In March, Raul Riveros showed up for work on a Jonah Hill movie when he keeled over in pain and was promptly rushed to the emergency room. He had undergone several surgeries to repair hernias he suffered from lifting large carts containing monitors and computers, and now a mesh implant had become entangled with his intestines.

His recovery kept him out of work for months, during which his disability payments only covered a portion of what he could have earned. He and his wife had the sinking feeling that living in a costly city like Los Angeles no longer made sense.

“We wanted to slow down, go where the mortgage and car insurance was cheaper, where, if I needed to exit the film business, I could survive on getting a blue-collar job,” Mr. Riveros said.

Los Angeles had long been the center of his universe. It was where he was raised and where he met his wife, Suzette, back when she was a lead server at the Hard Rock Cafe. And it was, of course, a mecca for those in the film and television industry.

Mr. Riveros, 50, had managed to stitch together a career in Hollywood as a digital imaging technician, a position in which he helps refine camera footage to improve its appearance.

The work had come with unbelievable highs. The time he was filming in the middle of Red Square in Moscow with Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway. The time, on a break during production, he challenged Adam Sandler to a game of one-on-one on the Lakers’ home court. (“I had one of the best games of my entire life. I smoked him.”)