“It's been the most financially reckless decision I could have possibly made for my life, and I don't regret a single part of it,” Giselle Bonilla tells me with a wry laugh.
Bonilla is a film director who graduated from the American Film Institute in 2023, smack in the middle of major job uncertainty for LA-based film and TV workers.
Industry vets I interviewed earlier this year told me about their efforts to bring production and post-production back to LA, and over and over again, I heard the same thing: the local industry was worth saving for the next generation.
But will the next gen be able to navigate this hot mess of an industry they’re inheriting? Double strikes. Studio consolidation. Tech companies taking over. Plus, are we really going to let the robots make movies?
Director and recent AFI grad Giselle Bonilla was born and raised in LA.
This month, I spoke to a dozen recent graduates from LA’s top film schools, who are caught in the turbulence of change in Hollywood. They’re stressed. And they’re hungry.
“The group I’m coming up with, we're kinda forged in the fire,” says producer Hector Martinez.
It’s common to hear people say there’s “no work” in Hollywood right now, and in the traditional sense, there isn’t. But the world’s changing fast.
I kid you not, 10 out of 12 people I interviewed are working on verticals to pay their bills — super-short serialized shows for your phone. “I mean, it's work, so I'm very grateful to do that, but I don't think it's what we envisioned doing creatively with our lives,” says cinematographer Arman Meinecke.
Meinecke says it’s steady enough to be able to take an occasional unpaid job on indie films he’s passionate about. From time to time, he asks himself these spooky questions: “Am I in a dying career? Am I wasting my time?”
Cinematographer Audrey Biche feels deeply conflicted about her work on verticals, but she’s in the U.S. on a visa, and legally can only work behind the camera. One of the verticals she made was a certifiable hit with 100 million views.
“Part of me is like, ‘Is that the thing that I'm going to shoot that will be the most watched ever?’” says Biche. “That's terrifying. I shot this objectively misogynistic thing to pay rent, and it has such a massive viewership.”
Outside of verticals, exactly one person, cinematographer Zach Morrison, told me they are able to pay their bills working on narrative indie films (the goal for most people I spoke to). “I would not consider myself in the least bit successful, but I consider myself lucky,” says Morrison, who lives in LA but couch surfs across the country for gigs.
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There’s also a bit of traditional industry work still out there: a production designer told me she recently landed on a Netflix show. And a cinematographer says he’s shooting press junkets.
Bonilla is assistant directing, teaching, and bartending to make it. She premiered her first feature at Sundance this year, but no one bought it. When she came back home to LA, she only had $300 left in her bank account. She took a job on a vertical.
Now, the executive producers on her feature are helping her self-distribute it, a gamble that may or may not pay off. Bonilla says her parents can’t help financially if it fails. “I’m having nightmares about getting evicted all the time,” she says.
Several people I spoke to are entering their 30s and wondering if it’s possible to have financial stability in the future if they stay in the industry. Al-e McWhorter told me she wants to have a family, but isn’t sure if she can afford it. There’s very little union work, which means you can forget union health insurance. “It's not that money buys happiness, but in America, money buys that, if you get hurt, you're going to be okay,” says McWhorter.
Eli Cooper, a cinematographer and recent AFI grad, moved to LA from Minnesota to pursue filmmaking.
Still, hope is a strong drug. McWhorter tells me she enjoys the hustle of trying to find the next gig and feels inspired when she meets people near retirement who are still excited to make things.
Cinematographer Eli Cooper told me from a Las Vegas hotel room where he was working on a reality show that the dream to make movies his parents would watch still feels within reach.
“What keeps me driving forward?” says Cooper. “No matter if I'm shooting a toothpaste commercial or if I'm shooting what I love, which is mid-budget romance movies, it is still infinitely better than 99% of the jobs on this Earth.”
