LA County supervisors encourage streamlined filming regulations
This 2008 staff file photo shows trucks carrying equipment used for movie filming parked along Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Chatsworth, Calif.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed a motion to encourage all 88 cities in the county to adopt practices that make film production easier across city limits.
Now that the board has signed off, a letter will be sent from the county’s Chief Executive Office to local governments urging them to do adopt California Film Commission’s Model Film Ordinance and Best Practices to the extent possible as their jurisdiction’s location production policy.
The hope is to get smaller cities’ permitting and protection policies more or less in line with those already used in the city and unincorporated county areas of Los Angeles, so producers will enjoy more consistent regulations when planning shoots that may cross city limits.
“The Model Film Ordinance was revised about two-and-a-half years ago, and at the time the county adopted it and then asked the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation and FilmL.A. to promote it,” explained Paul Audley, president of FilmL.A., the official film office for the city and county, which also handles location permitting for some other local municipalities. “The intent of this letter is to give us an entree to go to both our contract and independent cities that aren’t following the process on behalf of the county to introduce them to it, to explain how it works, and hopefully they’ll adopt most or all of it.
“It is about ease of permitting,” Audley added, “but the ‘Best Practices’ part of it also includes ways of operating to protect the community from problems with filming or over-filming or any other things.”