What unique advantages does shooting in California offer a production? During a panel conversation at the second California Day at The American Pavilion in Cannes, IndieWire Editor-in-Chief Dana Harris-Bridson was joined by municipal government leaders in towns around Southern California to discuss the work that goes into turning a city into a production hub in the modern industry ecosystem.
“This is a conversation about competition, identity, and what film offices have to become when production is fragmented, creators are decentralized, and cities want to get cultural and economic return in addition to shoot days,” Harris-Bridson said, introducing the panel, which was titled “The California Advantage: Locations, Hospitality, and Production Resources.”
The panel featured Santa Monica Film Office head Murielle Nouchy, Janet Zaldua from Marina del Rey Tourism, and Jacqueline Ryan from the Chula Vista Entertainment Company. Together, all three discussed the different work their municipalities have done to attract film and TV production to their streets, and how that intersects with tourism.
“From a tourism board point of view, what we want to achieve is to create a real network and a real proximity between our vendors, between our hospitality, our wonderful assets,” Nouchy said. “In Santa Monica, we have a lot of neighborhoods, to be shot and quite a lot of unique facilities. But what we want to create is an easiness for every branch of the productions. And this is one of our main goals to active the creativity, just to get this proximity between the inhabitants and the crews, and also the visitors. Because for the visitors coming to Santa Monica, the film industry is just like a dream. So it’s this kind of proximity we wanna create.”
One of the main conversation topics is what it means for a town to be “filmmaker friendly” in 2026. Zaldua said she interprets it as streamlining the process of shooting in a location to be as efficient and easy for an independent director as possible.
“In terms of Chula Vista’s approach, filmmaker-friendly really means streamlining the permitting process, making permitting less expensive, easier, a lot less red tape, and really trying to get back to the process of filmmaking,” Zaldua said. “It’s hard enough without having to worry about your paperwork. So our focus is really in giving our filmmakers, empowering them to put their energy where it matters and being a supportive entity and making it easier for our teams to do what they’re trying do.”
Marina Del Ray, which is not technically a city but instead an unincorporated community, faces its own challenges. Instead of a dedicated film office, productions who want to shoot in the area go through FilmLA, with the Tourism Board serving as a resource to facilitate shooting.
“We’ve seen in the Marina in the last year since the film incentives were approved, an increase in filming in the Marina,” Ryan said. “And so while we don’t have our own, specific film office, as the tourism board, as the Marina del Rey Tourism Board, we very much see an opportunity to work closer and hand in hand with the film commission, with scouts, with production.”
Watch the complete “The California Advantage: Locations, Hospitality, and Production Resources” panel in the video above.
California Day 2026 at The American Pavilion is presented by California Film Commission, Chula Vista Entertainment Company, Inc., Film Liaisons in California Statewide (FLICS), Film Santa Monica, Marina Del Rey Los Angeles, and NewFilmmakers Los Angeles.
