The wildfires that ravaged the Los Angeles area in January also took a toll on the already-distressed local film and TV production sector. FilmLA reported today that overall shoot days in Greater L.A. were down by 22.4% during the first quarter, continuing a disturbing trend.
The city and county film-permitting office said that all of the major filming categories it tracks declined during the period. Hardest hit was the TV production, which plunged by 30.5% to 1,670 shoot day for the quarter, but Feature Film production wasn’t far behind, dropping by 28.9 percent to 451 days. They reflected the impact of global production cutbacks and California’s ongoing loss of work to rival territories, FilmLA said.
FilmLA noted, however, that the wildfires that devastated the Pacific Palisades and Altadena communities had only a small effect on L.A.-area filming. A recent analysis by the group determined that combined, those areas had hosted 1,405 shoot days during the past four years – or roughly 1.3% of all regional filming. About 545 unique filming locations fell within the fires’ burn zones, which at the order of Los Angeles City and County, remain off-limits.
FilmLA defines a “shoot day” as one crew’s permission to film at one or more defined locations during any 24-hour period.
“Loss of filming opportunity in no way compares to the cost of the Eaton and Palisades Fires in terms of loss of life, resident displacement and property damage,” said Philip Sokoloski, VP Integrated Communications at FilmLA. “The fires sent many productions scrambling to reschedule shoots and displaced hundreds of industry workers from their homes. But their impact on local filming levels appears to have been temporary.”
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