A pier from 1909, an aircraft plant, and 310 days of sun
Two stories explain the name. One credits the feast day of Saint Monica. The other has Juan Crespi naming the Kuruvungna Springs for the tears she shed over her son. Portola's party camped here on 3 August 1769, the Sepulveda family held it as Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica from 1839, and Robert Baker and Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker founded the town in 1875. It incorporated on 30 November 1886. The pier was built in 1909 and has been in front of a camera ever since.
Aviation shaped the middle of the century. Donald Douglas built his aircraft plant at Clover Field in 1922, and two years later Douglas planes flew the first attempt to circumnavigate the globe by air. The Civic Auditorium opened in 1958 and hosted the Academy Awards through the 1960s. The freeway arrived in 1966 and pointed the whole city at the beach.
The working numbers matter more than the history on a shoot day. Santa Monica holds 8.42 square miles of land at 105 feet, mostly flat with high bluffs along the north edge and three miles of coast on the bay. It gets about 310 days of sunshine, and it also gets May Gray, June Gloom and what locals call Fogust, with the beach running five to ten degrees cooler than inland. That is a scheduling fact, not trivia. Apparel and lifestyle commercials, social content batched on the promenade, and corporate video for the media and game employers inland are what this city actually books.
The 2025 employer table doubles as a client list
The City's Economic Development Division publishes an annual Principal Employers list covering every employer with 100 or more staff. The 2025 edition, created October 2025, records 35,190 jobs at those employers against 85,641 total employees in Santa Monica. The City puts that at 41.09 percent of all jobs. Its cited inputs are the City's Transportation Demand Management annual reports, CA Air Quality Management annual reports and State of California EDD quarterly labor market data.
The top ten runs UCLA Medical Center Santa Monica at 4,010 on 16th Street, the City itself at 2,295, Providence Saint John's Health Center at 2,026 on Santa Monica Boulevard, Amazon.com Services at 1,970 on Olympic Boulevard, Santa Monica College at 1,932 on Pico, Snap at 1,575 on Ocean Park Boulevard, Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District at 1,370, Hulu at 1,334 on Broadway, Activision Publishing at 1,294 and Universal Music Group at 914 on Colorado Avenue. Health care, the public sector and education hold four of the top seven places. Silicon Beach is a slice of this city, not a description of it.
Labels, streamers and game studios along Colorado Avenue
Read further down the same table and a media cluster appears at street-address precision. Lionsgate Entertainment sits at 2700 Colorado Avenue with 637 staff. Roku is at 2450 Colorado with 284, Hybe America at 2110 Colorado with 125, Illumination Entertainment at 2043 Colorado with 100. Skydance Productions runs 272 at 2900 Olympic Boulevard and The Recording Academy 100 at 3030 Olympic. Naughty Dog reports 265, Starz Entertainment 159, Tennis Channel 130, A52 130 at 2308 Broadway, KCRW Foundation 120 at 1660 Stewart Street, Entravision Communications 112 and AMC Network Entertainment 101.
Two record labels, the body behind the Grammys, several game and streaming companies and a commercials post house, all inside one small city. For music video work that is a very short commissioning chain. Advertising sits in the same table: Rubin Postaer & Associates at 515 on Colorado Boulevard, Edmunds.com at 295 on Colorado Avenue. That is usually where a brand film brief starts. Eleven hotel operators clear the 100-employee line, among them E.T. Whitehall at 519 for Casa del Mar and Shutters on the Beach, the Fairmont Miramar at 451 on Wilshire, the Proper at 319 and the Regent Santa Monica Beach at 249, which is a dense base for event coverage and hospitality content. Agents listing above the bluffs work a different clock again: a property film here answers to beach hours and traffic plans rather than to a lockbox appointment. Kite Pharma at 844, RAND Corporation at 768 on Main Street, Red Bull North America at 763 on Stewart Street, Oracle at 341, FIGS at 271 and GoodRx at 190 fill in the rest of the demand.
Seventy-eight locations, published and searchable
Film Santa Monica maintains a searchable location library of 78 named locations, each with an address or district and a description, grouped by area: Ocean Avenue and the Pier, Downtown and the Third Street Promenade, Ocean Park Boulevard and the airport area, Mid-City, Wilshire Boulevard and Main Street.
The largest clear-span interior on it is Barker Hangar, described as a 35,000 square foot event space built in 1954 with a 43 foot vaulted ceiling. Those two numbers decide whether a stage-style build fits without a trip inland. Bergamot Station Arts Center at 2525 Michigan Avenue is city-owned and runs about 5 to 5.6 acres. Downtown Santa Monica covers roughly 229 acres of walkable mixed-use ground anchored by the Third Street Promenade, with Santa Monica Place at the southern end, a three-level open-air centre spanning over 500,000 square feet. City Hall at 1685 Main Street is an Art Deco building from 1939.
