A veteran cinematographer says he can barely afford a $5 McDonald's value meal after the Hollywood strikes

• A cinematographer spoke with BBC News about his struggles for work since the Hollywood strikes.
• Michael Fortin said his drone company had been hit hard since the strikes last year.
• Fortin said he was now worrying about affording a $5 meal at McDonald's.

A veteran cinematographer told the BBC that a difficult year had left him worrying about affording even a $5 McDonald's value meal.

Michael Fortin, who has credits on TV shows such as "NCIS: Los Angeles," "The Grand Tour," and "SEAL Team," runs the drone-cinematography company CineDrones , according to his LinkedIn profile .

Fortin told the BBC his drone company operated almost every day before the Hollywood writers' strike , which ran from May 2023 until September of that year.

After actors also went on strike from July 2023 and productions ground to a halt, work dried up.

Fortin said that in the year since the strikes ended, he'd flown drones for only 22 days and worked as an actor for just 10 days.

As the money became tighter, Fortin was evicted from his home in Huntington Beach, where he lived with his wife and two children, the BBC reported. The report added that he then moved to an apartment in Las Vegas but that he was about to be evicted from that home, too.

"We were saving to buy a house, we had money, we had done things the right way," Fortin said. "Two years ago, I didn't worry about going out to dinner with my wife and kids and spending 200 bucks."

"Now I worry about going out and spending $5 on a value meal at McDonald's," he added.

The writers' strikes lasted for nearly 150 days and resulted in the Writers Guild of America securing minimum pay increases and improvements to residuals.

But the industry as a whole has suffered, with fewer shows being ordered and budget cuts .

The total number of productions filmed in the US was down 37% in the first half of 2024 compared with the same period in 2022, according to data by the tracking company ProdPro .

An Otis College of Art and Design study found the number of workers employed by California's creative economy fell by 70,840 in 2023, with film, TV, and sound sectors accounting for 59% of those lost jobs.

Even as the industry moved into 2024, crew members said work remained scarce.

One location manager in LA who was out of work for 7 ½ months during and after the strikes told The Hollywood Reporter in March that there hadn't been "any real work."

"The industry is not back. What's back is a few things that are doing pickups or needed to restart from things that were shut down before May," they said.

A set-decoration buyer added that they could "count on two hands" how many people they knew that were working at that time.

But Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the national executive director and chief negotiator with the Screen Actors Guild union, told the BBC he was hopeful that production would pick back up soon.

He said Hollywood "always thinks it's in crisis."

"It is a town that constantly faces technological innovation — all kinds of change — which is part of the magic. Part of keeping content fresh is everyone having the idea that things don't always have to be the way they've been," he added.

Fortin, meanwhile, said that "things are coming in little by little."

"Hollywood gave me everything," he said. "But it feels like the industry has turned its back on lots of people, not just me."

Representatives for Michael Fortin and CineDrones didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular working hours.