urfacing from the ashes of Los Angeles’ raging wildfires is a plea from local entertainment industry folk gutted by the blazes: Bring production back to the region.
“One of the biggest things you can do to help our city is to shoot here,” wrote prominent cinematographer and director Rachel Morrison (The Morning Show, The Mandalorian) in an Instagram post making the rounds among behind-the-scenes film and TV workers. “We have some of the best crews in the world who need work now more than ever.”
Morrison’s message speaks to an unprecedented slump in local production. The pandemic came first. Then the strikes. And when it appeared as if filming in Los Angeles had bottomed out and would soon be on the upswing amid an escalating tit-for-tat battle among filming hotspots vying for Hollywood dollars, wildfires fueled by hurricane-force winds battered L.A. The city has seen its share of devastation in earthquakes, fires and civil unrest, but nothing like this in recent memory. Apocalyptic flames fortified by 100 mile per hour gusts destroyed upwards of 12,000 structures built over the course of more than a century in days, ushering in a cloud of uncertainty to a gloomy production landscape yet to recover from back-to-back crises that transformed the economics of Hollywood.
