Keeping a Hometown Industry Home : City Council should endorse plan to make it easier for filmmakers to shoot on location

Behind the slick facade Hollywood projects on the screen is the arduous process of filmmaking that involves endless details, especially when it comes to location shoots. In Los Angeles, both the county and city have film permit operations from which filmmakers must secure approval to shoot outside their studios. It is a redundancy that creates bureaucratic nightmares for many a film project.

To help create a more hospitable environment for our hometown industry, a proposal is on the table to merge the city and county film permit offices. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has already approved the merger. Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan supports combining the offices. The City Council is expected to vote on the matter in the next few weeks.

City Council members should endorse the merger. If they do so, a nonprofit organization would be created to take over the combined city-county operation.

Streamlining the permit operation would continue the welcome trend of rapprochement between Hollywood and local government. After several years of decline, the number of location permits issued by the county and city film offices has begun to rebound, thus stemming what had become an alarming exodus of filmmakers from Los Angeles County.

Some officials, recognizing the jobs and dollars generated by the local television and film industry, have worked to eliminate the red tape and cost that have been sending filmmakers elsewhere. “Runaway” productions, as film projects that have fled the area are called, cost Southern California an estimated $2 billion annually. Even with that loss, location production adds about $5 billion to the local economy. But who would seriously argue that we couldn’t use the extra $2 billion?

Granted, sometimes Los Angeles-area homeowners and commuters get angry with location shooting because of the traffic congestion it causes and the crowds it can attract. But these are temporary inconveniences that surely can be borne to keep more location production here. Supporting a major, financially successful industry just makes civic sense.

And greater efficiencies for everyone involved would be achieved by consolidating the city and county film permit operations. All that is left is for the City Council to endorse the merger.