New Film Office a Hit; L.A. Booms Again as Location

After years of watching portions of the lucrative entertainment business slip away from California, local officials and many filmmakers now say Los Angeles has stemmed the tide of so-called runaway production, luring TV and movie producers back home with streamlined permit procedures and better union deals.

A year after the city and county merged their film offices, location filming in Los Angeles is soaring, with production so far in 1996 up 26% over the same period last year, according to the new agency. Permits for August were up 35% over 1995.

The credit goes in large part to the joint city and county film office, which was set up in July 1995, said location managers, producers and film office administrators. The year-old Entertainment Industry Development Corp. has been so aggressive in its efforts to draw producers here that other states are complaining that their share of the business is declining.

A recent publication from the Oregon Film Office cited aggressive moves by Los Angeles for a 15% drop in filming there. “It has gotten really competitive, with L.A. making a lot of strides in keeping business there,” said a high-ranking Oregon film official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

To be sure, the entertainment industry is booming all over, with filmed products now needed for the resurgent movie business as well as cable TV and computer software. And some popular out-of-state locations, like Canada and North and South Carolina, continue to boom as a result.

But Los Angeles, historically the heart of the industry because of its weather and proximity to post-production facilities and industry workers, is looking good after suffering a flight of business during the late 1980s and early 1990s, location managers and producers say.

“It’s busier now than I’ve seen it in 10 years,” said Gary Watt, location manager for the Chatsworth-based DreamWorks SKG television program, “High Incident.” Watt, a Teamster with a union job, credits Mayor Richard Riordan, the new film office and concessions by unions with creating a climate conducive to local production.

Statewide, the film and TV business is estimated to have generated about $17 billion last year, mostly in Los Angeles County.

“I think we all realized that this is the last of the great industries in Southern California,” said Watt. “We’ve lost aerospace. We don’t want to lose this.”

Business is up so much at the local film office, Executive Vice President Stephanie Liner said, that her agency is starting to shift its focus: from getting producers to film here to spreading the work around town so the same neighborhoods don’t have to suffer the intrusions of work crews and trucks all the time.

“There’s so much production going on, it’s unbelievable,” she said. “The other day we had 215 locations being shot in one day.”

Janice Polley, a Los Angeles-based location manager, said her last three films, including the Warner Bros. release “Heat” and Tri Star’s “The Fan,” starring Robert De Niro, were filmed in Los Angeles.

“There are a lot of movies staying in town,” said Polley, who specializes in finding Los Angeles locations for action films. “At the moment there is more filming in this town than I’ve seen in years.”

The city-county film office, a pet project of Riordan’s, has concentrated its efforts on making it cheaper and easier to film in Los Angeles, Liner said.

The agency has changed the way a production company must apply for a permit. For example, it has eliminated a requirement that location managers and producers make their requests in person.

Now, applications can be faxed or phoned into the agency’s office, and completed permits are hand-delivered by courier to the applicant’s office or work site--sometimes in as little as 24 hours.

The agency has facilitated discussions with several film unions, resulting in concessions for low budget projects, relaxing strict union rules for productions under $6 million. It has also helped make it easier and cheaper to get some police and fire permits.

Because of that, Liner said, the city has seen a return of location shooting for made-for-TV movies, which are typically shot on fairly low budgets. These productions have been notorious for fleeing Los Angeles: a TV movie about the San Fernando Valley, for example, was shot in New Zealand.

Liner and her colleagues also have worked to smooth ruffled feathers with neighborhood groups wary of local filming.

“Historically, there has been an amount of tension between filmmakers and the communities where they film,” said Gini Barrett, senior vice president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in Encino and an industry representative on the city-county film agency’s board.

Now, Barrett said, the Development Corp. notifies neighborhoods before a film company begins production. Lack of notification was a frequent point of contention in the past, she said.

“I’ve seen a number of production companies that have really started to rethink Los Angeles, whereas in the past, L.A. was seen as too hard to film and too complicated,” said Lisa Rawlins, vice president of studio and production affairs at Warner Bros.

“You can make one call and you know the problem is going to be solved--one question and you know you’ll get an answer,” she said. “They anticipate problems for you.”

Rawlins cited the example of “Steel,” an action film starring Shaquille O’Neal that is currently in production. Warner Bros. was granted permission to film a car chase through Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles for a scene in the movie. That has never been allowed before and, in the past, the studio probably wouldn’t have bothered to ask, she said.

Ralph Meyer, a Topanga-based location manager who also specializes in the Los Angeles area, said there remain creative and financial barriers to filming in Southern California.

“They’ve made it easier to film in Los Angeles, but I don’t think that’s necessarily changed anybody’s mind,” said Meyer, who is currently working on a Richard Dreyfuss film called “Trigger Happy.”

Producers still can save money filming out of town, Meyer said, especially in places where residents charge less to lease out their homes and property for movie shoots.

“In Los Angeles, people are so savvy about location filming that they’ve all got their hands out,” Meyer said. A local homeowner with a big house to lease might charge $5,000 a day, Meyer said. By contrast, a family in a small town out of state might be so happy to have a movie filmed at their residence that they would ask for very little.

Local union concessions are significant, he said, but it still costs less to film in right-to-work states where union labor is not required.

Sometimes, productions are shot outside of Los Angeles simply because their story line demands it.

Michael Lansbury, vice president of series programming for MTM Entertainment in Studio City, said the company is filming its new syndicated series, “The Cape,” in Florida because the show will incorporate scenes at the Kennedy Space Center.

Even so, Los Angeles is the company’s choice to film its new NBC series, “The Pretender,” because it can double for so many places, accommodating a show with a plot that jumps from city to city.

Some industry executives say the increase in location filming in Los Angeles is largely the result of the booming demand for movies and TV shows.

“It’s extraordinary the proliferation of production that has been happening in town,” said Ted Kaye, vice president of videotape production at Walt Disney Co. in Burbank.

Elizabeth Woods, whose company, Ascot Locations, represents building owners who wish to lease out their property for movie shoots, said her business is way up, citing growing demand and a resolve on the part of filmmakers to treat private property better than in the past.

“About three or four years ago, it looked like everything was being shot in Canada,” Woods said. “Now it’s coming back.”