Since the start of the year, Brandy Hernandez has applied for nearly 200 entertainment jobs.
The graduate of the 22 -year -old film school, who works as a receptionist at the Ross stores purchasing office in downtown Los Angeles, said that for most of these applications, she has never heard – not even a rejection. When she did follow -up interviews, she was almost always a ghost later.
“I knew that I would not be a famous screenwriter or anything right out of the university,” said Hernandez, who graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts in 2024. But she thought she would be at least qualified for a job of the entry -level film industry.
“It shouldn't be so difficult,” she continued to think.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic sparked a slowdown in generalized production, the resumption of the entertainment industry was delayed by Double Hollywood strikes,, The most expensive forest fires in the history of California And a contraction on the industry scale.
Studios rush to reduce costs in the middle of turbulence have quickly reduced low -level positions that have historically put the recruits in the door.
“You feel almost cursed,” said Ryan Gimeson, a graduate of the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts from the University of Chapman in 2023, at the start of the writers' strike.
And although the script has always been a competitive field, the veterans of the industry have attested that the conditions have rarely been more severe for young writers.
“In the past 40 years, it is the most disruptive I have ever seen,” said Tom Nunan, founder of Bull's Eye Entertainment and professor of the Ucla School of Theater, Film and Television.
The landscape is particularly dry in writing television, according to a Job report Released last month by the Writers Guild of America.
The television editorial roles dropped by 42% during the 2023-2024 season which coincided with the strikes, according to the report. About a third of these cuts were lower level meetings.
It is far from the LIZ Alper television company 15 years ago.
Alper, a writer-producer based in Los Angeles and co-founder of the Fair Worker #Payuphollywood treatment movement, appeared in the early 2010s, when the scripted television opportunities were still numerous.
The CW, for example, published three original one hour per night shows, about 18 to 21 original programming pieces per week, said Alper. This resulted between 100 and 200 writer slots.
But in the past five years, the rise in streaming has mainly made the opposite cables, by ahead of episodic programming with bingable series on demand and reducing writing work in the process.
The scarcity of work has led those who have positions of entry to stay there longer than before. A 2021 #payuphollywood survey have found that most of the support employees were at the end of the twenties, several years more than they were on average ten years ago.
Without these employees who go up and create vacant positions, recent graduates have nowhere to enter.
“I think that if you have a job, you have the impression that you have one of the Titanic's rescue canoes, and you are not ready to abandon the seat,” said Alper.
The entertainment labor market has also suffered from the current exodus of productions in California, where costs are high and tax incentives are low.
The legislation which would increase the state's film tax credit to 35% of skilled spending – against its current rates of 20 to 25% – is pending after Win unanimous votes Outside the senatorial committee of income and taxation and the assembly committee of the Assembly. Supporters say that this decision is essential for California to remain competitive with other states and countries, States legislators argued.
Meanwhile, young creatives wonder if the ideal place to launch their careers.
Peter Gerard.
(Robert Hanashiro / For Times)
Peter Gerard, 24, moved to Los Angeles two years ago to continue television writing. After obtaining his data science diploma from the University of Maryland, he felt that it was his last chance to chase his dream.
In a few weeks after his arrival in Los Angeles in April 2023, he won a handful of job interviews and even had hope for a few.
Then the writers guild went on strike.
“I came for a few moments before the disaster and I had no idea,” he said.
During the slowdown, Gerard filled his time by working on independent films, by following writing lessons and building his portfolio. He was fine without a full-time concert, he said, thinking that her magic would finally work.
Such a “cosmic choreography” touched the producer of the writer Jill Goldsmith almost 30 years ago, she said, when she left her job as a public defender in Chicago to continue television writing. After seven months tried in Los Angeles, her luck went when she met the co-creator of “NYPD Blue”, David Milch, online in a chocolate factory by Santa Monica. Goldsmith sent her a script, the show bought him and she obtained her first credit in 1998.
Goldsmith, lecturer in the MFA program of the UCLA at the theater, cinema and television school, said that she said to her students that such opportunities present themselves until they meet fate halfway.
But hearing veteran writers cry their lost job and the revolting glory of Los Angeles led Gerard to question his own offer of success.
“I felt sorry for them, but it also made me realize, like” wow, there are many people who want to do that, and many of them are much further than me, without showing anything “,” he said.
Lore Olivera.
(Robert Hanashiro / For Times)
As the youngest editor of the staff of his current writers' room, tradition V. Olivera, 26, has got used to his senior counterparts who save nostalgic on the “good old days”.
“I think they romanianize a little,” she said, “but there is a truth in there.”
Olivera won his first job to the editor in 2023, a year after graduating from the University of Stanford. The process was simple: his representatives were the subject of his samples to a showrunner, he loved them, she interviewed and obtained the post. But Olivera said that such successes are rare.
“I was ridiculously lucky,” she said. However, making staff is not a finish line, she added, just a 20-week break on the panic to find the next concert.
Olivera is also the only editor in his current room, all her colleagues holding higher titles like the publisher or the producer. This is a natural consequence, she said, showrunners facing pressure to fill limited positions with heavy strikers already proven capable of creating successes.
Olivera said that she did not know that every 26 years were hired a few decades ago, but even her elder peers agreed that the industry had lost an old air of possibility.
“It is definitely a slap in your face when you get here and you say to yourself:” Yeah, it's going to be a few years miserable, and then I could not even do it “,” said Olivera. “Not even because I'm good or bad … But just because the industry is so dead and so afraid to take risks.” “”
Jolaya Gillams, who graduated from the Chapman's Dodge College in 2023, said that his class had talent in the shovel. But the industry did not give them anywhere to say it.
Instead, studios pay money into remakessaid the 24 -year -old, even if consumers have displayed their appetite for the original equipment.
“I hope that we are entering a film era when these are new ideas and new perspectives and to have an open mind to the voice of our generation,” said Gillams.
Until then, the filmmaker said that she would continue to create work for herself.
During strikes, Gillams and a budget -free production team made the short film “sincero”, which won the public prize for a short documentary at the Newport Newport Film Festival Newport. While she continues to search for a distributor for the doc, she already has another project in preparation.
Fassed with the “black hole” of job requests, Hernandez said that she was also focused on the life of her own work. In an ideal world, this leads to one or two film festivals, perhaps even an agency representation. But above all, what motivates it is the pride of the work itself.
“If I succeed in my mind,” said Hernandez, “I'm just.”
