The Recovery Has a Number Attached to It Now
California’s Film and Television Tax Credit Program funding more than doubled, jumping from $330 million to $750 million after Governor Newsom signed the expansion into law. The first full fiscal year of that expanded program has already awarded tax credits to 170 projects, including a fresh batch of 41 new film projects announced in July, and the state is projecting $6.6 billion in economic impact from that first year alone. Feature film shoot days were up more than 52% year-over-year in the first quarter. For producers who’ve spent the last two years hearing about Los Angeles production leaving for other states, the credit’s second year is the first real evidence that some of it is coming back.
The Recovery Isn’t Even Across the Board
That said, the numbers aren’t uniformly up. FilmLA’s second-quarter report showed on-location shoot days actually dipped 12.7% from the same period last year, even as TV dramas held up better than other categories and overall California production spend rose 5%. Read together, the picture is a state-level recovery that’s real but uneven month to month, which matters for aerial planning because it means productions are greenlighting and scheduling on shorter notice than they used to, leaving less runway to lock permits and airspace clearance before a shoot date is fixed.
Cheaper Permits Don’t Include Aerial Work
The City of Los Angeles rolled out its own piece of this recovery push in April: a Low Impact Permit Pilot Program that lets low-footprint shoots get a City permit at a reduced cost. It’s a genuinely useful tool for a lot of productions, but producers budgeting for a drone unit need to know it doesn’t apply to them. The low-impact tier explicitly excludes UAS, helicopters, and fixed-wing aircraft, and any aerial coverage still requires a Standard Film Permit through FilmLA. Aerial work is being carved out as its own permitting lane even as the rest of the process gets faster and cheaper.
Airspace Hasn’t Gotten Any Simpler
The other piece producers underestimate is airspace, not just permitting. LAX, Burbank, and Long Beach airports blanket much of the LA basin in Class B airspace, which requires LAANC authorization for any drone flight regardless of what the film permit says, and the FAA’s enforcement posture tightened this year, with airspace violations now more likely to draw fines or certificate action than a warning. A cleared FilmLA permit and a cleared airspace authorization are two different documents, and a production needs both before a drone leaves the ground anywhere near LA’s major flight corridors.
Get In Touch
CineDrones handles both sides of that paperwork, the FilmLA Standard Film Permit and the FAA/LAANC airspace authorization, as a standard part of booking an LA aerial unit, so a producer riding this production wave doesn’t get caught short on a detail the tax credit doesn’t cover. Get in touch with CineDrones to lock in an aerial unit and the paperwork behind it before your shoot date firms up.
