How Do You Make California and Los Angeles as Film-Friendly as Possible?

Between all the fears of production leaving California and the grumbling over uncapped tax credits, above-the-line eligibility, federal film offices, and more, the dirty secret is that if someone really wants to shoot in Los Angeles, they can — and they will.

“The people who want to film in California are going to film in California,” Mandi Dillin, a location manager on Amazon’s “Fallout” series and the upcoming “Cliff Booth” film for Netflix, both of which shot and are shooting in Los Angeles, told IndieWire.

“Cliff Booth” had to be made in Hollywood because of the nature of its story, but Jonathan Nolan made a point to center “Fallout” in Los Angeles even though it didn’t have to be. Amazon obliged and made it happen, California tax credit included. Even indies like “The Invite,” “Lurker,” “Atropia,” and the upcoming “They Follow” have all navigated tight budgets and made it work after securing the California tax credit.

But, in many cases, producers aren’t even asked for a Los Angeles budget because it’s just too expensive. That line of thinking needs to change, and there are several ways that mindset shift can become real.

Susan Sprung, the president of the Producers Guild, said everyone she speaks to who gets to shoot in Los Angeles is thrilled about it. They can see their families at night and sleep in their own beds. The California Employment Development Department reported that in May, just shy of 100,000 film professionals were employed here, but that’s a drop of 6.3 percent from a year earlier.

There’s real “bumpiness” in the process that can make things harder. Say you have a change of location because of the weather: the pain point in Los Angeles is that suddenly you need a new permit, new signage, and there may not be a person available who can facilitate that timely.

Time, after all, is money.

So while expenses are always going to be the driving factor of any production’s choices, she believes it should be the state of California’s priority to make us the “most film-friendly state” in the country.

“What people, and certainly my members, are willing to do, they’re willing to sacrifice a lot to shoot here,” Sprung said. “What they always say to me is, California doesn’t have to get right there, it just has to get us close enough financially that we can make the argument.”

California since expanding its credit to $750 million annually has awarded tax credits to 170 film projects, and applications have gone up by 82 percent compared to the prior year, according to the California Film Commission. The 4.0 program also awarded 20 new series and six pilots tax credits, a big jump from the last iteration of the program.

But the recent fiasco around Fox’s “Baywatch” reboot demonstrated that production shouldn’t just be cheaper here, but also easier. The producers found they were unable to shoot on the same beaches where the original series filmed, they weren’t able to drive trucks on the sand, and they had to fight to leave cars in beach parking lots overnight.

When your show becomes a talking point in the LA Mayoral debates, you know you’ve got problems.

“We still have the advantage that this is where everyone wants to be. The longer we let all of these annoying things happen … the more people will start to move away, and then it won’t become the priority in the same way,” Sprung said. In FilmLA‘s most recent report from 2025, it found that while LA remains the industry leader in productions in the world, Los Angeles productions in 2024 dropped 26.7 percent compared to 2023 while UK productions went up by 77.2 percent.

The people who really feel these pain points and know the red tape, inside and out, are location managers. IndieWire spoke with several, who identified four broad ideas that neighborhoods, cities, and counties across California can implement to make us more film-friendly.

In all these cases, other major film hubs across America deal with similar challenges. Some have certain aspects figured out better than others, and others may be cheaper but have longer wait times to receive permits or resources. But there currently is no filming Eden, and the means of finding solutions here is a nuanced conversation without easy answers or fixes.

Veronique Vowell, a location manager on “Tracker,” polled location managers from major film hubs around the world about how much it costs to pull permits, how many days requests take, and what requirements are demanded.

“Every place has a problem … every place had requirements for signatures, every place had requirements for parking on the street and how you go about getting permission for that. Every place had basically all the same issues we have,” Vowell said. “When it was all done, I came away thinking to myself, what do we do to make filming easier in Los Angeles that would want to keep people here? It’s a big question.”

Refine Neighborhood Special Conditions

In LA’s Hancock Park neighborhood, productions must make sure that craft services tables are away from public view and not placed on sidewalks or parkways. On one specific street in East Pasadena, location managers need to obtain signatures from all 36 residents that live there. In Echo Park, you need a specific type of portable bathroom that must be 100 feet away from any restaurant.

