Location shooting of films, television shows and commercials in Los Angeles dipped to the lowest level on record in the first quarter.
FilmLA, the quasi governmental agency that arranges industry location shoots, says in a report that Los Angeles had just 903 feature film production days logged in the first three months of the year.
That's a 56 percent plunge from the same period last year. The previous low was 1,051 days in the last quarter of 2008.
Location shoots for television shows were up, however. They jumped 76 percent from the year-ago period, largely because a writer's strike had crippled production a year ago.
The FilmLA figures don't include studio and soundstage production.
The slumping economy and runaway production incentives elsewhere have led to the dozen-year decline of shooting in film shoots.
Financial trouble in other sectors, including the auto industry and banking, both of which often shoot commercials in Los Angeles, shares the blame for the downturn.
