After the writers’ and actors’ strikes, the pandemic, and structural shifts in technology, LA’s trying to find its footing in a changed industry
T
he veteran Hollywood cinematographer Bruce McCleery knows all about Los Angeles’s struggles to maintain its dominance in the entertainment industry, because for most of the past 16 years he has lived on the road, never short of work but unable to land a major job within striking distance of his home and family in southern California.
It’s an increasingly common experience for many successful professionals in Hollywood who are hired by studios and production houses still largely based in Los Angeles, but do the actual work in Atlanta, or Toronto, or London, or Budapest.
Late last year, McCleery was at last hired to work on the second season of Fallout, a post-apocalyptic television drama based on a popular computer game that was moving from New York to LA. It was a welcome chance to sleep in his own bed and, McCleery hoped, a step toward a much-needed recovery for LA after the pummeling the city took during the Covid pandemic and, again, during twin strikes by the writers’ and actors’ guilds in 2023.
