The head of FilmLA has said production is ”far below where Los Angeles needs it to be” as the agency reported a 4.8% year-on-year drop in shooting days in the third quarter.
While California’s Film & Television Tax Credit Program was bringing productions back to Greater Los Angeles, the agency’s CEO Denise Gutches said that crews and businesses across the region were feeling the decline.
Overall on-location filming amounted to 4,171 shoot days from July through September compared to 4,380 in the year-ago period. Projects accessing the tax credit programme accounted for 40.3% of scripted on-location filming in the region in Q3.
There were 533 feature film shoot days, up 2.1% year-on-year from 522, and up 20.3% over 443 in the second quarter. Incentivised projects accounted for 24.2% of feature shoot days in a 22% year-on-year gain. FilmLA said the majority of local feature production came from independents. Studio and streamer productions included 13 Going On 30 for Netflix, Cut Off for Warner Bros, and They Follow for Neon.
The increase in incentivised production was concentrated on television after last year’s expansion of the tax credit programme to allow projects with minimum episode lengths of 20 minutes to qualify. Incentivised projects accounted for 62% of TV comedy shoot days compared to 19% this time last year and 49.4% of TV drama shoot days compared to 20.6%. TV comedies ended the quarter on 192 shoot days, up 143% from 79 days a year earlier.
Across feature and television production, incentivised projects accounted for 505 shoot days in Q3, more than double 242 from a year ago. FilmLA’s Gutches said she expected the tax credit programme’s impact to increase, with dozens of upcoming approved projects expected to log 1,049 shooting days in California. Credit recipients have 180 days to begin production.
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