CAMERAderie Economic Recovery Production Initiative

Access to tech and creative industry employment

County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit) City of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a citywide benefit)

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Beyond under-resourced, women working in filmmaking were once discriminated against to the point of being invisible. Women crew workers suffered inconsistent career trajectories, and we are still expected to undertake the bulk of homecare, childcare, and eldercare.
Since the strikes, there are 25% fewer film and TV jobs in CA than in 2022. The number of shooting days in LA County was down 42% in 2024 compared to 2022. [Otis Creative Economy Report 2025]
This lack of production has not only had a chilling effect on member employment but also has devastated our vendor sponsor partners, who are struggling financially. We fear that economic pressures will further exacerbate the downward trend in women’s hiring in the industry.
In 2023, only 4% of films employed 10 or more women, while 75% employed 10 or more men. Only 7% employed a woman cinematographer. The overall percentage of women in behind-the-scenes roles has increased only 6 points since 1998. [2023 Celluloid Ceiling Report]

We continue to create pathways for women and gender non-conforming people to secure sustainable paid work in all areas of the entertainment industry, and build real, living-wage careers that facilitate artistic contributions to the cultural life of their communities.
The goal of promoting gender balance in hiring underlies all our programming. We help our members upgrade their qualifications with proactive technical training, and actual productions, such as CAMERAderie projects and our recent volumetric music video shoot, that provide high-end hands-on experience. Our programs of networking at all levels, the Altitude Awards, and our recent finishing fund small grants all move the needle towards our members finding work, rising in their careers, and generating their own projects.
The CAMERAderie initiative has proven to have the biggest impact for the most number of people. Approximately 40% of our membership worked on the productions. Most went on to find paid production work in multiple areas of the industry including 48% in commercials, 62% in television, and 69% in feature films. 65% found work in new media. The finished films found success in various US and international festivals including Tribeca, Slamdance, and Cannes, with about 83% of the submitted films winning two or more awards. One was short-listed for a 2023 Oscar. 79% of participants recommended or referred someone they met during the program, creating a ripple effect. Some have gone on to direct feature films

Our work is already successful, in that our programs are effective to help people upgrade their skills and find work. We have also been successful at building our community, who support and hire each other, and made outstanding, artistically vibrant award-winning films. But we need to be able to scale our programs to serve more of our members. Currently 44% reside in the third and fourth quartiles of LA County. We would like to help them participate in the higher income levels of the creative economy. Qualifications make a difference in income potential [Otis Creative Economy Report]. We want to see more gender balance in the crews of film and television productions, more women leading creative teams, and being empowered to hire female below-the-line crews. In the recent list of 82 films/tv projects awarded tax incentives, only 14% have creative teams led primarily by women, and so far only 4 shows out of 41 with data even approach gender balance in the crews.