People in the post-production world of entertainment (editors, musicians, and sound designers) are beginning to face the same employment crisis as the rest of the industry.
We’ll start with the symptoms of the runaway production problem…
“Like with the rest of post-production, it has become remarkably simple to record a score somewhere else,” Stephanie O’Keefe, president of American Federation of Musicians Local 47 told the Wrap. “Ten years ago, 20 years ago, it required the composer and his crew and the director to fly to another location and record with a full orchestra.”
Today, she says, it is “no longer necessary to have an orchestra recording in the same room, productions have access to a global network of non-union, non-American musicians available for lower rates.”
And then there’s the Los Angeles business climate…
“It’s not just New York. States like Louisiana, Georgia, Ohio, they all have standalone tax credits,” Oscar-winning sound designer Karen Baker Landers told The Wrap. She’s currently organizing a “grassroots Stay in LA campaign to preserve entertainment jobs in the Southland.”
Scott George, the national executive director of the Motion Picture Editors Guild, says that, “We have been pushing hard with our IATSE family and allied unions to lobby for big improvements in California’s tax incentives, and we look forward to seeing those needed changes enacted.”
In summary, producers are going outside of California for two reasons: the labor is cheaper and the tax incentives are better.
So no one can accuse me of being a jerk, I’ll use myself to make my point…
I write 60+ articles a month for Breitbart News. I’m pretty good at what I do. I have a following that I’m grateful for. However, thirty years ago, a seasoned columnist with a following probably made five or ten times what I do, and only had to write five to ten pieces a month.
Yep, guys in my profession made a lot more money for a lot less work.
So what changed?
The Internet.
I could sit back and bellyache over how I should be making George Will money with a George Will workload. But those days are over… for everyone. In the world of the Internet, what I do is simply not worth what it was decades ago. Why? Because the Internet gives Breitbart (and every publisher) access to thousands and thousands of writers from all over the planet.
Sorry, it’s not 1975 anymore when the gateway into certain professions was bottlenecked by access, meaningless credentials, unions, and connections made through family and elite institutions. And if we’ve learned anything in the age of the Internet, it’s that almost all of the legacy media columnists we thought were special and precious turned out to be quite the opposite: ordinary, corrupt, and dull.
Hey, I can be ordinary, corrupt, and dull, too.
After the Internet came along, a thousand writers bloomed from all walks of life. Good ones. Insightful ones. Like me, they had no connections or Ivy League degrees. With a thousand writers in the job pool instead of a few dozen, guys like me are not gonna make that George Will money.
And I’m not complaining. I make a good living doing what I enjoy, and I’m not an idiot whose ego or sense of entitlement blinds him to a reality where I am easily replaced.
That’s the reality hitting Hollywood. The Local 47 musician now has to compete with the non-union musician in Germany or Scranton; the guy with a YouTube channel who’s willing to work for less and without all the rules unions place on everything.
You’ve gotta adapt.
If you want to work, you have to come to terms with the fact you’re no longer going to get that George Will money.
As far as the tax incentives and the overall business climate in California and Los Angeles, you get what you vote for. If entertainment industry morons continue to vote for incompetent, anti-business Democrats like Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, you might want to think about 1) voting differently or 2) moving (just don’t bring your suicidal voting habits with you).
It’s not only taxes scaring production out of Los Angeles. It’s the constant fear of crime, the regulations, the poop in the streets, and the concern that a riot could break out at any time and no one but the Bad Orange Man will put a stop to it.
Sorry, but the days of your job being protected by the cost of moving production or how difficult it is to get into a trade union are over.
Adapt to that changing reality or die.
Oh, and stop being assholes. This begging for tax incentives for your precious industry while opposing all other corporate tax cuts makes you an asshole. If you want Reaganomics, we should all get Reaganomics. You’re nothing special.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
