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Coronavirus: How will productions change how they shoot during the near/mid term future?


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Over the years there has been a general trend to do more TV series and feature films be shot multi-camera. 

I wonder if (until we find a vaccine for COVID-19, or it naturally burns out) in the near future we'll see a shift back to more single camera shooting instead? 

Could mean more shooting days, but there could be a strong desire to shoot with the smallest minimal crews possible. As the bigger the crews, the bigger the risk someone comes down with COVID-19, causing the entire production to be shutdown!

With one exception, I can see the sound department needing to add an extra boom op than they'd usually budget for. Because lav-ing a person is quite intimate, I can see for the next few weeks/months that lavs will be avoided. Thus it becomes even more essential than usual to make sure you get the best possible coverage with the boom. 

Wonder too what will happen to the generous film incentives these scripted productions get from states/countries? When their state budgets are already under massive stresses from increased costs and a reduced tax intake, they'll be looking to cut "costs" (although I'd argue it is not a cost, but merely a tax rebate? Tax money the state would have never got otherwise, if the production wasn't shot there).

These tax rebates / film incentives will be especially vulnerable to attack if they were implemented under the basis of being "marketing for the region" to help promote tourism. Was where is the tourism now?? Dead. There is very little tourism to promote, and many regions would not want to promote tourists coming! As they want to lock out everyone who is "non-essential".


Moving on from the scripted narrative world, to the corporate world of videography and also event shooting. Am expecting a rise in live streaming. Soon nearly everyone will need to offer, just like the shift from SD to HD, everyone had to offer HD. (and we're almost at that point with 4K now)

Who charges extra for 4K these days? Most don't, or only a small token extra amount. 

So will be the case with live streaming I think, you'll either throw it in to get the job or just a modest upsell extra cost. 

And because an ATEM Mini Pro costs only US$599 you can easily eat that cost, as if it only gets you a couple of extra jobs that you wouldn't have otherwise, then it is worth it!

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I dont think anyone ever charged more specifically to shoot in 4K over HD..   not directly anyway .. rates went up when we all had to buy new camera,s and lenses .. in corporate/ doc land ..  for owner operators anyway

I see alot more international shoots being done by local crews ..  and the camera person probably having to actually direct it too..  or director will want a Skype feed to location .. Ive had that a few times already .. its a pain .. 

Don't see live becoming a big deal.... if they want a life feed then they would have wanted it anyway regardless of corona .. .. but files transfer rather than shipping HDD,s I think will become more of a thing..  its already becoming popular in corp land shoots when you don't actually shoot that much actual footage .. with the DP having to make backups on their HDD,s..

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3 hours ago, David Peterson said:

With one exception, I can see the sound department needing to add an extra boom op than they'd usually budget for. Because lav-ing a person is quite intimate, I can see for the next few weeks/months that lavs will be avoided. Thus it becomes even more essential than usual to make sure you get the best possible coverage with the boom. 

Post COVID-19: "I can't wire the actors it's against the mitigation guidelines from the AMPTP, SAG and the studio. We'll need 3 boom operators and a Utility Sanitizer person."

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28 minutes ago, David Peterson said:

Post COVID-19: "I can't wire the actors it's against the mitigation guidelines from the AMPTP, SAG and the studio. We'll need 3 boom operators and a Utility Sanitizer person."

Set floors will also have to re enforced due to the massive extra weight of three boom swingers wallets ..

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1 hour ago, Robin R Probyn said:

Set floors will also have to re enforced due to the massive extra weight of three boom swingers wallets ..

Set floors will have to be reinforced to handle the weight of the 3x fisher booms (plus operators sitting on them) and the beefty Sound Grips who are pushing them around. 

As the coronavirus will lead to the return on wide spread usage of fisher booms! We'll even innovate and have offroad versions for shooting while on location. 

 

Photo of a boom and a bbq

 

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I believe once a vaccine is globally available, the film industry will begin to return to some sort of pre-pandemic workflow. There will be some good hold overs that will stay in place such as pre-packaged lunches, better sanitation on set, and even staggered lunches. However, no industry will ever be the same again and what those changes will be are a big question mark to everyone.

When will things start back up? That's the million dollar question. I don't think it'll be over night, it'll be a slow gradual process.

@David Peterson I think you're spot on in government reassessing their tax incentives. We don't know which way they'll go. In hard economic times, governments actually spend more to keep the economy going through tax incentives. Maybe states like Georgia, Louisiana, or New Mexico will make their tax incentives better to keep their economies going. Or their overloaded social safety net programs will have drained their budgets and they'll will have to reduce/cut their incentives to balance the budget. (In the US, individual states actually can't operate on a deficit unlike the federal government)

Overall, what we should expect is that everything will change, but not completely. There will be a new normal, but it we won't know what it is until we're well into it and that normal will keep evolving through the entire process.

