N.Y. Feels Pinch of Lost Filmmaking : Movies: Feature production takes a nose-dive, but, whether it’s recession-temporary or not, there’s still a lot of TV and film being made there.

What’s happened to the movie business in New York?

General Camera, suppliers of filmmaking hardware from cranes to klieg lights, has laid off half its 52 employees in the last two years.

The city boasted four major film processing labs as recently as five years ago. Only two remain.

And then there are ancillary businesses such as E & R Production Coordinators. In most cities, when a film crew needs to park its numerous trucks and trailers on a street, the police put up no-parking signs or orange traffic cones, and drivers leave the curb free. In New York, drivers are apt to plow right over the cones. On the theory that even those desperate for parking are unlikely to run over actual human beings, however, E & R supplies “parking coordinators” to hold the spaces until the crews arrive. A couple of years ago, the company employed 75 to 90 such stalwarts; now it only needs six or seven.

Hard times have befallen Hollywood on the Hudson. The number of shooting days devoted to all kinds of production, from music videos to commercials, fell by a quarter between the 1989 high-water mark and 1991. Preliminary stats from the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting show that decline continuing this year, with permits granted for feature films down from 106 to 70 in the first 10 months. It didn’t help that that very office, charged with enticing production companies to the city and smoothing their way once they arrive, had gone without a permanent director since April.

That problem was addressed recently when Richard Brick, an independent producer (“Hangin’ With the Homeboys”), took over the long-vacant job. At a City Hall press conference announcing his appointment, he talked about the need to market New York. “But I have to be frank; I am not the Messiah,” Brick said.

References to resurrection may overstate the problem. But the fear for an industry that a few years ago generated an estimated $3 billion annually in local economic activity, that has employed 75,000 in union locals alone, is palpable.

“My address book is getting smaller and smaller,” says locations manager Brett Botula, who recently worked on such major releases as “The Bonfire of the Vanities” and Sidney Lumet’s “A Stranger Among Us,” then found himself unemployed for seven months. “Many of my friends and co-workers have moved to California.”

The industry has never really recovered from a devastating seven-month boycott by the major movie studios in 1990. “We were doing ‘Godfather III’ in October, 1990,” says Alan Suna, CEO of Silvercup Studios in Queens. “They finished up and moved out, and it was fully a year before we had another feature.” Silvercup, a converted bakery that opened in 1983, had averaged six to 10 feature films a year; in the last 12 months it’s housed three.

The studios eventually wrung their desired concessions from the trade unions. And a tentative agreement reached with the Teamsters is expected to provide more. Labor costs, a number of New York film folks say, now amount to no more here than in Los Angeles.

But, while filmmakers were scrambling for substitute skylines during the boycott, they found far too many alternatives to both coasts--many of them non-union alternatives. “It’s not L.A.; it’s Houston, it’s Atlanta, Chicago, Pittsburgh,” says Martin Bregman, producer of such New York classics as “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Serpico.” “Other cities said, ‘Hey, guys, we’ll give you a free this and a discount on that. We’ll close this avenue, we’ll give you this hotel.’ They found another ball field.”

Meanwhile--the second half of a one-two punch--the entire industry took a pounding from the recession. Local cynics observe that Hollywood’s resulting passion for fiscal restraint has had relatively little impact on “above-the-line” costs, such as stars’ salaries. But elsewhere in budgets the squeeze is on, and New York remains a pricey place.

“Lumberyards in North Carolina can give you a better price than lumberyards in Astoria, Queens,” notes Bryan Unger, an official of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes. “How much of a difference that makes in a $40-million film is hard to say. But when companies are increasingly bottom-line oriented, those are the things they look at. ‘Keep Tom Cruise, get lower lumber bids.’ ”

This concern about feature films, the category in which New York has suffered the most conspicuous losses, can obscure the many varieties of film and TV produced here and the fact that they aren’t all shrinking. One bright spot is the East Coast Council, a labor consortium that negotiates reduced salary scales to help lure small independent movie makers to the city. In its first two years the council has made deals for about 20 such films that otherwise could not have afforded to shoot here, including the recently wrapped “Romeo Is Bleeding” with Gary Oldman and the about-to-wrap “The Night We Never Met,” starring Matthew Broderick.

New York-based TV series, although an endangered species compared with the heyday of the ‘50s and ‘60s, haven’t undergone a net loss: The late “Cosby Show’s” sound stages at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens have been taken over by Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s new show “Here and Now,” although whether the series will be renewed remains to be seen. Meanwhile “Law and Order” is still here, along with six network soap operas.

Less significant TV production--satellite teleconferences, for instance--is increasing. Music videos are up. TV commercials, a category deeply eroded since the mid-’80s, seem to have stabilized. “There’s a lot of the film business that is quite alive in New York,” says Suna of Silvercup.

When it comes to the troubles afflicting New York’s movie business, the optimists see one of those periodic economic downturns that affect many industries on both coasts and that eventually end. The pessimists see the latest installment in a long history, in which pieces of the entertainment industry leave New York and don’t return. Bregman, waiting to see whether the Teamsters agreement will be signed in time for him to shoot his next picture, “Carlito’s Way,” in New York or whether he’ll have to build sets and shoot it in California, is among the pessimists. “We’ve lost an awful lot of people,” he says. “Actors. Good technical people. . . . It’s very sad.”