2019 was a pretty exciting year for us. We had been doing a lot of work with musicians and other artists, and specifically music performances and music videos. We are also really into experimenting with immersive technology so 2020 started with an improv 360 jam session learning to record live performance in 360 with spacial audio.
By the end of February we had finished three music performance videos and we were getting to do another one the weekend in March when the lock down started. When we realized that we could no longer be working in the same ways we had before, we immediately stopped planning any sort of production.
In this video hear from Team Gold recounting how the COVID-19 Pandemic changed the ways in which the company produced videos in 2020.
At the start of the year, puzzle designer and set builder Melissa Schlesinger had to pivot her skills to find work. Melissa tells us what it was like learning and keeping up during quarantine.
“Going from analog to digital work was pretty much the only option I had once quarantine hit. Being in the shop now means something different than it did before. So far as a theater translation into the digital translation of how my life has changed, I'm no longer painting scenery to go out into the world, I'm designing graphics to go into another software to get animated. Instead of rigging up pulleys and things in real life to get something to move on stage like a pin rail system would, now I'm animating keyframes.
As work moved from a place that you go to a place that you sort of wake up in, one of the ways that I've stayed sharp on my on set skills while not being on set is to go into the garage and start making things for the house to make it more functional for us. We decided to take over the dining room as our main office area and that way we would have more space to spread out between ourselves to be able to work together and to see what each other was working on. I was able to recover this really cool old pegboard backdrop that my great uncle had in his basement back in the day, and I was able to put together from stuff that we had from old scenery back in 2019 and transform it into a new desk space for myself too, so those two places together made a really nice use of my carpentry skills.”
Katelyn Capri works as an Indie Film Producer and also has experience working on larger sets like Chicago’s Empire. Learn how she observed safety emerging as a priority in two different areas of filmmaking and how that inspired her to become a COVID-19 Compliance Officer.
“I would consider myself mostly an indie producer. I did work on Empire for two years. I saw a huge stark difference between the two different styles of production. They went to wrap Empire and they only had me on for a week but each week we would re-certify our testing. Everyone would be required to wear masks, however they weren’t super super strict about the six foot rule on that set. I've heard on other sets people feel a little bit uncomfortable about the lax, people being lax about the six feet rule, and just like the precautions of everyone involved.
When it came to the sets we were producing we took the extra time to put together a plan that kept everyone safe and made sure everybody understood the compliance rules. We asked our team for feedback based on the experiences they were having going back to work. If they've been on set before working with us, a lot of them unfortunately said that their experience on previous sets made them uncomfortable to come to set going forward. That was really disheartening, and that really inspired me to go above and beyond in the compliance and safety protocols that we were implementing on our sets.
After our first production during COVID-19 we followed up with those collaborators and they all felt strongly that our plan for compliance made them feel more comfortable and more secure. This was important to us. While we plan to improve our protocols as we learn, we see this kind of feedback as a total success and it motivates us to center dialog around safety first so that we can improve our protocols with each production, allowing our creative team to do their job more efficiently without worry.”
Zack Sievers is a writer and concept developer. His expert background in research was valuable in assessing risk and communicating developments in the progression of the virus. Zack shares special considerations our team made during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
“In the era of a pandemic, there are new risks associated with making media. I think there's more of an imperative - there's more of a demand, there’s more of a responsibility - to make decisions that protect your co-workers’ health around you. This is why we are steadfastly social distancing, we are wearing masks, we are repeatedly cleaning the gear.
So you know your co-workers’ health is very important now, but there’s also, if you're a documentary filmmaker like me, or a journalistic sort of freelance videographer, you also have a responsibility to protect the health of the subjects of interest who you're talking to out in the world. So there's many reasons to be taking ethical dimensions to PPE.
Our ability to run a safe set demands that we hold each other accountable and we hold ourselves accountable to the health of our co-workers and other filmmakers. That's why we care so much about making our sets safe and doing as much as we can to read up on the current state of the pandemic, to have all the most relevant information available to us when we’re making decisions that affect the health of our cast and crew, and also people you might be interviewing on the street.”
