Los Angeles is still overflowing with creativity.
But the work?
That’s disappearing.
And for thousands of people in the production community, that’s devastating.
Directors. Editors. Producers. Grips. Electrics. Art departments. Hair and makeup. Set designers. Freelancers. Small production companies. Crew members who built their entire lives around this business.
These are the people who helped make Los Angeles the production capital of the world.
And right now, a lot of them are just trying to survive.
The numbers are brutal.
Shoot days in Los Angeles have dropped from almost 37,000 in 2022 to under 20,000 in 2025.
More than 40,000 film and television jobs are gone.
Industry employment is down roughly 30% from its 2023 peak.
That’s not a “slow season.”
That’s a collapse.
And the hardest part is this:
The people are still here.
The talent is still here.
The crews are still here.
The history is still here.
But the economics are not.
Part of the problem is California is still trying to compete with an incentive model that feels like it was built for a different version of the business.
A back-end tax credit sounds great on paper, but when you compare Los Angeles to places like Atlanta, Austin, New Mexico, or other growing production markets, it becomes a cash-flow problem.
And cash flow is everything.
Big studios can front the money and wait months to get reimbursed.
Smaller producers, indie agencies, freelancers, and small production companies can’t always do that.
They can’t wait 60, 90, or 120 days to get paid back.
When the money doesn’t flow, the work doesn’t flow.
Maybe California doesn’t just need bigger incentives.
Maybe it needs smarter ones.
Maybe the answer is not another slow back-end rebate, but a front-end financing model that actually helps productions choose Los Angeles before the jobs leave.
Because right now, LA is losing work it should be winning.
At the same time, we have to be honest about something else.
For years, filmmakers and crews outside of Los Angeles struggled to get access while Hollywood held the keys to the kingdom.
Nobody seemed too concerned then.
So those markets built their own studios.
Their own crews.
Their own infrastructure.
Their own talent pools.
Their own distribution channels.
And now, they’re not waiting for permission anymore.
The industry is decentralizing.
Hollywood will always matter, but the future of production will not belong exclusively to Hollywood.
Maybe this is the painful reset nobody wanted.
Maybe this is what happens when an industry prices people out, gates people out, and then assumes the work will always come back.
I love Los Angeles.
I love this business.
I love the crews who built it.
But if we want people working again, we need to stop pretending this is just a temporary slowdown.
It’s bigger than that.
The model has changed.
And maybe the day of the independent has finally arrived.
For those of you still working in production, agency finance, entertainment, or indie filmmaking:
What are you seeing?
And what do you think would actually put people back to work?