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Some of the things in that Deadline article aren't very realistic -- every crew member carrying their own equipment and not sharing it for example. There is a lot of gear that has to be shared -- like lights, c-stands, dollies, cameras, etc.  Some jobs are hard to do with gloves on too, like using tape rolls.  Having extras stay six feet apart from actors and each other and then filling in the gaps with visual effects added people is not realistic.  Staggered meals with no cafeteria-style serving would be difficult -- imagine half the crew disappearing for lunch a half hour early and late around a scene being shot near lunchtime. And the truth is that in NYC, half the crew and the extras would be traveling to work on the subway system.

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52 minutes ago, AJ Young said:

I believe once a vaccine is globally available, the film industry will begin to return to some sort of pre-pandemic workflow

The availability of a vaccine is far from certain.

One distinct possibility is that a vaccine is developed but may suffer rather limited effectiveness. The current seasonal-flu vaccinations suffer this sort of problem; they work for a while, and not that well, until we have something new to deal with next year. If this becomes an ongoing issue, if we end up having to effectively vaccinate the entire global population repeatedly, year after year, in order to prevent massive loss of life, then that's going to be powerfully inconvenient and expensive.

Do not assume a vaccine is a guaranteed answer. There may be no good answer to this. At some point we may simply have to accept a certain number of deaths.

P

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TBH when things get back to normal ish..  vaccine or some sort treatment that means the death rate falls to the same as any other virus.. like common flu .. 50/60K a year or more.. no one even knew the numbers before ..  the fear now is you get this virus and you die.. as soon as there is reason to take this fear away .. it will all go back to pretty much exactly the same  .. this is human nature .. it will be forgotten .. there will be something else in the news .. we will get our jabs..and go back to the party..  there was no change in society after the Spanish flu .. maybe some medical advances .. but normal life went back to exactly the same as it was.. its just not how humans are hard wired .. we forget and just carry on the same .. school shooting a good example..  OMG we must stop giving kids guns when they open a bank account .. 2 months later .. no one cares ..  is the US suddenly going to get universal health care ..  I'll bet my Bentley, and a bottle of Rothschild 53..  it wont .. no sir ..   bring your own C stand and gloves .. thats just stupid .. 

Edited by Robin R Probyn
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14 hours ago, Richard Boddington said:

I am ready to get back to set, and COVID doesn't scare me one bit, same as it doesn't scare my 16 year old son, he just goes to work.

I definitely understand, but the liability factor scares productions and insurance companies. According to the Deadline article:

Quote

...insurers are unlikely to cover productions for COVID-19 cases when business resumes, according to multiple sources in the know. Producers all over filed multimillion-dollar claims triggered when civil authorities — governments — prevented filming from continuing and forcing production shutdowns. When the business starts up, that will now be considered an identified risk, and insurers will not cover it, sources said, just as CDC is warning of a second coronavirus wave.

This snowball's pretty quickly. If a production wants to avoid liability because of Covid-19, they'll turn to insurance. When insurance denies the production, they'll try to add a rider to cast/crew contracts that indemnify the production. However, that is shaky grounds for indemnity legally and socially; the unions, OSHA, and governments may place a moratorium on those kind of clauses. During all of this, little to no productions are shooting.

If there's any take-away from the deadline article, is that no one has a clue of how to get the industry going again. There won't be an easy answer and whatever happens will be challenging.

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On 4/17/2020 at 7:00 PM, Richard Boddington said:

My 16 year old son goes to work at the supermarket almost everyday, as he was deemed an essential worker.  He interacts with the public all day, his job goes on, jobs on film sets should of gone on as well.

Thankful for people like your son who make it possible for everyone to get to the market and buy fresh groceries. The markets locally here in Washington State all have sneeze guards, one way aisles, workers wearing masks and gloves. The carts at my local market are all sanitized before use. I would say at least 8/10 customers are wearing masks.  The job certainly goes on, but with pretty extreme preventative measures.

I would imagine that re-opening the economy and specifically re-opening our industry, will require some sort of adapting. As you said, we all work on close sets. Will the crew be required to wear masks on set? Is there easy access for proper sanitization? If half of your crew slowly gets sick and can't show up, what do you tell your client? Lots of unanswered questions. There is clearly no perfect solution and we are all feeling the financial effects of Covid-19.

