In some of the best news around, filming in the LA area reached and stabilized at pre-pandemic levels for the second quarter of 2022. This comes on the heels of three consecutive quarterly records, too. While we see TV shoot days decline a little, there’s a small uptick in film shootings, and overall numbers still look great. Blake & Wang P.A entertainment lawyer, Brandon Blake, shares the stats.
Correcting a Q1 Drop
We did see a stronger drop-off at the start of 2022, but this corrected in Q2 to 9,220 shoot days, leaving shoot days 6.8% ahead of 2019 numbers, and 2.7% over the same 2018 period. While it is down on the July 2021-March 2022 period, most of that exponential growth was driven by the re-launch of projects stalled by the pandemic restrictions, so there’s no real cause for worry.
TV a Driving Force
TV filming claims 4,136 of those days, 16% lower than the same period for 2021, but still managing a 12.7% increase on the five year average. Some of this growth can be attributed to the changes made to the Film & Television Tax Credit program, adding $180M in incentives to the existing $330M. We saw both Rap Sh!t (HBO) and Killing It (NBCUniversal) move to the state to capitalize on this incentive.
Reality TV programming continues to boom, finishing staggeringly close to doubling its presence over the five year average. Comedy is down on the same timeline, but still managed to finish 61.8% ahead of last year.
Feature films pulled in 898 shoot days, a 9% increase on the same time last year, though trailing a little on the five-year average. Commercials round out the remaining days, and are the only category to see double-figure drops on both last year and five-year figures.