These are just some of the long list of “special conditions” that each Los Angeles neighborhood has and that FilmLA lists on their website in order to obtain a filming permit. These sorts of things got in the way on “Baywatch,” and they’re annoyances that don’t necessarily exist in less-frequented filming locales. Many of these neighborhoods, which all fall under FilmLA’s jurisdiction, are arguably less restrictive than what is required in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Pasadena, or West Hollywood, with places like Santa Monica even having their own film offices that producers need to navigate.

Part of the problem is that these conditions, which are created by police and fire departments and not FilmLA, have been built up over years or even decades, and they’re not reviewed or regularly removed.

“Some of them can be a neighbor in, I don’t know, 1970 who had a complaint and wanted something done a certain way, and there was a condition put on filming in that neighborhood,” Sprung said. “What needs to happen, in my opinion, is every one of those special conditions needs to be reviewed, because the question is, are they really necessary anymore?”

Part of FilmLA’s role is to help producers navigate these concerns; they can gently nudge that by moving your shoot a few blocks down, you might avoid needing to pull a permit or pay new fees for an area that falls on slightly different municipal lines.

“The rules exist because they’re established, well-worn reasons that this additional level of oversight might be triggered, and so to avoid all of that, we decided to break it out as technically as possible, so you knew exactly what you were getting into and how you could avoid surprise increases in cost,” said Philip Sokolowski, VP of Integrated Communications for FilmLA. “Some of that regulation is still important because it keeps the peace in neighborhoods and keeps production a predictable thing that people can manage their lives around, and then some of it is more than is necessary, and we’re looking at all jurisdictions and how they handle this to see what good ideas we can take back to LA and improve upon.”

Greg Alpert, a location manager currently working on Nancy Meyers’ next film at Warner Bros., leans on FilmLA to get frequency reports about how often filming has occurred in a neighborhood, which can help him determine if there’s an area he should avoid or that might come with unusual shooting hours to work around. Alpert and several of the location managers we spoke to disagreed with some of the criticism from the grassroots organization Stay in LA that FilmLA needs an overhaul and is the cause of all this red tape and dysfunction. He argued that’s a misnomer and that FilmLA is necessary the way we’re currently set up, even if the system isn’t perfect.

“If FilmLA were to not be renewed, filming would come to a halt the very next day. Period. Stop. End of conversation. Because LA doesn’t have a system in place to handle what they do,” Alpert said. “Every organization has hiccups here and there, but by no means is FilmLA the reason that there’s no filming in Los Angeles; that is just wrong. And if FilmLA were to ever shut down without another system in place, filming with it would cease to exist in this town.”

But the special conditions can still be a pain. Alpert has met directly with Mayor Karen Bass about such challenges and why they need to be re-examined. In one instance, Alpert said he reached out to a listed contact on a neighborhood’s special conditions, only to discover the individual had died several years earlier.

One solution could be to throw them all out and start from scratch, but that presents its own challenges and may be overkill.

“A free-for-all would be terrible, because the neighborhoods who have already asked for special conditions in their neighborhood because of a lot of filming would probably impose more special conditions,” Vowell said. “If people are just coming willy-nilly and filming [and] not following the rules, they’re just going to put up more roadblocks. And I’m talking about neighborhoods, I’m talking about actual people, actual human beings who own businesses.”

‘Fallout’Courtesy of Prime Video

Ease the Burden on Locals

One of the jobs of location departments is to do the legwork within the community in which you’re filming, go door to door and understand the concerns of locals about filming in their neighborhood, as well as securing signatures as necessary. Sometimes, you’ll have HOA boards that demand money in exchange for giving their permission to film, and often, those asks can get pricey, if not outrageous.

“There are certain real-life economic factors that do get factored into location fees and other things that location managers spend money on, but I have noticed that there [are] definitely more requests from the general public for inconvenience reimbursement for things that just don’t make sense,” Dillin said. She described a horror story in which an individual wanted $75,000 as an “inconvenience fee” and was attempting to rally other businesses on the street to demand the same of the production.

“There’s a fee for seeing your property on screen, there’s a fee for accessing your property for a cable run or parking, but if somebody’s coming at me and wants money just because there’s filming in the area, that’s not something that we are obligated to do,” she added. Dillin explained that certain productions, even bigger ones, can feel “very threatened” when approached for money, and agreeing to terms can set an unfair precedent.

