Invited book chapter · In preparation
Making Places Filmable
Film Commissions and the Infrastructure of Hollywood Mobility
The States of Hollywood, edited by Kate Fortmueller and Alisa Perren · University of California Press
Cale Epps is a PhD student in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California whose research focuses on media industries, labor and precarity, public policy, regional production cultures, political economy, and the U.S. Southwest.
Researcher · Writer · Teacher
I study how media industries make places.
My work examines how film and television production takes root in particular regions: the policies, infrastructures, labor, institutions, and cultural imaginaries that make places usable to industry—and the changes that follow.
Worlding the Southwest
Current research
01
Worlding the Southwest
Infrastructure, Imagination, and the Territorial Reorganization of Hollywood
This project examines how film and television production infrastructures, state incentive regimes, regional imaginaries, and Indigenous media governance have reorganized Hollywood’s relationship to the U.S. Southwest.
Media industries
Labor & precarity
Public policy
Regional production cultures
Political economy of film / television / streaming
U.S. Southwest
Selected writing
02
Research in progress and in circulation.
Article · Revise & resubmit
The Failed Franchise
Arizona’s Film Commission and the State Governance of Hollywood Compatibility
Media Industries
Article · Revise & resubmit
Constraint as Norm
Recreation Drama, Film Policy, and the Normalization of Precarity in Arizona’s Production Ecology
Television & New Media
Invited manuscript · Under review
Paramount+ With Showtime and the Branding of Cohesion
New Review of Film and Television Studies
Also
2026
Tax Incentives: More Public Risk, Less Return
Co-authored with Pete Johnson · The Costs of Consolidation: The Arguments and Evidence for Blocking the Paramount–Warner Bros. Merger · MACRO Lab, University of California, San Diego
2025
Incentives, Commissions, and Hollywood Production Mobility
Roadmap to the Texas Media Industries · University of Texas at Austin
2024
Book review of Kay Dickinson, Supply Chain Cinema: Producing Global Film Workers
European Journal of Cultural Studies
Research in the media
Forbes
July 25, 2026
Study Suggests Paramount/WBD Merger Would Upend Tax Incentive Programs
Rick Ellis features and quotes research coauthored with Peter Johnson on the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger.
Read the Forbes coverage ↗Teaching
03
From close observation to historical argument.
My discussion sections and invited lectures connect film and media history and theory to how media is produced, organized, and experienced.
At USC, I have led discussion sections for World Cinema to 1950 and Introduction to Television and Media; served as a lead teaching assistant for Introduction to Television and Media and The Star Wars Phenomenon; evaluated student work for Gender, Sexuality, and Media; and worked as a course assistant for Global TV, Intro to Cultural Studies, Survey History of Television, and (Post)Socialist Media. I also served as instructor of record at Pacific States University for Mediating Culture in the Streaming Era.
Upcoming lecture
The Film Industry Under National Socialism: Infrastructure, Labor, and Compliance
Recent lecture
Recreating the Global: Raw, Netflix, and the Labor of Streaming Docudrama
In the classroom
Observation → evidence → concept → historical argument
Selected recognition
2026
Graduate Student Writing Award
SCMS Media Industries SIG
2026
Finalist, Graduate Student Essay Contest
SCMS Television Studies SIG
2025
Graduate Student Writing Award (Honorable Mention)
SCMS Media Industries SIG
About
04
Scholarship shaped by production experience.
Before doctoral study, I worked as a video producer at Wibbitz and as Education Manager at Arizona Theatre Company, and I completed a postgraduate certificate in filmmaking at the London Film School.
My background includes short-form breaking news and branded client videos, arts-education programming, and narrative, documentary, and experimental filmmaking. My creative work has included writing, directing, producing, shooting, editing, and soundscape design.
That experience continues to inform how I approach media industries: from policy and infrastructure to the practical coordination required to make creative work possible.
Selected creative work and festival screenings are listed on my CV. The films themselves are not publicly archived here.
Contact
Get in touch.
Division of Cinema and Media Studies
School of Cinematic Arts
University of Southern California