It was a dismal fourth quarter for the Los Angeles area in terms of on-location filming, according to figures released this week by FilmLA.
The Studio City-based nonprofit, which coordinates film locations permits in Los Angeles, unincorporated Los Angeles County and other jurisdictions handled 5,520 on-location shoot days from October through December. That compares to 8,674 shoot days in the same period a year earlier, a decline of 36%.
For all of last year, the organization handled 24,873 shoot days, or a 32% decrease from the 36,792 shoot days it did in all of 2022.
A shoot day is one crew’s permission to film at one or more locations during a 24-hour period. FilmLA’s data does not include activity on soundstages or studio backlots.
Paul Audley, FilmLA’s president, said that history offers no point of comparison to the present.
“The pandemic year aside, we have to look very far back – farther back than permit records allow – to find a time when production levels stayed so low, for so long,” Audley said.
“Everyone we are speaking to is eager to see production resume,” he added, “Even as it does, we’ll remain in uncharted territory. We have months to go before we can describe what the new normal looks like for filming in Los Angeles.”
The conclusion of the Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists work actions on Sept. 27 and Nov. 9, respectively, came too late for production to pick up by year’s end.
In the feature film category, on-location production dropped steeply in the fourth quarter, with a 57.5% decrease to 323 shoot days. Most feature projects in production this summer were smaller, independent productions, among a few moving forward under SAG-AFTRA interim agreements.
In the television category, the one bright spot was in pilots filming on location, which saw an increase in the fourth quarter of 67%, or to 15 shoot days from the nine shoot days in the same period of the prior year.
Reality programming saw a 29% decrease in the quarter to 1,425 shoot days, despite being the category with the most activity in television. Reality TV comprised 76.5 percent of all on-location television production in 2023.
TV drama production dropped 91.3% from October through December (101 shoot days in 2023 versus 1,155 shoot days in 2022), and TV sitcom production dropped 85.6% (51 shoot days vs. 353 shoot days), according to the organization.
“Unaffected by the strikes but trending lower due to runway production, filming for web and television commercials slipped last quarter, with a 9.9 percent year-over-year drop to 746 (shoot days),” FilmLA said.
FilmLA’s “other” category, which aggregates smaller, lower-cost shoots such as still photography, student films, documentaries, music and industrial videos and other projects, declined 18.1% – to 2,744 shoot days – for the quarter, it said.
