A Few Ways to Prevent Los Angeles From Becoming a Production Ghost Town (Guest Column)
There’s a sequence from Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood that comes to mind – everything that unfolds on Spahn Ranch. It’s a ghost town percolating with bizarre menace; a town that’s only pretending to be a town in the first place. The facades aren’t aged with an artistic patina – they’re falling apart because of neglect. Its keeper has gone blind and has become senile.
I only film in Los Angeles when I have to. I bemoan filming in LA County whenever it’s required. As the co-owner and managing director of a Directors Guild, IATSE, and Teamster 399 signatory production company, Rakish, my guttural whinging has nothing to do with production value – I know the craftspeople we’d inevitably collaborate with in LA are world class.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
Rather, the moans are inspired by a laundry list of quandaries that any producer in 2024 will empathize with. Permitting locations within the greater Los Angeles area is uniquely cumbersome compared with essentially every other domestic production hub; not to mention significantly more expensive than other markets. Location fees are out of control. Inflation pricing for gear rentals and crew street rates are not commensurate with the real world budgets production companies inherit from advertising agencies and brands. The yearly union minimum rate hikes that impact Los Angeles solely acknowledge macro inflation. There is no acknowledgment of the micro economics within advertising; what advertising agencies and brands are willing to pay in the current marketplace.
As a producer and business owner, objectively speaking, I don’t care where we host our shoots. To determine where we should film I ask: Does the production hub have the right locations? Is the local crew base strong for our needs? Will it work for the budget? “Yes” has to be the answer to all three. I’ll gladly go wherever “yes” is the mantra. So will anyone.
Los Angeles has the crew, that’s a yes. That’s typically the only yes.
Right locations? LA often boasts them from a creative point of view; but LA is not a film-friendly hub. The permitting idiosyncrasies of LA are unique to LA, and LA alone. It is death by a thousand cuts almost no matter the spec, simple or complex. “No” or “that’ll cost you handsomely” are the ubiquitous responses when attempting to permit most anything, from a street grid to a private residence.
In the current production marketplace, the “no” or “expensive” response is no longer sufficient. The insufficiency lies in a simple fact: Supply of capable film hubs has risen significantly, yet demand has plateaued, relatively speaking. Additionally, the real world cost of peripheral, non-labor resources has gone down, unless you must shoot on the Alexa 65 or you must optimize for Imax or you must shoot on film. Nary are these things musts; they are hopes and dreams for most productions. Will the budget work in LA? More times than not, no.
I was at a barbershop in Montrose the other day. I overheard stories between what I assume was a 1st AD and a television producer – stories of the dry well that is Los Angeles production. I felt compelled to jump in, uninvited, and say “the sky is blue.” Instead, I listened.
I heard stories of strife. Foreclosed, multi-generationally owned homes. Parents traveling to distant locations for months at a time; alienated wives and husbands and children. Jeopardized pensions. So-and-so leaving the business after 20 or 30 years; taking a pay cut to stabilize income. And this person moving to Atlanta and this one to Austin and this one to somewhere else in hopes of finding steadier work. “I’m blessed to have a six month gig in Dallas, but I don’t know if I can keep my marriage together.” This was the 1st AD’s story.
I appreciate, in general, that industries ebb and flow. A hub today may not be one tomorrow. Look at Appalachia and so many smaller cities in the Midwest. Look at what’s happening in San Francisco today. The precedent of Detroit. I am not the only person who’s articulated the problems that come with filming in Los Angeles County. But I’m not here to dwell on doom, which is the ubiquitous timbre of the news printed and discourse publicized about this issue.
This is my attempt to push us into solution. The Los Angeles film community has thus far become comfortable in strife – at least those appointed to act on the film community’s behalf. It’s time to articulate discomfort and demand action.
What does the way forward look like? These are the top line things that come to mind for me.
— Demand for legislative measures to stimulate the film economy within Los Angeles County. Such as a unified LA County permitting protocol with consistent pricing in lieu of fragmented rules from zip code to zip code; less stringent rules to boot. Compared with the aforementioned competitive film hubs, Los Angeles is not currently a desirable place to shoot – this is a fact. Make the county more film-friendly.
— Legislation that caps location fees within Los Angeles county. I.e. If you wish to list your home as a prospective filming location, you cannot legally charge more than X. Tiers and categories of locations with price cap mandates.
— Tax breaks for vendors supplying film-specific gear and rentals to the film community; in effort to make local pricing of said gear competitive with non-LA markets. Breaks for property taxes, sales tax, etc. for vendors who meet a specific criteria.
— A statewide film rebate program that is genuinely lucrative; that actually attracts production to the state from outside of California. The influx of volume will pay for the rebate via sales tax and income tax; plus mitigate film-worker retention within the state, creating and protecting legacy revenue.
— A red alert alignment across unions and guilds regarding union minimums and staffing requirements within Los Angeles county. An emergency moratorium on increases in crew minimums; a temporary lowering of crew minimums until stabilization within the Los Angeles marketplace can be declared.
To my friends in the film community who are members of the unions and guilds, I say emphatically that I am very pro-union in our industry. I’m a proud member of the DGA myself. While it may feel like a step backwards to lower minimums in response to the financial struggle of so many – we must consider the long game. Lower rates will create more opportunities. More opportunities will fill the coffers more quickly than a lesser amount of opportunities with higher rates. In the name of stabilization, please consider this.
Do not get me wrong – there are systemic fiscal issues within commercial advertising at large; significant contributors to the pervasive budget problem rearing its head in today’s advertising marketplace. Los Angeles is not to blame for this, nor any production community attempting to keep pace with inflation. Both sides have to give something to find immediate equilibrium; the makers and the advertisers … But that’s another op-ed entirely.
I am not a legislator nor an economist nor have much know-how beyond producing. Perhaps the notions of change I’ve proposed are naive or radical. Naivete and radical thinking is what brought me to Los Angeles in the first place, specifically the film community. They’re the indelible qualities by which Hollywood was forged.
If we don’t make the market competitive now, Los Angeles will be Spahn Ranch. Abandoned, in as far as it’s considered a filmmaking hub. Contracts may still be signed in Los Angeles, deals done; but cameras will not roll. And so – is Los Angeles’s history as the film capital of the world a facade? Or is it a foundation? Now is the time to decide.
Preston Garrett is the managing director and co-founder of Rakish, a DGA, IATSE, and Teamster 399 signatory Los Angeles production company that works on branded entertainment filmmaking.
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
Sign up for THR's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
