LOS ANGELES – Preparations for a possible actors strike may have caused on-location feature film shoots in Los Angeles to decline in the last two months, according to a local permitting agency.

Major Hollywood studios hurried production of some movies and delayed filming others in case actors went on strike after their contract expired June 30.

Although negotiators for the Screen Actors Guild and the studios' trade group haven't agreed on a new contract, actors didn't walk out and the union has yet to call for a strike authorization vote.

Many studios say fears of a walkout have dimmed and they will resume business as usual.

“We front-loaded most of our production for the first half of the year,” said Patti Rockenwagner, a spokeswoman for Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures. “2009 is set. Now we're doing preproduction work, in anticipation of 2010.”

There were 898 on-location film shooting days in the Los Angeles area between July 1 and Aug. 26, compared to 1,104 in the period a year ago, a 19 percent drop, according to permitting agency FilmL.A.

“We hope these initial hints of decline in production days for the feature category don't blossom into the trend witnessed in 2001, when labor contract uncertainties resulted in a strong first half of the year for on-location feature production followed by a drastic decline in the latter half,” said FilmL.A. spokesman Todd Lindgren.

The number of films in production on location fell 8 percent to 97 from 108 in the July-to-August period.

That includes only one major studio film, the DreamWorks SKG Inc. sequel “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” while seven were in production last year in the same period. And only one major studio film is in production in a studio. “Angels & Demons,” the Sony Pictures “The Da Vinci Code” prequel, is shooting on the Sony lot.

Both studio shoots and all shooting outside the Los Angeles area are excluded from FilmL.A. statistics.