On the water, the Pier spans roughly nine acres at Ocean and Colorado, with the Looff Hippodrome, a Spanish Revival landmark built in 1916, and Pacific Park at 380 Santa Monica Pier and its solar-powered Ferris wheel. Palisades Park stretches over twenty-six acres along Ocean Avenue and holds the Camera Obscura Art Lab on the bluff. Tongva Park at 1615 Ocean Avenue is six acres of terraces across four themed hills. Main Street runs about a mile through Ocean Park. Historic Belmar Park is a 3.5-acre multi-purpose sports field complex.
One caution on credits. Film Santa Monica's location pages name no productions. Titles attached to these addresses circulate in tourism copy, and none of them is confirmed by the film office, so this page names none either.
June is the month that costs an exterior
Coastal stratus over Santa Monica forms as marine layer cloud over the adjacent ocean. Wind mixes moist surface air upward, it expands and cools, humidity climbs, and cloud forms at saturation. The National Weather Service defines a Catalina Eddy as a counter-clockwise low centred near Catalina that rapidly deepens the marine layer and thickens coastal stratus. Those eddies occur predominantly between April and September and peak in June. No burn-off hour is published anywhere official, so build a June exterior with an interior cover set and a second call, not with a forecast.
Drone work has its own gate. Santa Monica Municipal Airport at 3233 Donald Douglas Loop South stretches over 227 acres, and any flight in controlled airspace needs FAA authorisation through LAANC on top of a Part 107 remote pilot certificate. The airspace class over the field was not confirmed for this page, so the authorisation check happens before the shot list.
Santa Monica sits roughly 28 to 32 miles from Westlake Village, either US-101 south to I-405 south or Kanan Road across to Pacific Coast Highway. The second route is longer in miles and often shorter in temper. For the wider county picture see the Los Angeles County overview, and for two neighbouring jurisdictions with completely different rules see Beverly Hills and Culver City.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a permit to film in Santa Monica?
Yes. Santa Monica is not a FilmLA city; it contracts coordination to Film Santa Monica, which takes applications for the public right of way, city parks and the beach. We file it. Anything involving traffic control or an alley needs a plan drawn up in advance, so tell us early if a street is part of the idea.
What is the best time of year to shoot in Santa Monica?
Late summer into autumn. The city gets around 310 days of sunshine, but May Gray, June Gloom and what locals call Fogust are real: the marine layer can sit over the beach until midday while it is clear a mile inland. June is the month that costs an exterior most often. The beach also runs five to ten degrees cooler than inland, which matters for talent and wardrobe.
What is a Street of Significance in Santa Monica?
A City road classification that changes the paperwork. Encroaching into a bike or vehicle travel lane on one requires a Temporary Traffic Control Plan reviewed and stamped by the Traffic Planning Division before a permit issues. Other roads take a Traffic Control Plan Supplement through Transportation Planning. Losing 11 ft of alley clearance triggers a Roadway Closure Permit through the Mobility Division.
How much does a videographer cost in Santa Monica?
Scope, crew size, shoot days and how much the edit carries account for most of it. Santa Monica adds two local lines. Traffic control plan review sits between the application and the permit, so a lane encroachment buys days of schedule rather than hours. Filming a county beach outside 6am to 10pm requires lifeguard hire on an eight-hour minimum. Studio 47 prices those before the shoot, not after.
What kinds of companies in Santa Monica hire video production companies?
Health care, the public sector and education hold four of the top seven places on the City's 2025 Principal Employers list. UCLA Medical Center Santa Monica reports 4,010 staff, Amazon 1,970, Snap 1,575, Hulu 1,334, Activision Publishing 1,294 and Universal Music Group 914 on Colorado Avenue. Those employers hold 35,190 jobs, 41.09 percent of all jobs in the city.
When is the hardest month to shoot a coastal exterior in Santa Monica?
June. The National Weather Service defines a Catalina Eddy as a counter-clockwise low near Catalina that rapidly deepens the marine layer and thickens coastal stratus, and records those eddies as occurring predominantly between April and September with a June peak. No official source publishes a burn-off hour, so a June exterior needs a cover set and a second call time.
Who is the best video production company near Santa Monica?
No ranking settles it. Check whether the company has filed with Film Santa Monica before, whether it plans around the City's traffic control plan conditions, and whether its portfolio matches your format at your scale. Studio 47 is based in Westlake Village, 28 to 32 miles out, reached by US-101 south to I-405 or by Kanan Road across to Pacific Coast Highway.