COVID silver lining - the opportunity of building back greener
Let’s face the truth, the film and TV business is stuck in a kind of purgatory due to the COVID, like almost everything else.
After the pandemic hiatus, the whole industry is trying to establish the new standards, and sad as the pandemic situation is, I must confess that some of them have certain comic potential.
High levels of protection for cast and crew members, including a voluntary quarantine outside work and isolating the crew from their friends and family have a tone of a summer camp or a dystopian “Big Brother” situation. For art’s sake, we will sacrifice our social and family life. Even if your cousins look very healthy, it’s all about minimising the risk. Now the shooting crew, more than ever, will be our family. But a very Nordic family, no touching, no hugging, no handshakes and no kissing.
So what’s new in the post-pandemic film & TV industry?
A collaborative effort across the industry has brought a number of protocols and safety guidelines, and every production will need to draw up its own COVID-safe production plan, including:
- Remote work
- Distancing
- PCR testing
- Health and Safety information and training
- PPE distribution: masks, eye protection, gloves, etc.
- Screening measures to detect symptoms: temperature set checks
- Restricted access to the shooting set
- Medical questionnaires
- Disinfection, disinfection, disinfection
It looks like it will take longer to get movies made and the budgets are likely to puff out.
On the other hand, the pandemic offers an opportunity to shape a climate-friendly recovery. The lockdown increased awareness and helped to re-order the values, so bearing in mind what’s good for the planet may also be good for the film and TV industry.
We all saw it happen: technology has been a key to keeping the lights on during the lockdown! Remote and collaborative production software is providing solutions to this new challenging situation.
You can equip your production and your Health & Safety Ninjas with some digital tools to mitigate the additional, COVID related, risks and costs.
Willco integrates some new features that will help you to implement the new security protocols:
- Health and Safety protocols distribution
- Medical questionnaires
- Temperature surveillance
- Access control
- Personal Protection Equipment distribution
- Shared workspace for remote collaboration
This new set of digital tools will not only allow your production to adjust to the so-called new reality, but it also will increase the sustainability of your projects.
During the lockdown, we had time to think about sustainability, we saw the impact of our behaviour on the planet and have experienced the good implication of Covid-19 on the climate.
We have become more aware: our system is the problem and we need a paradigm shift.
Green recovery has been increasingly recognised, we know that we can come back better and actually, we don’t have many years to take significant actions.
The majority of us know why we have to change, but we might not exactly know how to do it.
In the 90 days of the lockdown, Google saw a 4,000% increase in people searching for how to live a sustainable lifestyle! Good! Although we’re still more interested in kitten videos.
Decarbonization is the way to build back better.
And again, technological solutions reduce the carbon footprint, so digitalising of production processes will help to recover the industry in a modern and more sustainable way.
During the DPP webinar ‘Can We Build Back Greener?’ Professor CB Bhattacharya highlighted a big issue, hoping that the industry will use the Covid-19 crisis as some kind of epiphany: to realise that it is not just about the profit, it is now about people, planet and profit.
Going back to certain austerity may have a positive impact as well. Smaller in crew, smaller in cast, but… greater in creativity!
We will probably all agree that in film and TV shows productions it is all about Adaptability.
After all, we are used to working under challenging and constantly changing circumstances, this is our natural environment. So let’s try to embrace this “new normal” as something potentially good for the industry and, above all, good for the planet and build it back greener!