In mid-September, a handful of FilmL.A. leaders gathered at e3rd Steakhouse and Lounge for an unmoderated lunch discussion and webcast organized by laxArtscene.
The program, one of a series of Live@Lunch discussions, included FilmL.A. President Paul Audley, FilmL.A. Director of Community Relations Geoffrey Smith and Teamster Local 399 Business Agent Ed Duffy as they discussed the past, present and future of filming in Los Angeles.
Full playback of the webcast is available online, with the full program lasting one hour. Follow this link, scroll down the list of videos, and take a look/listen for the panelists’ thoughts on a variety of filming topics, such as:
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Geoffrey Smith: “Residents will say, ‘there are all these strangers in the neighborhood’. [But] they’re not really strangers, they’re here to do a job… They’re very nice people; they have homes and families and they’re working and they’re all involved with the film crew.”
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Ed Duffy: “[Location Managers] have many issues with city agencies. One of the things that really bothers most Location Managers and most production companies is that the first answer is ‘no’. You have to fight to try and get a ‘yes’. The first answer with a city agency should be ‘well, we’ll look into it and we’ll try’.”
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Paul Audley: “It goes back to people. There are 130,000 direct jobs in this region associated with filming, and for every one of those there’s 2.7 others dependent totally… on this activity. So when an agency or a neighbor or anybody else blocks it, you’re talking about people’s life work.”