Film students in Los Angeles are preparing to graduate into an industry that is making less work than it did a few years ago, and many of them say they are not frightened by it. The Los Angeles Times reported on 5 November that film students at the city’s schools are finishing their degrees as production in the region falls, and Carrasco said there is room to keep working even as the studio system contracts.
In a hallway lined with movie posters in UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television, Tomas Carrasco was preparing to shoot his senior capstone film, a surreal horror comedy. Carrasco, a senior on the director’s track of UCLA’s film and television program, is one of the film students finishing a degree this year. He said he is not afraid necessarily about where the industry is heading because there is always going to be space for artists.
Film students and the numbers behind the downturn
The figures behind the mood are plain. FilmLA, the nonprofit that tracks filming in the greater Los Angeles area, counted 19,694 shoot days in 2025, the lowest total since 2020. The total in 2024 was 23,480, a fall of 16.1 percent in a single year. Television filming in greater Los Angeles fell 58.4 percent in three years, by FilmLA’s count, and the end of 2025 ran steeper than the year as a whole. In the fourth quarter, FilmLA counted 4,625 on-location shoot days, down 21.1 percent from the same months of 2024, and television shoot days fell 21.9 percent to 1,247.
The Los Angeles Times has tied the drop to work leaving for other states and countries, the lingering effects of the pandemic, the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes, and cuts in studio spending. The studios shrank alongside the count. Discovery’s 2022 takeover of the Warner assets prompted successive rounds of layoffs, and in 2025 Disney, Warner Bros., NBC News and Paramount all laid off workers. On 26 October 2026, the Times reported that Skydance had offered voluntary buyouts to some employees.
How film students are changing their plans
Film schools are changing what they teach in response. Stephen Galloway, dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, has said the entertainment industry changes at the speed of light, while universities do not. His remark, reported by the Ankler, sums up the tension between a syllabus that takes years to write and an industry that can change in a season.
At the University of Southern California, professor Tomm Polos has brought creator economy ideas to drama students, teaching them to build an audience of their own rather than wait for a casting call. At the University of Cincinnati, acting and voice professor D’Arcy Smith has gone all in on teaching microdrama acting, a form made for phones. The aim in each case is the same: film students who can make work without a studio commission.
California has moved to keep more production in the state. The state expanded its film and television tax credit, and the Los Angeles City Council has offered $1 a day parking fees and free permits for micro-shoots, a step aimed at the smallest productions. FilmLA reported a rise in shoot days in early 2026 against late 2025, although second quarter 2026 shoot days still fell 12 percent year over year, according to TheWrap.
What film students say about the future
Carrasco’s capstone, a surreal horror comedy, is the kind of film that does not need a studio lot. The number of shows on television has fallen by about a third since the peak of 1,695 in 2022, according to Luminate, and United States produced television premieres fell 11 percent in 2025. Viewing of original streaming series still rose, from 21.8 billion hours in 2024 to 25 billion in 2025, which suggests the audience film students hope to reach has not gone away, even if the jobs have moved.
Daniel Green, a former television crew member who now directs an entertainment industry management program at Carnegie Mellon, told the Los Angeles Times that there might be great advantages for those on Wall Street, but that he was greatly worried about the middle class workers in the industry. The production decline has left many in Hollywood without work for months or even years, and film students entering now know they will compete for fewer staff jobs.
Carrasco is still preparing to shoot his senior capstone film, a surreal horror comedy, in the poster lined hallway at UCLA. The film students in his program will finish their degrees in the coming months and look for work in an industry that counted 19,694 shoot days in Los Angeles last year.