Q & A; adds

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Q & A; ADD/dt1st/mark2nd

Bryan Unger, DGA

(Add to answer about difference between moving to Canada as opposed to moving elsewhere in U.S. )

When you have production move around from state to state, very mobile people relocate to places where there is greater production to Texas, or wherever. But when you take a trained workforce and cut it off from any other options, and there is a whole other workforce in Canada, then those jobs are cut off. And when production comes back to L.A., which it will, you’ll have a glut of unemployed workers in Canada.

Q: The number of film-industry jobs in Los Angeles may have dropped off slightly of late, but it has grown dramatically in the past decade or so, from around 53,000 to around 130,000. So why all the fuss?

A: No question that the number of jobs in L.A. has risen, we have had good times, the economy has been good. But the unions haven’t seen the kind of growth you’re talking about, and these studies capture different types of jobs, some of which are discrete. And anyway, in an industry like the automobile industry, you can absorb and retrain people. That doesn’t happen here. People in TV production don’t have contacts in feature film. While there might be job growth, when segments (of the production process) leave, they leave behind jobs.

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