The woes continued for on-location shoots in Los Angeles during the second quarter of 2025, but there also a modicum of quarter-to-quarter good news on both the feature and small-screen fronts as the regions continues to recover from the wildfires.
FilmLA, the city and county’s film permitting office, said today that overall on-location production in Greater Los Angeles declined by 6.2% to 5,349 shoot days in the April-to-June quarter compared to the same period a year ago. That continues a multiyear downward trend. See the charts below.
Feature film production took the hardest hit in Q2, managed only 553 shoot days. That’s 21.4% dive from the same frame in 2024 but up by 22.6% from the first three months of 2025. All of the features were indie productions, including Animals, I’ll Take the Hamm, Totally Ghosted, Unravel, and Whalefall.
TV producers fared better in the second quarter, producing more L.A. shoot days than the sector has seen in more than a year. There were some 2,224 shoot days for television, a year-over-year increase of 17% and 25% more than Q1. The boost in local TV production is attributed to gains for TV Dramas (up 9.5%) and TV Reality (29.5%). In fact, with 782 shoot days, TV Dramas posted their highest observed levels since pre-strike period Q4 2022.
Still, the category still is down by 32.6% over its five-year quarterly average.
Commercial production declined by 15.3% last quarter to 692 shoot days. The category remains 38.3% below its five-year quarterly average – making it the weakest of the three major production categories FilmLA tracks.
“While there is work ahead to bring Los Angeles-area production back to its full potential, we are optimistic and grounded in our mission to keep production affordable, accessible and straightforward,” FilmLA President Paul Audley said in a statement. “We look forward to our continuing conversations with government officials and our partners in the industry to see the full fruition of the economic, cultural and employment benefits that Los Angeles’ film ecosystem offers to our community.”
FilmLA defines a shoot day as one crew’s permission to film at one or more defined locations during any 24-hour period.
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