<\/p>\n
LOS ANGELES\u00a0\u2014 In Hollywood, getting a production off the ground once started with a script. Today, it starts with a tax break.<\/p>\n
Heather Fink knows that reality firsthand. The boom operator and aspiring director said California\u2019s new film tax incentives have already sparked a surge in production.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as our state released the new film tax incentives, we saw an immediate increase in production,\u201d Fink said.<\/p>\n
For more than a decade, Fink has chased the classic Hollywood dream \u2014 to write, direct and tell her own stories. Until that happens, she keeps the microphone overhead on sets such as \u201cGrey\u2019s Anatomy\u201d to pay the bills.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have seen a lot more people working and production has picked up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
State tax credits are designed to bring production jobs back to California, but a new frontier of filmmaking is testing those limits. Los Angeles City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield is proposing an extra incentive aimed at so-called \u201cmicro-dramas\u201d \u2014 low-budget, vertically shot series made for cellphones.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are, first of all, vertically shot, so formatted for a cellphone held vertically,\u201d entertainment attorney Jonathan Handel said. \u201cThey are one- to two-minute episodes with dozens of episodes per story or per season, and they are budgeted at extremely low levels. They\u2019re very popular in China. They\u2019re making their way over.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Micro-dramas have already gone mainstream in China, drawing over 830 million viewers and generating an estimated $9.4 billion in revenue this year, according to Media Partners Asia. But with budgets typically under $200,000, they often fall below the threshold to qualify for California\u2019s existing tax credits.<\/p>\n
Handel said keeping these productions in Los Angeles could provide a critical boost to Hollywood\u2019s working middle class.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe working and middle class in this industry are being hollowed out by the loss of production to places like Atlanta, New York and overseas,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Fink welcomes the effort \u2014 as long as crews get the pay and respect they deserve.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really smart and encouraging to see our city be proactive instead of reactive when it comes to funding these vertical and micro-budget projects,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For a city built on filmmaking, California\u2019s latest push is one more attempt to keep the industry where it began.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source spectrumnews1.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" LOS ANGELES\u00a0\u2014 In Hollywood, getting a production off the ground once started with a script. Today, it starts with a tax break. Heather Fink knows that reality firsthand. The boom operator and aspiring director said California\u2019s new film tax incentives have already sparked a surge in production. \u201cAs soon as our state released the new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2032869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[22694,21796,22691,21741,304754,352833,71501],"class_list":["post-2032868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-app-arts-entertainment","tag-business","tag-california","tag-entertainment","tag-socal-editors-picks","tag-taylor-schaub","tag-vod"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Keeping-filmmaking-in-Hollywood-with-new-tax-breaks.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2032868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2032869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2032868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2032868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2032868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}