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If social distancing in some forms has to continue through 2022, I have literally no idea how movies will get made. You’d either have to quarantine your entire team - and somehow caterers/truck drivers etc - both before and during the shoot, or risk a massive outbreak
And it goes without saying, indie films can’t put everyone in locked down locations for weeks.
Sure, you can add hand sanitizer and eliminate shared foods and snacks - everything in individual bags - but it’s not like you can drag a bunch of sinks up a mountain to allow for adequate hand washing on remote locations.
Think about your average makeup and hair team on a small film. Brushes get shared, makeup gets shared. You can give your team a kit fee, but how can you afford individual brushes and a complete product set for every single cast member? And it’s very close contact.
People outside the business tend to forget moviemaking is hard, sweaty, dirty work - it’s manual labor for most of the crew - and long long days - which mean little sleep - which means you’re tanking your immune system. We’ve all seen colds and flus absolutely ravage a set.
I’m not trying to be depressing. I want to work sometime in the next two years. I want to shoot another feature. I have tremendous faith in our boundless creativity as filmmakers. I just want us to start putting our brains on figuring this out - not just for studios.
And animation and zoom shot movies are great, but they don’t employ the grips, electricians, makeup teams, ACs etc who still need and love their work. How do we do this without leaving our crews behind?
