Posted on 07/12/2009 4:41:12 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Small, blue-collar businesses that sustain California's entertainment industry -- prop houses, studio equipment shops -- fight for business as film production migrates to incentive-rich states.
California's share of U.S. feature film production dropped to 31% in 2008 from 66% in 2003, according to the California Film Commission. That largely reflects a falloff in the Los Angeles area, where feature filming activity in 2008 was nearly half what it was at its peak in 1996.
Television production, which recently has been a more reliable source of jobs in the region, is also declining. A recent survey from FilmL.A. Inc. found that 44 of 103 TV pilots this year were shot in such disparate locations as Canada, Illinois, Georgia, New York, Louisiana and New Mexico.
More than 30 states have sought to outbid one another with tax credits and rebates aimed at luring productions away from California. Sacramento has responded with its first-ever film-tax credit program, but most analysts think the credits are too small and restrictive to have much effect.
"L.A. is at risk of losing a good part of one of its signature industries, just like it did with the aerospace industry in the early 1990s," said Jack Kyser, chief economist for Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Even socialists don’t like socialism.
Three guesses where most of that production went.
They will learn absolutely nothing from the experience.
It’s funny how the Hollyweirdos are all towing and preaching the Demonrat lines and inject their leftist politics into everything and then have the audacity to seek tax breaks! To hell with them and they need to be the FIRST to pay up and ‘spread the wealth’. As they used to say-’Off with their heads!’. These people are part of the problem in what they’ve done to bring upon the death of this country.
Hollyweird is the only industry that the LA Times cares about leaving the Titanicformia and calls for supply side tax cuts.
The state of Misery...er Michigan might lead the way in tax breaks for Hollywood. Our governor Jenny Grantheft wants the lead in the remake of Misery. We might exceed the old Misery Index with unemployment numbers alone.
I guess Barbara will be moving to China soon because her taxes will be to high in the US.
another foot on the chest of California.
I think it’s more’n’at .... La Reconquista’s have won (southern) California back.
They won’t and will remain dumbfounded as to why.
The state is cannibalizing it's most productive (or at least, most money generating) elements. Hollywood is going to be nothing more than a sign and some empty studio lots in 25 years, if this keeps up.
I'm reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time right now. It's downright eerie. Ayn Rand called all of this decades ago.
***I’m reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time right now. It’s downright eerie. Ayn Rand called all of this decades ago.***
Over half a century and she’s called it like Al Michaels calls a game. The steps that she outlines and the reasoning behind each step is almost perfectly aligned with what’s happening. It’s almost as if the book is being used as a framework on what to do and how to do it.
If you had a film to make called “Dirty Streets of LA”, guess where you would make it - hint: anyplace but LA / TaxUfornia! The greater the special effects capability become the more the idiots lose.
If you are a wine enthusiast you have probably noted that the price of California wines have dropped over the last nine months. Watch out, the elitists from Napa and Sonoma are next in line and will soon be asking Arnold for a bail-out.
Canada, Illinois, Georgia, New York, Louisiana and New Mexico and I hope they stay there Hollywood people are freaks.
California's share of U.S. feature film production dropped to 31% in 2008 from 66% in 2003, according to the California Film Commission. That largely reflects a falloff in the Los Angeles area, where feature filming activity in 2008 was nearly half what it was at its peak in 1996. Television production, which recently has been a more reliable source of jobs in the region, is also declining. A recent survey from FilmL.A. Inc. found that 44 of 103 TV pilots this year were shot in such disparate locations as Canada, Illinois, Georgia, New York, Louisiana and New Mexico.So-called reality TV is shot all over the place; L.A. has the largest share of any city, and of course, still has a vibrant economy thanks to the hardworking carjackers, illegal aliens, and gov't-funded health care for anchor babies and their moms.
they can ask but important that they have far fewer choices of places to move too since climate and soil are so integral to the product.
Why would wine and not bourbon or some other hard liquor qualify for aid? I think it would be difficult to pick one or the other. Are the field workers unionized? That might be the only way zero steps in.
Doh! Wealth is portable after all! And if you become a business hostile-environment, soon you will have no business. Just dang those economic consistencies! They work just like gravity and hit just as hard...
I was recently in Sonoma and at Healdsburg had a chance to talk (in Spanish) with some Mexican laborers who were hanging around. There are the old time Mexican laborers who have worked the region for years, and the newcomers. Word is that many newcomers could not find work either in the fields or in construction and were returning home. Word on the street was that the Sanapanoma high-end producers of 92+ wine may be able to hold the price, but the big boys will reduce, and the minibottlers will fold.
but are they unionized? i seem to recall a certain organizer by the name of cesar chavez back in the day..
Any bets that when film production drops to zero the California Film Commission (only one of over 800 CA state organizations) will still draw full wages, benefits, and retirement?
Chavez destroyed the Braceero program. Ironically, he couldn’t provide the laborers the Central Valley farmers needed so they turned to Food Machinery Corporation for field machinery and to other corporations to provide new hybrids that would ripen at a consistency that would allow strip operations. There are certain operations, like grapes, that need the human touch, and as Americans went wine happy more and more illegals were needed in California. That is changing, right now.
Years ago, John Sayles (THE HOWLING, MATEWAN) said he preferred to make movies in Canada so he could use non-union labor.
When Nissan announced a few years ago it was moving its North American headquarters from L.A. to Nashville they calculated it was 44 percent cheaper to do business in Tennessee than California. California has always given more—in taxes, job and wealth creation—to the country than it has gotten back. That’s changing before our eyes.
And the press? The ones so willing to catch the smallest hypocrisy on the part of the right - where were they... never heard this one about a lefty.
........computer software like Vulcan, digital editing from Avid and Final Cut, and Sony Extreme stock production music have all gotten so good that you don’t need half the crap that the post production biz provides. All the other things like wardrobe ect have moved out long ago. Now even the market has moved to direct to DVD, India and China, so it’s good bye Hollywood, good bye Record companies.
Also “Tax Me if You Can”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123698885439126181.html
We’re constantly told that taxes don’t matter to business and investors, but listen to that noted supply-side economist, Alec Baldwin. The actor recently rebuked New York Governor David Paterson for threatening to try to help close the state’s $7 billion budget deficit by canceling a 35% tax credit for films shot in the Big Apple.
“I’m telling you right now,” Mr. Baldwin declared, “if these tax breaks are not reinstated into the budget, film production in this town is going to collapse, and television is going to collapse and it’s all going to go to California.” [snip]
Mr. Baldwin’s views are shared across the movie industry [snip]
Vancouver.
No one can afford to shoot in L.A. especially a pilot that doesn’t have a guarantee of getting picked up. The unions have made it impossible.
Yep. Clint Eastwood made his movie “Gran Torino” in Michigan.
Eastwood never shoots in town because he has used the same crew for 30 years and if he had to replace any one of them with a union gummer, he’d quit the business.
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