As film and television production continues to struggle in Los Angeles, a new City Council committee is targeting some of the city’s own obstacles to keeping Hollywood home.

Councilmember Adrin Nazarian is chairing the new Ad Hoc Committee on Film, Entertainment and Creative Industry, which will focus on speeding up permitting, reducing uncertainty for productions and holding city departments accountable for how they work with the entertainment industry.

Nazarian told KFI the effort comes with a sense of urgency.

“There’s no time to lose,” Nazarian said, adding that the committee’s work is about more than passing motions and legislation. He said it will examine whether city departments are “doing everything they can” to create certainty and predictability for productions.

Another Hollywood initiative?

The committee arrives as Los Angeles already has several efforts underway to address the production downturn.

Mayor Karen Bass has appointed Steve Kang as a film liaison to work directly with productions, while the city also has other industry-focused efforts and its longstanding relationship with FilmLA.

That raises an obvious question: With so many people working on the same problem, is the new committee duplicating work already being done?

Nazarian says no.

“This is not in any way competing with what the mayor is doing,” Nazarian told KFI. “If anything, these are complementary efforts.”

He described the decline of the local entertainment industry as a “death of 1,000 cuts” and said the severity of the current crisis requires multiple parts of city government to be involved.

The distinction, Nazarian said, comes down largely to troubleshooting versus oversight.

Kang and the mayor’s office can serve as a point of contact when productions encounter problems. Nazarian’s committee, meanwhile, plans to look at the city departments and agencies behind those problems and hold them accountable for making changes.

“This committee’s responsibility is going to be to make sure all the departments are doing the necessary work to make sure that permits are being issued timely,” Nazarian said.

He added that the committee will be able to hold departments and agencies accountable.

Changing the culture at City Hall

Nazarian says one of the biggest challenges may not be a particular fee or regulation, but the culture inside city government.

“When something has been done a certain way for 10, 20, 30 years, 40 years, it’s hard to undo that,” he said.

For a film or television production, a delayed permit can have consequences far beyond City Hall.

Nazarian said productions need certainty about when permits will be approved so they can hire crews, secure locations and make other investments tied to a shoot date. When that certainty isn’t there, he said, productions may simply choose to work somewhere else.

That means the solution isn't necessarily eliminating every filming fee.

“What will save their costs, though, is if we make sure that the permit is reaching them in time,” Nazarian said.

‘All hands on deck’

Nazarian acknowledges there are now a lot of players involved in trying to revive production in Los Angeles. But he argues that it is appropriate given the scale of the problem.

“This is also a crisis mode right now that the industry is facing,” he said, calling for an “all hands on deck approach.”

Nazarian said different groups can handle different parts of the problem — some executing changes day-to-day and others providing oversight — without necessarily conflicting with one another.

“The roles don’t necessarily conflict with one another,” he said. “In fact, they help complement one another.”

The committee plans to bring city departments before its members to explain their role in the filming process and identify ways to move faster. Nazarian said the first round includes presentations from the Los Angeles Fire Department, Los Angeles Police Department and Public Works, with other departments expected at future hearings.

The goal, Nazarian says, is to make Los Angeles a place where productions know they can get approvals on time, make their investments and put local crews to work — rather than taking those projects somewhere else.

Tim Conway Jr