Prior to the actors’ strike against the advertising industry, The Camera House in North Hollywood had been averaging business growth at a monthly clip of about 20 percent during its year-plus existence. Starting on May 1—day one of the strike—that pattern reversed, with the camera rental shop experiencing a decrease of 20 percent per month through August.
September and October picked up due to concerted efforts on the part of loyal clients to funnel business over to the company, and also because The Camera House started to ship out camera packages to Canada, New Zealand, the Bahamas and remote locations throughout the U.S.
Now, with the strike finally settled (SHOOT, 10/27, p. 1), Rufus Burnham, principal in The Camera House, feels cause for both optimism and continued concern. In several key respects, his situation and sentiments parallel those of many supplier and service company owners who were adversely impacted by the strike.
For one, Burnham is buoyed by the fact that winter is upon us. "Weather is changing everywhere, and I think a significant share of business might have returned to Southern California anyway, even if the strike were still going on," he conjectured. "But there’s no guarantee that all the work that normally stays here past the winter will remain. We’ll need time to gauge the long-term impact [of the strike]. A lot of advertisers discovered other locales and countries, and we now have to court back that business."
Runaway production was identified as a major problem by different sectors of the U.S. film industry, including SAG, prior to the strike. But, clearly, the strike exacerbated the flight of filming to outside of the U.S. "The strike opened up my eyes to the fact that setting up an additional situation in Vancouver is something I have to consider—even if I don’t want to," acknowledged Burnham. "I now anticipate that we’ll have some sort of facility or service operation there within the next 12 months. I would have never thought that before the strike. Runaway production is real, and it’s not going to go away."
The other cause for concern involves possible strikes by actors and writers against the feature and TV industries next year. "That makes me nervous," noted Burnham. "Even though we primarily service clients in commercial production, I can see rental houses dependent on those areas [features and TV programs] suddenly targeting our market [spots] if longform business declines due to strikes … It means, in a sense, that we will have to be running scared for another six to eight months."
Thankfully, though, the phones are starting to ring more consistently. "I’m already seeing an increase in the flow of calls and jobs coming in," Burnham reported. "It’s still probably going to take a good 10 to 15 business days for everyone to reorganize and get commercial filming going again at a decent pace in Los Angeles."
Now Burnham hopes to begin the process of eventually bringing back five employees that he had to lay off because of the strike. When business picked up in September and October, a couple of those staffers got some part-time work at The Camera House. "I cannot commit to return to our full staffing and purchasing levels again until we know a little bit more about how the area [Los Angeles] will recover, and about the prospects for a strike or strikes next year," related Burnham. "But at the very least, for the first time in months, there’s reason to think that the future can be bright."
