It’s a well-known misconception that absolutely everyone who works in film and TVhas earned Scrooge McDuck levels of wealth from doing it — they do not. But California state and the City of Los Angeles have long taken that for granted that, even when productions go elsewhere to shoot films or TV shows, they’ll come back to L.A. for post-production. No longer.
There’s a whole confluence of factors, a “perfect storm,” as editor Erik C. Anderson told IndieWire, that are accelerating the outsourcing of post work from California. There’s the end of the streaming wars on TV and tightening of budgets and changing of models, as well as corporate consolidation and the specter of AI eliminating white-collar work of all kinds. Every department that works on film and television has felt this pain, and post-production teams are no exception.
Post-production work has been slowly bleeding away over the last decade or so. But the situation has become so dire in the last three years that the California Post Alliance (CAPA) formed a year ago to advocate for a specific post-production tax credit in California, where the bulk of Hollywood‘s post-production workforce is located. When that workforce has been having to stretch work or go without work for 13 months, 15 months, and decades-old guild members find that they have not worked enough union days to qualify for health insurance, the situation tips toward crisis.
And, of course, on top of all of that, there are tax credits designed to lure productions — and sometimes post-production — elsewhere.
“Other jurisdictions, such as Canada, UK, Ireland, Georgia and New York, have created stand-alone post-production programs and/or specific uplifts, to try to incentivize projects to move this work, with varying levels of success,” Sarah Westman-Liu, director of tax incentives and products at Entertainment Partners, wrote to IndieWire.
But according to Westman-Liu, the most successful post-specific tax programs have been in places where the local industry is already strong. Like the New York and New Jersey area, where, for instance, the second-highest number of members in the editors’ guild, IATSE 700 Local, are located.
“While incentives and/or lower-cost territories can be a sufficient draw for filming or VFX contracts, they may not move the needle enough for post-production work to be relocated. More often than not, even when a production is shot in another jurisdiction, the post-production work will still typically be brought back to L.A. (or sometimes N.Y.),” Westman-Liu said.
