The number of commercial location shooting days in Los Angeles declined some 32.7 percent last year as compared to 1999, according to film permit figures released by the Entertainment Industry Development Corporation (EIDC), the public/private sector partnership that oversees the joint Los Angeles City/County Film Office.
The decrease—from 6,569 days in ’99 to 4,950 in ’00—was due largely to the six-month-long actors’ strike against the advertising industry, during which Los Angeles endured high levels of runaway production. For that six-month stretch (May-October), the EIDC reported 1,425 commercial location shooting days, a staggering 55.6 percent less than the 3,210 days during the same period in ’99. As chronicled in SHOOT, that decline translated into a hard financial hit on Southern California crew members and sup-port-service companies.
A slightly encouraging sign is that spot location activity for last month, 489 location shoot days, was virtually on a par with that of December ’99. However, the real test may be the volume of work after the winter. It was generally expected that location lensing in Los Angeles would return to "normal" levels in the months immediately after the strike—because of the climate change in such popular runaway destinations as Vancouver, B.C., and Toronto. But when weather warms up in Canada and other foreign locales, will L.A. spot shoot levels hold, increase or decrease?
One prevalent theory is that the strike caused many advertisers to discover that shooting in Canada and overseas represents a viable cost-saving alternative. Thus for years to come the strike could prove to have a lasting effect in terms of heightened runaway production.
Spot shoot numbers in Los Angeles figure to be heavily scrutinized this year to help determine the strike’s impact. Also looming over the U.S. economy—particularly in California—is possible strike action by actors and/or writers against the theatrical feature and TV program studios. If a strike or strikes come to pass, location shoot days for features and TV in Los Angeles will plummet. In ’00, feature location shoot days decreased 10 percent as compared to the previous year’s, while TV program location lensing days went up eight percent over ’99.
