because they aren’t under contracts with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers. So all crew members who were working on productions that are or would have been under alliance contracts are out of work, too.
Christian Oliveira, who is in the Editors Guild, Local 700, just had to leave Austin to move back home with his parents in Dallas because opportunities for work have drastically slowed down. He said that really started at the beginning of the year when strikes were rumored – then when they hit, rates went down, too.
“There’s more people available to take jobs,” he said. “When union jobs go away, narrative or otherwise, then they take on these non-union, smaller corporate-type jobs that I usually interact with. … I mean, it’s just more availability for other workers to compete on jobs.”Not everyone in the film industry attributes the slowdown in work to the strikes. Some say Texas is still feeling the impact of the pandemic. Others think it’s the heat or inflation.
Of the $200 million budget, $155 million went into effect immediately, as of June 1, so that it could be allocated to previous projects that might have been waiting for promised grants that the previous budget didn’t allow payment for. The remaining $45 million will go into effect Sept. 1, alongside, which lowers the Texas residency requirement for the incentive program from 70% to 55%.
“Then every time I come back, there’s always this push of like, ‘yeah, San Antonio or Austin’s going to be the next big filming capital of the world. We’re building studios in Austin.’ And every time I come back, nothing’s happened,” said Morales, who moved back home to San Antonio last year and took a job at a radio station because there wasn’t enough work in film. “And it’s just stagnant. It’s stale.
“I was here when we had a pretty good incentive and it was really good in our area. And then I either had to travel outside of Texas or sit at home,” Brown said. “I’ve worked out of the state for several weeks and months at a time, but always come back home.”So the $200 million incentive funding is something to be celebrated, right? Yes, except for one problem: The strikes.“It was unbelievably bad timing,” Belsky said.