LA city council approves filming permit motion in bid to stay competitive

Los Angeles City Council yesterday (April 29) unanimously approved a motion to make the filming permit process more efficient in order to keep production in the city.

The motion was put forward by council member Adrin Nazarian. It calls for reducing regulatory red tape, offering fee waivers, and solving reported price gouging on crew parking and base camps in order to make the city more competitive with other filming locations.

California recently approved a record-breaking number of productions for the state's incentive including a feature from Oscar-winners The Daniels, though the overall number of productions in the state continues to decline.

Put forward on March 28, the motion calls for the City’s Chief Legislative Analyst (CLA) with assistance from various city departments, bodies such as FilmLA, and any other relevant departments to report back in 30 days on their research into the following:

• Recommendations on establishing more competitive fee structures within the City's filming permitting process
• Proposing alternatives or reducing requirements of public safety personnel required at shoots which can impose a significant cost on shoots within the City
• Offering waived or reduced fees for utilising public property as shoot locations
• Creating a pool of film-certified public safety officers available for rates competitive with other cities that are currently taking production away from LA
• Identifying and enforcing the price gouging of crew parking and base camps for film shoots.
• Recommendations for streamlining the film permitting review process, that includes staffing and resources necessary across all departments involved
• Recommendations for revising the stage certification process that allow for more stages to certify and limit additional expenses. 

Present at City Hall after the vote were fellow council members; actors such as Community's Yvette Nicole Brown; and guild representatives such as Brigitta Romanov of the Costume Designers Guild and Alex Aguilar of Labourers International.