Three years ago, Carrie Dufresne’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing.
The 43-year-old camera operator would get two to five calls a day from producers asking for camera operators on projects filming in both Atlanta and surrounding states. It was the busiest she’d ever been in her 19-year career. She even had to start declining jobs.
Today, it’s a much different story. Strikes by Hollywood actors and writers last year halted production, and the rebound since those disputes were resolved has been tepid. Media companies have merged. Streaming services have slashed their content budgets.
And studios, looking to save money, have shifted some production that might’ve gone to Georgia to Europe — where incentives are even more lucrative than those in the Peach State.
Aside from some one-off jobs, Dufresne said she hasn’t had stable work in months. She hasn’t worked enough hours to keep her health insurance through the union, which will expire in January if she cannot bank another 300 hours before Thanksgiving.
“I don’t think people believe work’s going to bounce back,” Dufresne said. “I think this is the new normal. This is where we’re at.”
Dufresne is one of thousands of metro Atlanta film industry professionals impacted by a slowdown of film and TV production across the country. After a three-year-long content blitz from studios and streamers, production in Georgia has dipped below pre-pandemic levels, leaving thousands of specialized workers without steady work.
Production hasn’t halted entirely. But the pipeline is a fraction of what it was two and three years ago, a period when hundreds, if not thousands, of workers moved to the state to work in the industry. By mid-October, the Georgia film office reported 29 active productions. In October 2021, that number was 55, and in October 2022, it was 41.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Workers who specialize as sound designers, stunt coordinators and lighting technicians are pivoting to gig work, living off savings or withdrawing from their union retirement accounts to make ends meet. Some are taking nonunion work, which doesn’t pay as much or provide the same safety or payment protections as union projects. Some are getting out of the industry entirely. Others are losing their homes or cars and going deeper into debt as they wait for work to pick up again.
Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, when Georgia’s film sector was booming, spirits were high.
Now, morale is low. Film crew members say they take pride in the work they do and want to continue making a living out of it.
“I don’t think people realized that eventually the bubble was going to burst, because it was only a matter of time before that happened,” said Matthew Kelly Jackson, who has worked in Atlanta’s film industry for more than 15 years. “It’s like any gold rush, right? At a certain point there’s not going to be any more gold.”
Credit: Disney
Credit: Disney
‘It’s not enough’
More than 10,000 people work in motion picture and video production in Georgia, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This number varies from year to year and is sensitive to outside forces impacting the industry. In 2021, about 19,100 people worked in production. In 2020, the year in which the pandemic halted many projects, about 10,700 were employed.
But hundreds, if not thousands, more hold jobs that have nothing to do at all with the positions typically associated with movies. Truck drivers, accountants, custodians and caterers are just as essential to productions as makeup artists, casting agents or the actors themselves.
Film and TV production took off after 2008, the year the state expanded its tax credit for Hollywood and made it transferable so studios could sell the credits for cash.
The changes allowed production companies spending at least $500,000 on projects in the state to receive a tax credit of 20%, with an additional 10% if they tack on the Georgia peach logo at the end of the credits.
Productions generally have small tax liabilities. Georgia’s law allows producers to sell the credits that they have to other Georgia taxpayers. Producers get revenue and the buyers can use the credits to reduce their own tax load. This credit is now Georgia’s biggest corporate incentive, typically totaling more than $1 billion a year.
The change had an immediate effect. Cost-conscious producers and accountants began running the numbers and found Georgia was a low-cost alternative to major markets like Los Angeles and New York, and yellow filming signs sprouted all over the city.
During a panel part of Georgia Tech’s Avant South event on Oct. 7, Lee Thomas, the deputy commissioner of the Georgia Film Office, said the industry now is such an “incentives-driven business.”
“If you’re giving them money, they would go shoot in hell,” Thomas joked during the panel.
Georgia became home to some of the most-watched television series of the last 10 years, including “Stranger Things,” “The Walking Dead” and “Ozark,” and dozens of high-budget film franchises, many in the DC and Marvel universes. Over the past five years, eager real estate developers in the state more than doubled the amount of available soundstage space to 4.4 million square feet, the most soundstage space of any single state except California.
An influx of workers followed. Between 2011 and 2021, Georgia led the way in job growth for the motion picture and video industries between 2011 and 2021, adding more than 15,000 jobs, according to the BLS.
Case Norton, who has worked in the camera department throughout his nearly 20-year career, was one of them. In 2021, he moved his family to Atlanta from California, where he’d spent his whole life, lured by the lower cost of housing, Southern hospitality and available work.
He spent weeks cold-calling other professionals in the industry and introducing himself, which landed him a lot of work in the beginning.
But in early 2023, jobs became scarce. Producers hesitated to begin new projects before the writers and actors unions could ratify new contracts. In May, the Writers Guild of America went on strike, and the actors’ union, known as SAG-AFTRA, followed in July. Movies and TV shows were mostly unable to continue or begin filming without both parties, so crew members were out of work, too, even though their union — the International Alliance of Stage and Theatrical Employees — wasn’t on strike.
