| Studio zone Thirty-mile zone (TMZ) |
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| The intersection at the center of the studio zone: West Beverly Blvd and North La Cienega Blvd in Los Angeles | |
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Studio zone
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Studio zone
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In the American entertainment industry, the studio zone, also known as the thirty-mile zone or the TMZ, is the area within a 30-mile (50 km) radius from the intersection of West Beverly Boulevard and North La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. This area includes almost all of the southern half of Los Angeles County, as well as slices of eastern Ventura County and northwestern Orange County.
Entertainment industry unions currently use this area to determine rates and work rules for union workers. The zone also largely determined the location and success of the original movie ranches in or near Hollywood. In addition, the studio zone also includes the Metro–Goldwyn–Mayer Conejo Ranch property near Thousand Oaks in Ventura County, although it technically lies outside of the zone's radius.
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During almost all of the 20th century, the Hollywood entertainment industry preferred to film movies and television shows within the studio zone to hold costs down. With clever editing, it was easy to use a handful of aerial and location shots (usually shot by a second unit), along with carefully dressed sets, to give viewers the impression that a movie or show was set somewhere else. The studio zone itself as well as the lack of motion picture production companies and experienced personnel outside the zone made it very expensive to film on location, since movie studios literally had to bring everything with them from Los Angeles. In turn, anyone who wanted to start a career in the entertainment industry had to move to Los Angeles to break into the studio zone, thus creating a self-perpetuating cycle.
In the 1990s, to counteract such inertia, many countries and even other U.S. states began offering generous tax credits or deductions to reduce the much higher cost of filming on location. The result was what Hollywood people call runaway production.
Entertainment industry labor unions use this area to determine rates and work rules for workers. For instance, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees contracts state:
"Studio rates" are generally lower than "distant location rates", which would need to be paid (in addition to travel time and mileage) for work outside the studio zone.
The initials of the Time Warner tabloid news website TMZ.com stand for "Thirty Mile Zone", an alternate name for the studio zone.[2]