The real victims of the Screen Actors Guild strike against the commercial production industry aren’t necessarily actors, most of whom have other jobs and don’t rely on ad work to make a living. And they certainly aren’t producers, who seem to be going ahead with their commercials without SAG’s participation.

The real victims are people like Danny Butch.

Butch’s commercial set design and prop house Zeitgeist is one of hundreds of small businesses throughout L.A. County that rely on commercial production work for their survival. Like many of its peers, Zeitgeist has been severely damaged by the strike.

“In May, we did two small jobs when normally we do five,” Butch said. “Since then, we’ve done two more small jobs when it would be about 12.”

He says business is down about 75 percent. Zeitgeist “got lucky” in August and was able to find some television and feature film work, but such gifts are more the exception than the norm.

“For set decoration and design, either you’re in commercial or you’re in theatrical,” Butch said. “(Theatrical) producers are looking for specific backgrounds (that commercial designers can’t provide).”

As the strike by SAG and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists trudges into its fifth month, support businesses like Butch’s are reporting enormous decreases in work, the possibility of layoffs and, in the not-too-distant future, possibly a permanent shuttering of doors.

Local prop houses, equipment-rental shops, recording studios, talent agencies and even small-time photo development shops have been hit hard by the ongoing labor dispute, industry observers said.

Maury Goldman, vice president of communications with the Entertainment Industry Development Corp., a nonprofit agency with a mission to spur film production in the region, says this strike is costing the local economy $1 million a day that’s an aggregate $140 million or so to date.

Larry Comara, vice president of recording studio Wave Sound Recorders in Hollywood, says the strike is “impeding my business and everybody else’s.” Wave is rummaging around for Internet opportunities, but business is off 40 percent. “It’s one of those unfortunate things. We’re just muddling through it.”

Comara, Butch and other businesspeople were casting a hopeful eye upon a meeting of SAG/AFTRA negotiators and representatives of the Joint Policy Council (the umbrella group for the Association of National Advertisers and American Association of Advertising Agencies) that was set to take place Sept. 13. Regardless of the outcome, though, permanent damage may have already been done.

“All the commercial production has gone to Canada,” said Jim Thompson, president of Reel-to-Reel Locations, which rents out locations for shooting. “(Commercial producers) are having good experiences up there. The more the actors dig in, the less business they’re going to see in the future.”

Reel-to-Reel maintains a list of properties largely in the L.A.-area. It has been reduced to leasing a much smaller collection of locations in Orange and Ventura counties, where producers have fled in an effort to avoid the unions’ wrath.

Thompson said his company planned for the strike and will be able to make it “a couple of more months” before layoffs will have to be undertaken.

Reel-to-Reel had been averaging about 30 bookings a month, but that figure is now under 10. “It has really hurt our business a lot,” he said.

Even businesses not obviously linked to commercial production are taking a hit. Butch says 23-Minute Photo, on Wilshire Boulevard at Highland Avenue, is a favorite place for set decorators to develop film. “People normally bring them nine or 10 rolls a day. Now there’s nobody in there. It’s sad to see,” Butch said.

Ian Kim, the proprietor of 23-Minute Photo, confirmed that assessment. “It’s bad. My business is off by one-third. Set decorators and some location guys don’t have jobs and I feel bad to see them that way. I wish that the strike would be over very soon.”

Butch says he’ll be able to scrape by this fall because of a seasonal pick-up in television and film production work. That situation will reverse itself if the oft-mentioned writers and theatrical actors strikes materialize in spring 2001.

For now, he’s got a finger in the dike, with small jobs from the party services industry. “We can probably hold on for another three months,” he said, but if the strike lasts longer than that, he’ll have to close his doors after eight years in business.