The Motion Picture Editors Guild is celebrating a new California law designed to bring post-production work back to the state, calling the measure a landmark development for editors and other below-the-line workers whose jobs can follow productions after cameras stop rolling.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB2319 into law Friday, creating a tax credit for productions that shoot outside California but return to the state for post-production. The bill expands California’s film and television tax credit efforts by supporting work across post, including picture editorial, sound, music, visual effects and finishing.
Newsom also signed AB186, which exempts certain productions from caps on tax credits. Together, the measures mark the latest expansion of California’s strategy to protect entertainment employment amid ongoing competition from other states and countries.
“This is a historic day for Editors Guild members and for California’s film and TV workers more broadly,” Editors Guild National Executive Director Scott George said in a statement. “AB 186 ensures that the California Film and TV Tax Credit Program continues to drive the recovery of our industry in its historic home, while AB 2319 will complement the program by making sure that even projects shooting outside of our state can come back to California to employ Editors Guild members in post-production.”
George also credited Assemblymember Nick Schultz, lawmakers who supported the measure, the California IATSE Council for its advocacy and the California Post Alliance, which partnered with the Guild on the bill.
A post-production push for California workers
The Editors Guild and the California Post Alliance co-sponsored AB2319. The groups have described the bill as “a necessary step to level the playing field for editors, assistant editors, mixers and other post-production workers who have seen their work lured away to other states and countries with powerful tax incentives.”
The legislation passed both the Assembly and Senate at the end of the legislative session with broad, bipartisan support. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass advocated for the bill, along with other local leaders in Southern California.
Initial funding of $10 million will be allocated to launch the program.
F. Hudson Miller, president of the Editors Guild, framed the law as the result of member activism as well as legislative support.
“We owe this victory not only to lawmakers and, of course, to Gov. Newsom, but also to the activism of our members and partners,” Miller said. “Post-production professionals work behind the scenes in dark rooms, unseen, to craft entertainment that dazzles. But for months our union has asked members to get out there and make some noise in order to save our industry. They absolutely delivered.”
Part of a broader tax credit expansion
The new post-production credit is intended to complement California’s Film and Television Tax Credit Program 4.0, which passed last year. That program provides $750 million to incentivize filming in the state and address runaway production to other areas.
Newsom, in his own statement, positioned the legislation as a defense of California’s entertainment workforce and infrastructure.
“California is the nation’s entertainment capital,” Newsom said. “It is the home of storytellers, dreamers, artists, entrepreneurs, and creators who define culture for the rest of the world. This legislation protects the extraordinary people who make this industry possible and makes it unmistakably clear: California is still the future of film and television. We have the talent. We have the infrastructure. We have the creative community. And we have an ecosystem that simply cannot be replicated anywhere else.”
For the Editors Guild, the significance of AB2319 is that it targets a part of the production pipeline that can be separated from where filming takes place. Under the new law, a project that shoots outside California may still have a financial reason to bring its post-production work back to the state — and, in the Guild’s view, employ California-based post professionals in the process.