By November, the labor disputes resolved, and both unions adopted new contracts. But the pipeline didn’t rebound as quickly as crews, actors and writers anticipated. After the holidays — a slow period for the industry — the unions representing the crew members, Teamsters and other Hollywood craftspeople still had to renegotiate their contracts with studios. Like the negotiations for writers and actors, this meant producers didn’t want to begin new projects until pen was put to paper.
Now, all of the major entertainment unions have new contracts. But the work hasn’t ramped back up to its prestrike levels.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
In February, Dufresne, the camera operator, said she heard a producer say his mantra is “survive until 2025.” She thought that was a little far-fetched, given that 2025 was then still another 10 months away.
“But here we are now, and people are not surviving,” Dufresne said.
To pay the bills, she’s lived off savings, her tax return and a $1,500 grant from the Entertainment Community Fund, a charity helping industry workers. She also withdrew from her retirement and plans to apply for a personal loan until stable work comes along or she can find a role in another industry.
Norton describes the slowdown like a traffic-jammed freeway with two lanes and 80 cars trying to get in.
“Say there’s 10 union shows and movies shooting here, and each of them needs 15 camera people. That’s 150 camera people,” Norton said.
“There’s (more than) 700 camera people in Atlanta, and now you have 550 people completely out of work,” Norton said, citing figures from his union. “It’s not enough.”
To pay the bills, Norton said he’s had to get creative. Pivoting to a regular 9-to-5 job is not an attractive option for industry workers, because they are essentially free agents. A three-month opportunity can pop up out of the blue. He operates an Amazon store where he mainly sells kitchen gadgets, spent some months working as a private driver and has curbed his spending. He’s taken film jobs out of state that are still within the jurisdiction of his IATSE chapter, but these gigs can be cost prohibitive because he’d have to hire additional child care. His wife also took on a second job.
“It’s unprecedented. It’s back-to-back-to-back, from COVID to the strikes to waiting for contract negotiations to be up with the unions,” Norton said. “Every single one of us is at a loss for words.”
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
‘We are expendable’
When Georgia expanded its tax credit, it stole production from other places, and its generic scenery often stood in for other locales, such as New York, Los Angeles and even places overseas.
The High Museum of Art was a British museum and Atlanta City Hall was the United Nations in “Black Panther,” for instance.
Now, studios and streamers are increasingly moving productions overseas, chasing inexpensive labor, looser union regulations and competitive tax incentives.
This past fiscal year, productions in Georgia spent $2.6 billion, down 37% from the previous year. Excluding 2020, when production stopped for months due to the pandemic, fiscal year 2024 is the weakest year the state has seen since fiscal year 2016.
Both the United Kingdom and Hungary are now hot spots for projects of all scales, from big-budget Marvel action movies to reality television shows.
The U.K. offers a range of incentives. High-budget films can claim a tax incentive on about 25% of eligible expenses. Independent films can claim an incentive for up to 40% of eligible expenses.
Hungary offers a 30% rebate, and doesn’t cap the amount awarded per project. Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things,” which won four Academy Awards last season, shot in Hungary. So did the most recent addition to the Alien franchise, “Alien: Romulus,” which was shot on an $80 million budget. Last year, the total spending on production in Hungary hit a record $910 million, almost four times more than the total in 2018, which was $183 million, according to the country’s National Film Institute.
Other small eastern and central European countries have bolstered their incentive programs over the years. Malta, an island country between Sicily and the North African Coast, offers a cash rebate up to 40% of qualified expenditures. Romania, where Netflix filmed its television series “Wednesday,” offers a cash-back incentive up to 45%. Poland offers a 30% cash rebate.
Reality television shows, which are typically lower-budget than scripted projects, are also moving overseas. “Next Level Chef,” a cooking competition show on Fox, relocated from Las Vegas to Ireland. Several other reality shows, including Fox’s “The Floor” and “Beat Shazam,” film in Ireland.
Jackson, the veteran Atlanta cameraman, said the business has changed so much in the last 15 years. Studios are more concerned with the bottom-line than they are with the actual art they are creating, he said.
“Profits over people,” Jackson said. “We are expendable. It’s the next man up.”
In late September, IATSE extended a relief program it enacted during the 2023 strikes to continue assisting workers facing hardship. Eligible members can make withdrawals from their retirement accounts.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
There’s one good thing that came with Dufresne’s year off work. She realized she liked having a life. She’s had time to take project management classes, to workshop her resume and start applying for roles in other industries.
She knows her skills are transferable, and that she can apply them to another job that affords her a life outside work, stability and pays her a living wage. And when the time comes to shoot a friend’s short film, she can answer the call.
“I feel like I’ve had 20 years of a very exciting career, and I don’t want to be in my 60s and broke,” Dufresne said. “We’re all so stressed about money and trying to survive that it really does kill the creativity.”
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