San Francisco hasn’t traditionally been known for its film scene. But in recent years, Bay Area filmmakers like Boots Riley, whose Oakland-based 2018 surrealist comedy, Sorry to Bother You, was a critical and box office success, and Joe Talbot, who won the Directing Award at Sundance for his 2019 drama, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, have helped establish the Bay as a major character within the indie festival circuit. And San Francisco has always been home to a community of indie filmmakers, who pass through local incubators and residency programs like the SFFilm Filmhouse.
“It’s the interim — that is the question mark that everyone is sort of having — that’s affecting sports, that’s affecting live music, that’s affecting all sorts of arts,” Lai says. “There’s a hiccup in the way that the work can be executed, and at what point can you overcome it or circumvent that?”
It’s quite a hiccup. In 2019, the San Francisco Film Commission — a municipal office that helps develop and promote local filmmaking projects — granted permits to 252 productions between mid-March and the end of August, ranging from student projects to commercials to feature films. During that same time period in 2020, the Film Commission permitted only 42 productions. Those totalled up to just 85 scheduled shoot days in the city, compared to 426 days the previous year. And the total estimated budgets of all productions in San Francisco since the pandemic hit is about $3 million — 10 times less than it was in 2019.
The most obvious obstacle to filmmaking right now is, of course, that films require people — lots of them. A major studio production could have hundreds of crew members in addition to their cast; even an indie project, with a much leaner budget, will typically have around 25 to 50 people on set.
Currently, the San Francisco Film Commission is issuing permits to new productions, but only if there are no more than 12 people on set, total. That rule, on its own, is enough to kill plenty of projects.
The shortage of local productions has put many in the San Francisco film industry out of work. Most of the filmmakers who spoke to SF Weekly for this story have filed for unemployment. Film industry workers often operate as independent contractors, and lack a safety net. Many work second jobs to pay the bills — but those, of course, may have been impacted as well.
Taylor Whitehouse is a Bay Area-based location scout; when a production launches, she’s one of the first people brought onto the team. In March, Whitehouse got a call from a producer looking for a warehouse space to shoot in. Then the county went into lockdown.
“And then it was kind of like, no one really knew what was going to be happening,” Whitehouse says. “And so [the producer] was like, ‘Well, I’ll get back in touch with you when we figure out what we can do.’ And then he kind of fell off the map… That was really the only thing that had come my way in terms of locations.”
Whitehouse, who’s relatively new to scouting and previously worked as a production assistant, says she imagines better established scouts have probably been receiving more calls. Those who are just getting their start in the industry, she worries, are being hit the hardest — and are the easiest to exploit. Her roommate, a recent graduate hungry for work as a production assistant, has taken to hunting down job listings on Facebook.
“People are just so desperate to work right now that I think that they’re willing to do a lot, even if it means putting themselves at risk on unsafe sets,” Whitehouse says.
“Not everyone is working,” Lee says. “So I had a few people when I was deliberating who were envious of the opportunity. And so I’ve been working a few of those; I’ve been trying to be selective about the risk that each job comes from.”
Lee is also considering saving up money as quickly as possible, so he can go stay with his family in Taiwan, where the coronavirus has been almost entirely contained. As he weighs the risks of taking a gig, he also has to consider what the future looks like, and whether things are likely to take a turn for the worse.
“Is this the safest that we’re gonna be for a while?” Lee wonders. “And am I not even gonna have the opportunity to take these risks in the near future?”
Article by:Roxy Bonafont for SF Weekly
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