alt Hacker NewsNothing new. When I was in college down in LA I lived in a very small town founded by stunt people. Probably 80% of the people there were in the stunt business. Every few months they were off to another state or country for filming. Hollywood is just for the studio execs now, everyone else flies to whatever country offers the best tax breaks for them to film.
They go to some pretty incredible lengths too, A friend of mine and his dad own a stunt company that works explicitly with semi-trucks. Pretty much every time you see a semi in a stunt in a movie it's either my friend or his dad driving it. They will ship these semi's to foreign countries instead of film locally because the tax incentives are greater than moving entire production companies around the world.
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A few days ago I visited the little picturesque town of Hope, British Columbia. While driving down the Main Street, I saw a dozen chainsaw carvings of wildlife. I thought, why does that one look like Rambo? Found out the first movie was filmed there in 1982. The movie took place in the fictional town of Hope, Washington. When the movie begins, you see Sylvester Stallone walking into town under the real “Welcome to Hope” sign that was in the Canadian town at that time.
Aging myself here but growing up in a "movie set city" (definitely not LA) in the 90's meant getting rerouted on the way to school because The Wire needed our block again. It's funny to see how the article shows this wasn't just a local annoyance back then, but an early sign of a much bigger, long running shift in where and how Hollywood actually makes movies.
According to this article about 1/3rd as many movies are made in LA since the 90s. They were only making 30% of films in LA in the 90s so your experience still matches with the data but having 2/3rds of the local film production move elsewhere is significant.