The event production economy will be hit hard. Companies like Facebook and Microsoft have canceled all events through June 2021. That's a lot of production and event support jobs. 

Edited by Ben Ericson
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It IS possible (although a lot has to go right) that a vaccine is ready in September, although if it is, it'd take a few months to implement. The idea of reopening slowly and accepting a certain death toll is hard to comprehend though. I get that some people want to get back to work but it's important as many have said NOT to do it too quickly and it ending up being worse than ever. 

I'm guessing that films and co shooting exclusively on studio lots will be much easier to control, and the antibody tests are rolling in in the US, soon in the UK and are already operational in several countries. This allows to tell who has had the virus. Now the unknown right now is how many are TRULY immune, as we see quite a few cases of folks cleared multiple times and then retesting positive after the two week quarantine. Apparently some folks, which is not uncommon it seems, have less antibodies than others. So that's kind of an additional hurdle.

We need to somehow be sure that there can't be reinfection or transmission going after being cleared. But as Deadline says, the studios are consulting with some of the best epidemiologists out there and I'm sure everything will be thought of to make sure everyone on set is as safe as possible. It'll be harder for smaller productions though that won't be able to afford having a medical team on set. 

Edited by Manu Delpech
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2 hours ago, Manu Delpech said:

It IS possible (although a lot has to go right) that a vaccine is ready in September, although if it is, it'd take a few months to implement. The idea of reopening slowly and accepting a certain death toll is hard to comprehend though. I get that some people want to get back to work but it's important as many have said NOT to do it too quickly and it ending up being worse than ever. 

I'm guessing that films and co shooting exclusively on studio lots will be much easier to control, and the antibody tests are rolling in in the US, soon in the UK and are already operational in several countries. This allows to tell who has had the virus. Now the unknown right now is how many are TRULY immune, as we see quite a few cases of folks cleared multiple times and then retesting positive after the two week quarantine. Apparently some folks, which is not uncommon it seems, have less antibodies than others. So that's kind of an additional hurdle.

We need to somehow be sure that there can't be reinfection or transmission going after being cleared. But as Deadline says, the studios are consulting with some of the best epidemiologists out there and I'm sure everything will be thought of to make sure everyone on set is as safe as possible. It'll be harder for smaller productions though that won't be able to afford having a medical team on set. 

Yeah but what happens when the people on the controlled studio set go home and back .. some for sure by public transport .. or stop off for a coffee .. or a quick shop .. I dont see how a studio set can really be any safer than a location one.. unless they wrap in in cling film and dont let anyone in or out .. 

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I think working on getting testing fast and cheap is at least as important as a vaccine.

If you could test the cast and crew - at least weakly, combined with extra sanitation procedures on set -  production should be possible. 

Sometimes on productions you feel cut off from normal life anyway, e.g drive to set and work long days, you don't encounter anyone thats not on the production. So if everyone is tested and you stay in your production "bubble" you going to be at least as safe and probably more safe than many other workers at the moment.  

We also don't know how effective a vaccine will be  - so some form of "new normal" will have to happen or things will collapse. It's probably going to need a combination of medication, better hospital resources, testing, cleaning and moderate care on distancing.

The issue is the risk is hard to guage and different for different people. For instance my wife is immunocompromised, so could get very ill if she got it. Last month I was doing sound on a feature and at the moment when I was sticking a mic on a coughing/sick actor (normal flu in the end) i felt like I was probably taking a bit too much of a risk.  Its the not knowing if your at risk or not and if your close to a person with the illness or not. Testing has to be sorted out. 

 

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Honestly I don't think the testing thing will work.. some people have been tested for antibodies after recovery and there have been none .. or they are gone very quickly..  and its by no means certain they have any immunity anyway .. it just has to be a vaccine .. or a 100% proven treatment that you wont buy the farm ,having contracted the virus ..  people want to know that as the last resort .. or just by herd immunity / virus runs its course as with Black Death  /  Spanish flu .. I think we are screwed for at least 2 years .. as far as going back to anything like "normal"..  its the only logical path .. captain .. 

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presumably governments will pay .. even someone like Trump will see its a good idea .. for business interests if nothing else ..and a no questions asked system.. I think most people are scared enough to get it done .. then herd immunity will have an effect too..  always be some anti Vaccine nut jobs.. but hopefully they stay in their cave .. with a flag and a gun..