With so much filming in LA, locals aren’t rolling out the red carpet the way they might in a small town, so there’s a demand for signatures or payment. But regulating this isn’t as easy as eliminating requirements for signatures or telling businesses they don’t own the streets. That’s because it’s not just greed that leads to people asking for money. HOAs want help for their communities, and restaurants that have been without steady business since COVID and the 2023 strikes don’t want another distraction. It’s incumbent then on the city, the state, and city councils to better educate the public about the values of filming.

Dillin believes there could be neighborhood film liaisons, a neutral party with actual film experience who can educate neighbors and merchants on challenges and explain the realities of a film shoot. Sokolowski said fees shouldn’t act as a “citizen veto,” and when you demand money, it has a direct impact on lost jobs and wages for film workers.

“This is the benefit of filming. This is what to expect when filming occurs in your neighborhood. This is who to call. This is how we handle questions,” Dillin said. “I think just defining the realities of what it means to have filming would be helpful, because a lot of people really don’t know.”

Tiers and Certainty for Indies

Thirty-five of the 41 tax credits approved in the latest round of applications were for independent films, including 30 that are being made for under $10 million. While California has made strides to increase that number, the state’s rigid application window can be a challenge for indie producers with rapid, often changing timelines. Indies won’t get financing without the promise of a tax credit, but they may have to wait months or weeks to know if they’ve been awarded one.

Sprung shared an example of an unnamed producer who was granted a tax credit for an indie project, but when financing fell out and pushed that project to the back burner, he pivoted to a new project. Now, he needs to wait a whole other round to see if he gets approved again. Sprung personally would like to see from the state more certainty for indie producers in that regard.

The good news is that every union already has various tiers for low-budget projects, and certain municipalities around LA are trying to meet them with similar tiers and benefits, even for small shoots in an area that might only take a day or two. The CFC hosts regular information sessions for smaller teams with tighter budgets and has dedicated permit coordination for different tiers of projects.

Culver City launched its current incentive in November as a way to get on the map as a filming location, and FilmLA launched another program that eliminates some of the fees and necessities that come with special conditions, such as having numerous city personnel on hand with day rates that add up quickly.

Sokolowski said its expansion of a recent ultra-low budget program got city departments to waive their fees and reduce costs by between 50-60 percent, costs that can balloon to thousands of dollars. The program currently is only running for six months, but they’ve already been issuing a permit a day under the program, and the hope is to refine it and make the program permanent.

‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ (2019) Courtesy Columbia Pictures/Everett Collection

Lack of Government Resources

People on film sets are always trying to put out fires, but there are police and firefighters assigned to film shoots who often have to put out literal wildfires. Their priorities are elsewhere, and for good reason.

In Los Angeles, city and county workers are not specifically incentivized to help film shoots. They deal with film shoots on top of their day jobs, and when a location manager can’t get something from the powers that be, it may be because of budgets and department policies that have nothing to do with a film shoot.

On “Cliff Booth,” Dillin worked with the Bureau of Street Lighting, who had a rep stay overnight and made sure everything was planned in advance to help with production. Similar individuals in the Department of Transportation helped to swap out period-appropriate street signs.

“If that department is not fully staffed because of budget cuts, then who’s the person who’s going to be helping us when we need to shut down the street lights on three blocks of Melrose?,” Dillin explained. “You have one guy who’s already worked an 8-hour day, we’re shooting at night, so he’s going to work a 12-hour overtime shift, and then go back to his regular job at 8 a.m. the next day? There’s some departments that just don’t have the staffing to support filming because of other policies that have nothing to do with us, and how that can be changed is by being vocal to the city, the county, and the state about these inefficiencies.”

Dillin recently met directly with Mayor Bass to stress the importance of budgeting for people who are dedicated to these types of challenges. One issue she raised involved fire season. Recently, her production needed someone to run traffic control on a shoot, but all the law enforcement was rightfully reserved for fighting fires. What she’d like is a clause that would enable the production, in the event of an emergency, to use licensed flag men when law enforcement is unavailable.

Bass last August finally appointed Steve Kang as the city’s film czar, a role that had been vacant for the first two-and-a-half years of her term as mayor, and Dillin is heartened that it seems like the mayor is genuinely listening.

“When you’re working in the film industry, it’s easy to think in a very insular way about what our needs are and what we need to function,” she said. “But more and more I’m having to explain politics and legislation and staffing to my producers and directors so they understand why there are certain things we can’t do and why it’s taking longer to get an answer, and it’s because of those things.”