The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to consider creating a $5 million grant for microdramas, short-form vertical videos that are rapidly gaining in popularity.
The City Council voted 14-0 to direct city staff to find public or private funding sources to support microdrama production.
“Many of these works do not meet the requirements necessary to qualify for state tax credits,” said City Councilman Bob Blumenfield, who authored the motion. “This is a problem we need to solve.”
Blumenfield got the idea from his brother Jay, a television veteran who recently created the microdramas “Her Heart, Held Hostage” and “Hired to Obey” for the MyDrama platform. Jay Blumenfield said in an interview that the genre offers a glimmer of hope.
“I believe this is one way to bring back a creative middle class to this town,” he said. “I think it’s been completely hollowed out by mergers and moguls and stupidity.”
But microdramas have small budgets of about $200,000 each, making it difficult to film in Los Angeles, he said.
“If you can get an extra $20,000, $30,000, that’s the difference between being able to do it here and not being able to do it here,” he said.
Last year, California expanded its tax incentives from $330 million to $750 million. However, a project must have a budget of at least $1 million to qualify. In Georgia, the minimum spending amount is $500,000, and producers can use multiple projects to meet that standard.
Microdramas are generally non-union. They originated in China, and many of the companies that manufacture them are based there. Bob Blumenfield argued that Los Angeles should establish itself as a global hub for such productions.
“It’s pretty new here, but there’s a lot of American players coming in,” Jay Blumenfield said. “A lot of Chinese companies and foreign companies still want to film here. They like American creators and actors and everything.”
Bob Blumenfield’s proposal asks the city to consider reducing permit fees and creating a “micro-budget concierge” that would offer a three-day permit approval process.
