This story is part of a series of interviews with Atlanta creatives about what it’s like to be working in Atlanta’s independent film scene and film industry at large. Click here to read more stories.
When Alexxiss Jackson was little, she loved playing with Polly Pockets. But God help you if you touched those dolls.
“It was a soap opera, and nobody else could touch it. It was this whole elaborate set-up on my two dressers in my room, with a little paper bridge connecting the two parts of the town,” she remembered. “Nobody could touch it, because they had to be in their places for the next episode of the soap opera.”
And so, at a young age, this future cinematographer (or director of photography) was already thinking about the importance of continuity. But since then, Jackson’s work has grown in scale from those tiny dolls.
Born and raised in Detroit, her resume runs the gamut from documentaries, to independent films, to work with acclaimed filmmakers like Julie Dash. But, over the course of the past few years as Georgia’s film and television production has slowed down, Jackson – like so many others – has seen less and less work coming in.
Throughout this Indie Spotlight series, we’ve spoken with filmmakers and producers working hard to keep film in Georgia alive. But Jackson knows firsthand that the slowdown has hit Georgia’s crew workers particularly hard.
“So many of my colleagues and peers that are super talented and super good at what they do, and they’ve put in years and years of work – I’ve watched a lot of them leave the industry and go to other industries or positions just to survive,” Jackson said.
Working in the industry
Jackson first ended up in Atlanta during the summer of 2011, sleeping on a friend’s couch and working in the production office for a show at Tyler Perry Studios. The job threw a bit of a wrench in her plans. She knew she wanted to be a director of photography – the person who leads the camera and lighting crew on set, working closely with the director to bring the visuals of the film to life.
She went to film school at the University of Michigan, and in 2006 completed the intensive summer film program at the University of Southern California. The plan was to eventually go to Hollywood, but she never felt like she quite vibed with Los Angeles, and so she kept putting off the move.
Turns out Atlanta was more her speed. She’s been in the city officially since January of 2012.
“Atlanta feels a lot more like home,” Jackson said. “It feels more like Detroit to me, than Los Angeles does, in terms of the people, in terms of the personalities and the vibe.”
There was a brief moment in time where Jackson might have been able to live out her film industry dreams in Detroit. Michigan introduced a film tax credit in 2008, bringing in Hollywood productions like “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.” But lawmakers ended the incentive program in 2015, and production dried up (state lawmakers are now in the process of trying to bring those incentives back).
Georgia’s film tax incentives are still firmly in place, but production has declined over the years. Film production in Georgia peaked in 2022, with spending on film and television production hitting $4.4 billion, while the number of total productions listed at 412. Last fiscal year saw $2.3 billion in spending and 245 productions. According to a report released by the Georgia Film Office, this fiscal year’s revenue (July 1, 2025 – June 30, 2026) dropped to $2 billion – the lowest amount in about a decade, according to the AJC – but the number of productions rose slightly to 280.
There are a few factors that contribute to the slowdown. Studios and streamers are greenlighting fewer productions than they used to, and – particularly post the 2023 actors and writers strikes – productions have opted to move to places like the United Kingdom, where labor and production costs are cheaper – for example, Marvel Studios made the decision to do just that in 2025.
Large productions – like filmmaker James Gunn’s “Superman” sequel, which shot here this year – still come to Georgia. But the exodus that has occurred is emblematic of an issue that critics of film tax incentives often point out – these incentives might yield big productions in the short term, but studios could just as quickly leave once a cheaper option arises. And workers often bear the brunt of that movement.
“Profit-hungry companies don’t care about workers, so when it’s cheaper to ship jobs overseas, that’s what they do – in the film industry and beyond,” Jackson said.
Jackson, much like the state of Georgia, had her busiest year in 2022. But, after the writers and actors strikes the following year, she said her workload dropped off precipitously. That drop off has hit below the line film workers – members of the crew like cinematographers, sound technicians, set designers, etc. – particularly hard.
In June earlier this year, film industry workers gathered at a town hall dedicated to discussing the possible merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. Those workers talked about the adverse effects of previous consolidation on their livelihoods and their lack of work compared to just a few years ago.
“I can say that work dropped precipitously after 2022, for me, for all of us,” Jackson said. “It’s been a constant thread, constant lament for me and 99% (if not 100%) of my peers.”
It’s not abnormal for production to slow down after a major industry strike. But from Jackson’s perspective, the extenuating circumstances – from numerous layoffs at major media companies, to productions moving overseas, to the shuttering and slow down in operations for production services companies and rental houses – has exacerbated the issue.
According to a report released by the rental company Giggster, as of 2025 Georgia ranks third out of the top 10 states with the largest losses of film industry jobs, losing nine percent (or 1,370) from 2024-2025. Nationwide in that same time period, film industry employment rose slightly, by 0.7 percent.
But, despite all the hardship, Georgia still ranked fourth in the nation (behind California, New York,and Texas) for states with the largest film industry job market, with about 13.8 thousand jobs in 2025. Georgia still has an industry, and, according to the Georgia Film Office, independent productions in the state were up 83 percent this year over the prior year. There is still a creative workforce here that’s hungry for work, and the infrastructure – the lots, the equipment – to support them.
“We have all of that stuff here,” Jackson said. “We just need the funded projects that are coming through, and ideally, we need people that are in charge that care about workers and not just trying to figure out how cheaply they can make something somewhere else.”
A lifeline and the next generation
Luckily, Jackson has had a lifeline during the production slowdown – working as an adjunct cinematography professor at Spelman College.
“Being at Spelman has been a huge lifesaver for me,” she said. “One, it just means a lot to me to be there in general. But also when the strike hit and when that slowdown came, having that additional source of income that was still in my field was a lifesaver for me in a lot of ways.”
One of the most meaningful aspects of the job has been being around young women who also want to become filmmakers. Gender disparity in roles like director of photography is still rampant. According to a study from San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Film and Television, only seven percent of the cinematographers of the 250 top domestic grossing films of 2025 were women. That’s up just three percentage points from 1998.
Jackson said that as a woman of color working as a director of photography, she often hasn’t felt as supported as her male counterparts. In recent years things have gotten better, but for a large chunk of career, she was met with a sort of skepticism, she said. Often, people on set would assume she was a makeup artist.
“There can be certain assumptions or biases, which may seem harmless, but when you look at the aggregate numbers of how few women there are, you have to examine where it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy or a chicken and egg conundrum,” she said. “Where women can be excluded, discouraged, or overlooked; whether overtly or further under the surface.”
Working with young women has been reinvigorating, Jackson said, particularly at a time when the industry is slow. Watching them understand and get excited about cinematic concepts, like low-key lighting or depth of field, reminds Jackson how “bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and energetic” she was in film school – and reminds her why she wanted to work in this industry in the first place.
“Engaging with young filmmakers helps me stay connected to what makes most of us want to be filmmakers in the first place: that desire to create, in its purest form,” she said. “It means a lot to me to help them make their storytelling voices stronger.”
