'You have to be delusional': L.A. film students are prepared for a shrinking Hollywood

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Set us as preferred Film student Angela Henderson was collecting her thoughts, resting on the patio of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts on a recent sunny afternoon while listening to music on her headphones as she stared into the sky.Henderson was taking a short break after applying for dozens of Hollywood jobs.

The 22-year-old cinema and media studies student graduates in December, and she’s admittedly “a little freaked out” by what awaits her.“What if one day, I am one of those people that ends up losing a job?” Henderson said.She isn’t wrong to wonder.

Partly fueled by media consolidation, waves of layoffs have swept across the industry, bringing job cuts to Netflix, Walt Disney and Warner Bros., recently acquired by Paramount-Skydance.Productions keep leaving the state and artificial intelligence and vertical video are reshaping what gets made and who makes it.Yet aspiring actors, screenwriters and directors, many of them film school students like Henderson, are still making the pilgrimage to Los Angeles.

The Times spoke with some of these students about how they plan to navigate today’s Hollywood.Most are clear-eyed about the odds, and none of them are planning to quit.“Some of us can see a lot of doom and gloom,” said Miranda Banks, a professor of film, television and media studies at Loyola Marymount University.

“But this generation has their eye on the power of human creativity in a way that I’m not sure any of us in other generations have been so attuned to.”She thinks many of her students have a good chance at making it if they are “savvy and strategic” about where the industry is headed.“We’ve had a lot of unprecedented years, a lot of years with strange things that have impacted the industry and made things particularly challenging,” Banks added.“That has happened before.

It will continue to happen.”Gianna Jordano, Loyola Marymount University, 19When G...