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The Spanish association of commercial production companies (http://apcp.es/en/) has created a document with several guidelines in order to try reactivating shoots in Spain. 

https://www.eldiario.es/catalunya/Castings-telematicos-recambio-personas-contagios_0_1019098587.html

Basically: 

- Work from home in all the preproduction stage (and post if you can)
- Shoots in sound-stages or private locations are allowed
- Shoots in locations which require permits from the government are not allowed (since the government has stopped giving them)
- All workers must have and wear PPE at all times (but the cast when they are acting)
- All locations will be cleaned before and after the shoot. 
- Food will be given in individual single use boxes.
- Costume tests will be done on the day of shooting.  
- There will be a maximum of 25 crew on set and 10 cast, the rest will have to be outside the set. 
- All cast will wear a protective "onesie" under the costumes.
- Hair & Make up department to clean and disinfect every tool after each use and if possible they will have to provide different tools for each cast member.
- The set will be a "clean" space, there will be temperature controls on the day, with backups of cast and crew.
 

Edited by Miguel Angel
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That doesn't seem too bad, quite workable.

Or we could do what Sweden did, which is what we all should of done, presumably film sets in Sweden just continued on as normal:

https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-20200419-g2gyyetwiza5xbp37xsfmhpite-story.html?fbclid=IwAR0cayzOPzPV69pDR2oSokYhJJPNAsn0czgxZULAsD_533my8DAjP_cEbgc

Incredibly crew will still show up late, drunk, high, be belligerent, harass female co workers, & steal from the production.  Those are bigger issues in my view.

R,

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Some of the crew protocols will probably be easier to change than how to block and shoot actors and extras. What do you do about scenes in which the actors have to be very close to each other? Does this require a fundamental re-thinking of how to shoot such scenes? It seems that creative decisions will be affected, along with overall production logistics.

Edited by Ravi Kiran
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Personally I view much of what's been proposed so far as completely impractical, and also unlikely to do enough to reduce infection rates.

What I suspect will actually happen is that in about six or eight weeks, gradually, we'll start risking it, because (and I hesitate, oh how I hesitate, to line up alongside Trump here) at some point the utter misery and economic cataclysm of further isolation will become less palatable than the infections. Deaths will probably result and that will probably be tolerated. For years to come, outbreaks of this disease will probably continue to cause inconvenience and death in at least isolated areas. Large scale shutdowns such as the one we're currently in may have to happen again.

This being the case, what's important is whether we have done enough to make the ongoing existence of the disease workable in terms of sustainable medical treatment and maintenance of civil society in the face of potential mass sickness. Frankly, we haven't. Essentially nothing has changed in the last few weeks and there is nothing stopping the medical systems in various countries being utterly overwhelmed in the next few weeks, as it was feared they would be in the previous few.

In short, much as lockdowns work where they are followed, they are clearly not sustainable, the alternatives are not attractive, and there may not ever be another way out. It might vanish; SARS more or less did, but there's no reason to expect that.

It is worth bearing in mind that the development of a useful vaccine or treatment is not guaranteed and herd immunity may never build up. There is no vaccine, treatment nor long-term immunity to many coronaviruses. A return to the mid-twentieth-century world of hospitals specialising in treating large numbers of tuberculosis patients (2019-nCoV patients, in this case) may be all that can be done. Some number of mechanically ventilated patients were maintained during polio outbreaks.

Perhaps the most positive thing we can do now is to try to avoid this happening again, or more to the point another disease happening in concert with those which already exist. 2019-nCoV is almost certainly based on an infection in bats that went zoonotic (that is, became able to infect humans) via a third animal intermediary. HIV arose from apes in the same way; people in central Africa ate bush meat from chimpanzees infected with a related virus. It is difficult to avoid the very strong suspicion that this problem arises from poor biosecurity practises in China. After the 2003 SARS outbreak, China issued a formal apology via the WHO for its appalling mishandling of the situation. In my view, the staggering damage done this time round demands a more practical response than merely saying sorry. 

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1 hour ago, Phil Rhodes said:

In my view, the staggering damage done this time round demands a more practical response than merely saying sorry. 

A complete, utter, and total consumer boycott of all Chinese made products.  We can't ask governments to do this for us, the world owes China too much money.  But they can't make us buy their crap off the shelf, if consumers in all G7 countries start leaving Chinese made products on the shelves, just watch how fast China is brought to its knees.

And don't forget that today we have intelligence reports out about how Chinese agents used social media to help create panic in the US. They have a clear agenda to achieve dominance in the world, and they will let nothing stand in their way.

I was on a cruise a few years ago, I struck up a conversation with a Chinese passenger, at one point she said very seriously to me.....The 19th Century belonged to Great Britain, the 20th Century belonged to the USA, the 21st Century will belong to China.

R,

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