COMMERCIAL SLOWDOWN: L.A. Production Down
By LAURENCE DARMIENTO
Los Angeles’ commercial production industry has yet to recover from the actors’ strike that shut down filming two years ago and may have caused permanent damage by shifting more filming overseas.
Commercial production is down 6.2% for the first seven months of the year vs. last year, according to the L.A.-based Entertainment Industry Development Corp. Those figures come despite national data indicating that after more than two years, the advertising industry slump might be showing signs of coming back.
“There was a trend toward global production, and the strike exacerbated that trend significantly,” said Steve Caplan, a senior vice president with the Association of Independent Commercial Producers.
From January through the end of July, there were 3,370 commercial shooting days in Los Angeles County, 224 fewer than last year, although filming picked up somewhat during the summer.
Production is down 18% compared with the like seven-month period in 1999, prior to the actors’ strike, which lasted from May to October of 2000.
The figures are more striking since all other types of production, including motion pictures, television and music videos, are off less than 2% from 1999 levels,and the latest national figures show spending for all types of media advertising was off only 0.2% for the first six months of the year.
And two longtime talent agencies,DDK Talent Representatives and Abrams-Rubaloff & Lawrence,are closing their ad operations because of a slowdown in the local commercial advertising business they trace to the actors’ strike.
Gary Rose, an executive producer at Moxie Pictures Inc., a Hollywood commercial production company, said that while the effects of the recession and the terrorist attacks should not be underestimated, overseas filming got a big boost from the strike.
“At the time the strike happened it was very difficult for producers to shoot statewide,” he said. “You would have picketing actors. It was crazy.”
What they found were adequately trained actors, as well as a burgeoning production industry, that has made great strides in Canada, Australia, South Africa and Eastern Europe.
The higher cost of air travel is more than made up by favorable exchange rates, far cheaper labor and even less expensive hotels and meal costs than L.A. or other U.S. locales.
Rich Carter, owner of Gartner, a Santa Monica commercial production house, said overseas production now accounts for 30% of his business, compared with 10% prior to the strike, which at the time was largely done for creative reasons, such as to capture a landscape.
Advertisers, said Carter, have determined that certain commercials involving little or no dialogue are not worth shooting in the United States, where actors’ fees and residuals represent a large portion of their costs.
Carter estimates that advertisers can save 25 cents on the dollar by using non-union talent in foreign countries.
The Entertainment Industry Development Corp. and others have tried to counter the problem of runaway production through legislative efforts, but a bill that would have granted state tax credits to companies that keep at least half their production in California was defeated last month in Sacramento over state budgetary concerns.
Darmiento is a staff reporter with the Los Angeles Business Journal.
