With every step, Hollywood is moving closer to resume its work, with the entertainment industry’s guilds and unions agreeing on a 22-page documented guideline well-established to ensure safety protocols for producing movies and TV in an era of coronavirus.
The agreement is built upon, after a prolonged discussion of negotiation among the various stakeholders of the entertainment fraternity, including actors, directors and crews and heavily depends on rigorous testing, temperature checks, cleaning measures and social distancing as and when suitable. The parties also agree to the fact that alterations are of utmost importance while going forward.
Activities such as writing and casting, are still encouraged to be managed virtually whenever possible. Simultaneously, other parts of production including live studio audiences will still not been paid much attention, with restrictions like social-distancing measures when used.
Actors and other performers, the report states, are “most vulnerable because they cannot wear PPE [personal protective equipment when cameras are rolling, and frequently will not be able to engage in physical distancing.” That will amount to increased testing frequency for them and those with whom they are in close contact.
The report also acknowledges the fact that there are certain activities, such as makeup and fight scenes, where stronger safeguards aren’t possible.
The blueprint of the plan was constructed by the Industry-Wide Labor Management Safety Committee Task Force, which was formed particularly for such purposes, with input from epidemiologists and sanitation experts.
The guidelines have been handed over to public-health officials in New York and California. Movie and TV production is a commonality all over the world, including Georgia, Canada and New Zealand, where work on the next “Avatar” movies is slated to formally resume after a quarantine period for director James Cameron and other crew members.
There are certain other aspects of the guidelines which conclude the ability to respond proactively if personnel contract the virus, educational programs, and a designated compliance officer on each production. Efforts will also be taken to “assess health/wellness of all personnel prior to entry onto set.”
There are still several speculations governing the process of how all this will work practically, and significantly, how much it’s going to cost. As Variety noted, the report initially didn’t particularly address how the expense of “conducting extensive testing, cleaning and safety monitoring will be covered, and who will pay for it.”
The white paper specifies that personal protective equipment be provided “to all cast and crew at no cost.”
Due to the unprecedented circumstances associated with Covid-19, U.S. networks have been working day and night on contingency measures if production is significantly delayed. That includes focusing on programs that have already been designed either for streaming services or other countries such as the U.K. and Canada.
News Source: CNN