How is the credit crunch affecting the film and photographic industries?

The bad news is all around us, the consumer isn't spending, unemployment is rising and companies are drastically cutting their advertising budgets. The film and photographic industries can't escape this reality - even today we learned that ITV is cutting 600 jobs and a number of its programs, blaming the fall in advertising revenue as their primary motive.

But it isn't all bad news for Lavish Locations. We've seen two clear trends emerging over the last few months: first that volumes are not being affected as much as budgets and second, that we are seeing a large number of new and high quality locations coming on to our books.

Our clients, whether they be a film production companies, stills production companies or editorial magazines are still shooting on location. However, their budgets are much tighter than they have been, in some cases coming down by 10% or more. Fortunately our location owners are not holding out for unrealistic location fees and in almost all cases have been prepared to negotiate to meet our clients' budgets.

The second trend which has to be great for the industry is the number of new and original locations which have been registering with Lavish Locations. Lavish Locations has featured in numerous newspapers, magazines and websites in articles designed to help people increase their incomes through new and imaginative ways. What better way than to use your house as a film or photo-shoot location? Not only do you get a nice cheque for your trouble (even with reduced budgets you can still expect to clear a minimum of several hundred pounds upwards) you get the opportunity to get a real glimpse behind the scenes of a fascinating business.

So even with the recession in full force, there are still lots of reasons to be optimistic in the film and photographic business with our clients benefiting from lots of new and original locations being registered, and our locations, if they are prepared to work for reduced budgets, still benefiting from lots of work.

Keep reading our blog to learn how the changing business climate will affect the locations business.