How to... maintain safe shoots through an ongoing pandemic
Karim Naceur, Global Head of TV Production at BETC, tells us how to keep going amid the global pandemic, what changes need to be made to keep everyone safe and what the future of production will look like in a post-coronavirus world.
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Like everyone else, we were first shocked by the first lockdown.
Shocked to discover that a virus could affect our lives that much living in developed countries in the 21th century.
It felt unreal.
Once the situation was digested, it was immediately time to think and implement solutions to save our industry. We had a lot of discussions, first with our production team, then with competitors, advertisers, professional organizations. Everybody had the same objectives and it was great to feel this solidarity effort.
The virus made us rethink our production methods and the ways that we would have to adapt in order to keep shooting. We had to be reactive and inventive while having to get the hang of new collaboration tools, like Microsoft Teams.
Below are a few thoughts on what we've learnt so far, and how this could lead to a better production future.
The central role of producers in the crisis
At an agency, you have a duty to advise.
We, producers, have to make sure that the sanitary restrictions are in place and that shootings are handled correctly. All this on behalf of our clients and our teams.
[Remote shooting] forced us to be even better listeners and helpers.
When Covid hit, we worked in collaboration with our own internal production company, General Pop, and our external production partners, to establish a protocol that had to be followed to the T. We remain confident in our efforts, especially given the fact that, to this day, no cluster has been found on any of our shoots, whether in France or abroad.
It's vital that all the professionals involved follow the rules perfectly.
The main challenges in this new safe environment
In the pre-production phase, the fact that we couldn't all be in the same room at the same time, with the team and especially with the client during pre-production meetings, made taking decisions a bit more complex. It forced us to be even better listeners and helpers.
The most difficult aspect was to establish remote shooting. It was difficult at first to deal with the teams that were suddenly deprived of going on location. For everyone, it was an all-new way of working.
Following the protocol meant, for instance, that the shooting of scenes was slowed which caused financial consequences. However, clients understood and added these constraints into their budgets and were totally on board with the new measures.
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Taking cues from other countries
The sanitary protocol that we devised was massively inspired by what was being done in Sweden. We believed that their response was absolutely strict, thorough and efficient.
They had rules on every aspect of the shoot from how to transport the teams onto sets up to how to clean the equipment. It requires everyone to be on their best behavior. Everybody is asked to be responsible and to follow exactly the sanitary measures that we are now familiar with, which are: wear the mandatory mask on your nose and your mouth at all times, that has to be changed every four hours, wash your hands regularly, avoid touching your face, keep your distance with others and restrict the number of people allowed at the same time on set and in the remote room.
The crisis helped us highlight the weaknesses we had during our shoots.
At the same time, everyone that was on set or in the remote room had to go through a nasal swab testing.
In addition to these measures, life on set had to be adjusted with distance lunch and dinner because we had to remove the restaurant and the self-service catering. Other measures were to limit travel, to clean regularly the shooting equipment, having a covid referent who make sure that all these rules are respected.
It all adds up to more concentration on-set, although dining alone in my room was a weird shooting experience as well.
Highlighting the flaws
One positive is that the crisis helped us spotlight the weaknesses we had during our shoots.
On the economic and environmental sides, putting remote shooting in place helped limit travel costs and the carbon footprint on some productions that definitely didn't need a ten people agency and client crew.
Moving forward, we will make sure to keep our good reflexes around hygiene on shoots with regular hand washing and social distancing.
That being said, I can't wait to go back to life without having to wear a mask. Masks rob us of some human dimension.
Nailing the remote shoot
We wanted to bring the same energy and dedication than for a regular shooting on location. For remote shooting, we had the fewest possible number of decision-making people from the client, agency and production company sides at the same spot, which was often a post-production room that had been reconfigured.
On the same screen, they were shown live footage from a camera shooting the whole set at all time and also live footage from the director's monitor. This required us to provide a good network strong enough to handle a continuous and stable stream. This setup allowed the client and the creative team to take part in the action and provide their notes to their director when needed.
To this day, we are still waiting on a decent insurance policy that could be a good cover for our line of work.
We even had some quite original setups with the director in London, creatives in Paris, clients in Shanghai and the shoot happening at the same time in Los Angeles.
What still needs doing...
Having to adjust quickly, think differently and design a new way of producing, took us out of our comfort zone.
My personal take would be to be over-instructional with clients to get them to speed on the current Covid-19 situation. We were having constant briefings on this subject.
The worst that happened was when we had to cancel shoots, with all the financial costs that it caused. To this day, we are still waiting on a decent insurance policy that could be a good cover for our line of work.
