The Headline Number Undersells What’s Actually Happening
FilmLA’s second-quarter numbers for 2026 read like bad news at first pass: 4,711 on-location shoot days across Los Angeles County, down 13% from the same quarter last year and down 8% from Q1. For a producer scanning that line alone, it looks like the LA production slowdown that’s defined the last few years hasn’t turned a corner yet. The detail worth reading past the headline is where that decline is concentrated — and where it isn’t.
Television Is Doing the Heavy Lifting
Break the Q2 numbers down by category and the picture splits. Television, historically the single biggest driver of on-location shoot days in LA, actually rose 34% from Q1 to Q2, reaching 1,607 shoot days for the three months ending in June. Comedies including Shrinking and Apple TV+’s The Studio, along with Peacock’s The Paper Season 2, kept crews working locally through the quarter. That’s a meaningfully different story than “production is down” — it’s a market where episodic work is recovering faster than film, and where the shows shooting need aerial coverage on a recurring basis rather than a single booking.
For a producer or line producer on an episodic show, that changes the vendor calculus. A single-shoot production can absorb some scheduling friction. A show ordering aerial coverage across a season can’t — the same unit needs to be available episode after episode, on tight turnarounds, without re-explaining airspace history and permit paperwork each time.
The Tax Credit Money Is Starting to Show Up in Titles
The other half of the recovery story is California’s expanded Film & TV Tax Credit Program, which has now awarded credits to 170 projects since its expansion, with 41 new film projects approved in July alone. That batch includes an untitled Pixar project, Ben Affleck’s Gingerbread Men, the Hailee Steinfeld and Rashida Jones-led animated feature Hexed from Disney, and DreamWorks’ Eddie Murphy vehicle Donkey. None of those are guaranteed aerial-heavy shoots, but they represent real production volume that wasn’t committed to California a year ago — and a share of it will need airspace clearance, permit coordination, and aerial units booked through the same FilmLA process as everything else moving through the county.
What a Bumpy Recovery Means for Booking Aerial Work
The practical read for producers: LA’s recovery isn’t uniform, and it isn’t finished. Overall shoot days are still down double digits year-over-year, which means competition for stage space and crew is real but uneven — some categories are tight, others still have slack. That unevenness is exactly the environment where booking an aerial partner early, rather than scrambling once a start date is locked, pays off. Vendors who already have FilmLA relationships, current insurance documentation on file, and airspace authorizations sorted for the county’s trickier zones can turn a booking around in days instead of the two-plus weeks a new relationship might require.
Get In Touch
CineDrones works across LA’s episodic and feature productions and keeps FilmLA paperwork, insurance, and airspace authorizations current year-round, so a new booking doesn’t start from zero. Get in touch with CineDrones to line up aerial coverage before your next LA shoot date is set.
