Enhanced medical staffs, constant testing, a color-coded armband system, and intimidating security officers ready to bark whenever anyone gets too close. These and other methods were concocted on the fly for two productions — pretty much the only productions — happening in the film and television world right now. And it may be the only way to get new work in the pipeline.
A detailed article in The New York Times interviews Baltasar Kormákur, Icelandic director of Everest, 2 Guns, and 101 Reykjavik, and Lucas Foster, producer of Law Abiding Citizen, Street Kings, and Man on Fire. Both found themselves able to continue working on their projects when the coronavirus pandemic brought everything to a halt.
Kormákur had the good fortune to be shooting the forthcoming Netflix series Katla in his native country of Iceland. The small population and ready access to testing has kept Covid-19 cases to a minimum in general, but additional measures let the cameras stay rolling. Color-coded armbands determine who is allowed to go to which area, and no more than 20 people can congregate. Strict boundaries prevent people from wandering where they don’t need to be, with hawk-eyed security monitors ready to shout “two meters!” if anyone gets too close.
Temperature checks are made each morning, touch-points like doorknobs are sanitized every hour, and craft services have dulled-down to unsexy box lunches. Everyone but the actors wear masks, and makeup and the art department wear gloves. Eventually they will need to shoot some “intimate” scenes, and the actors will be retested beforehand.
Due to the temperature checks, two people in the crew were sent home before working, and were later found to test positive for Covid-19. The initial safeguard prevented anyone else from getting sick.
Foster is on location in remote Australia with director Kurt Wimmer for their remake of Stephen King’s Children of the Corn.
Each day opens and closes with everyone filling out a medical questionnaire. On-set medical staff and having the entire cast and crew isolate together in a small town has added 20% to the budget. (It also caused some scrambling, when some actors declined to participate.) For one sequence described as “challenging,” actors wore scuba-like suits (presumedly under their costumes) for added protection.
Elsewhere in the entertainment industry are productions that almost made it across the finish line. The Blacklist just aired its season finale, incorporating “motion comic”-like animation. Star Trek Discovery’s third season finished shooting, and was ready for scoring when the pandemic hit. With composer Jeff Russo unable to get an orchestra together in a room, it looked like a bottleneck with no solution. He recently confirmed that an arduous but workable “jigsaw method” was initiated. Individual instrumentalists have been recording their parts remotely, and engineers are mixing it all down for a finished track.
We, the consumers, will have new things to watch in the coming months. The question remains how larger and more high profile productions will soldier on.
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