Speaker 1: It's Monday, June eight. I'm Oscar Emiras from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is Reopening America.
Speaker 1: We're changing the focus of the Daily Coronavirus Update to
Speaker 1: reflect what is happening right now while we try to
Speaker 1: get through this pandemic. We'll still bring you all the
Speaker 1: latest news about the virus and vaccine development, but will
Speaker 1: also be highlighting the stories of how we come back
Speaker 1: and reopen America. One industry that has yet to formalize
Speaker 1: a plan to get back is the entertainment industry. What
Speaker 1: we do know is that whatever the plan is that
Speaker 1: eventually comes out, it will be expensive to restart production.
Speaker 1: There will be shorter shooting days and longer shooting schedules.
Speaker 1: Cass and crews will be put in quarantine. There will
Speaker 1: be breaks for temperature checks and COVID testing, a new
Speaker 1: personnel dedicated to health and safety. Adam be Very, senior
Speaker 1: entertainment writer at Variety, joins us for the pricey plan
Speaker 1: to restart production. Thanks for joining us, Adam, thank you
Speaker 1: for having me. You know, we're continuing to talk about
Speaker 1: reopening America, getting back to normal, and one of the
Speaker 1: biggest things that was still looming, is how Hollywood is
Speaker 1: gonna get back, How movie TV production, which happens across
Speaker 1: the whole country, how was that gonna be handled? Because
Speaker 1: it's an industry that has a lot of close contact
Speaker 1: and all aspects of production, and it was just gonna
Speaker 1: be a huge undertaking. And you know, they had a
Speaker 1: huge hit too to the industry. Everything got halted with
Speaker 1: regards to the entertainment industry. So one of the first
Speaker 1: big things that came out just recently was Tyler Perry.
Speaker 1: He announced that he's going to be beginning production in
Speaker 1: Atlanta and his studios on two shows that he was
Speaker 1: working on, starting on July eight. And he has this
Speaker 1: plan of testing and re testing people, quarantining the cast
Speaker 1: altogether so that hopefully nobody comes down with it while
Speaker 1: they're in production. Let's start there and then we'll get
Speaker 1: into what's happening industry wide, because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that still yet has to be nailed down. So
Speaker 1: Tyler Perry has his own sound stage facility outside Atlanta
Speaker 1: called Tyler Perry Studios. It's a decommissioned army compound that
Speaker 1: he converted into a giant sound stage complex. And because
Speaker 1: of the nature of that facility. He can house people
Speaker 1: there while they're making his shows, and he converted his
Speaker 1: largest sound stage into the sort of mess hall where
Speaker 1: people can socially distant while they're eating their lunch. He's
Speaker 1: said that he will fly past who's out of town.
Speaker 1: Is private planes. They don't have to deal with commercial
Speaker 1: air travel. So the biggest thing that he's doing really
Speaker 1: is implementing a whole sort of roster of protocols that
Speaker 1: have at this point still remained at least in the
Speaker 1: United States, largely theoretical as ways to start production back
Speaker 1: in as much of a safe and healthy environment as
Speaker 1: can be managed given what's going on now. Georgia was
Speaker 1: one of the first states to start reopening. Obviously Atlanta
Speaker 1: is there. Have they signed off on Tyler Perry's plans
Speaker 1: so far? Yes. He was very clear that he had
Speaker 1: been working with the state of Georgia on coming up
Speaker 1: with plans that would be safe for the state, and
Speaker 1: then also coordinating with the network that broadcasts his shows,
Speaker 1: b ET and their parent company Viacom CBS, Because what
Speaker 1: we looked at in our cover story was that all
Speaker 1: of these protocols and changes that are going to be
Speaker 1: implemented across the entire and entertainment industry are not going
Speaker 1: to come cheap. That there's going to be an added
Speaker 1: cost to all of this to make sure that people
Speaker 1: can make content safely. So the entire period worked with
Speaker 1: Viacom CBS to make sure that they would back him
Speaker 1: up in paying for these procedures. The cost is going
Speaker 1: to be so crazy, the extra stuff, because a lot
Speaker 1: of places are going to be scaling back on certain
Speaker 1: parts of the crew but increasing other parts of the
Speaker 1: crew health advisors and consultations and things like that. So
Speaker 1: the effects of this, you know, there might be shorter
Speaker 1: shooting days, but longer shooting schedules. Casting from are going
Speaker 1: to be put in these quarantines, temperature checks, breaks for
Speaker 1: these things will interrupt shooting and filming and all that
Speaker 1: and then all the COVID testing and a lot more
Speaker 1: special effects. Is what people are saying too. But the
Speaker 1: industry as a whole is still waiting from guidelines from
Speaker 1: the a MP T p D Alliance of Motion Picture
Speaker 1: and Television Producers. What do we know about what their
Speaker 1: plans are and when they might be released. That is
Speaker 1: a question that is being asked across the entire industry
Speaker 1: right now as we speak. You know, when we published
Speaker 1: this story, the AMPTP was still working with a sort
Speaker 1: of industry group that included the Screen Actors Guild SAGA, AFTRA,
Speaker 1: the Director's Guild of America IATSI, which is the union
Speaker 1: that represents essentially all of the kind of crew members
Speaker 1: that are the backbone of any production, to come up
Speaker 1: with guidelines that could be industry wide. Unfortunately, what's ended
Speaker 1: happening is that each of those guilds were also working
Speaker 1: with their own experts and internal teams to come up
Speaker 1: with guidelines that made sense for their specific disciplines. And
Speaker 1: what seems to be happening is that there's some real
Speaker 1: disagreement about how to move best to move forward with
Speaker 1: what those guidelines look like. So what we may end
Speaker 1: up seeing in the next few weeks is not one
Speaker 1: set of guidelines, but perhaps several, and hopefully they'll still
Speaker 1: be in parallel and they'll fit together in harmony and
Speaker 1: there won't be any confusion. But what the mp PTP
Speaker 1: is really spearheading here as sort of an industry wide
Speaker 1: group that was the plan was that they would take
Speaker 1: these guidelines to the governors of New York and California
Speaker 1: to get you know, a government sign off, to make
Speaker 1: sure that the governments and public health officials were happy
Speaker 1: with the way that they were going to be proceeding.
Speaker 1: Not to get to in the weeds, but one of
Speaker 1: the major sticking points here, and something that is as
Speaker 1: yet really unresolved aolved, is the size of the cruise
Speaker 1: that will be going into production. Because for decades, every
Speaker 1: job that you could do on a major studio film
Speaker 1: or television set was very clearly delineated in longstanding union
Speaker 1: contracts and best practices, like to the point where a
Speaker 1: director couldn't move the chair that they sat in, that
Speaker 1: was somebody else's job. And you know, director couldn't operate
Speaker 1: the camera unless he was also part of the cinematographer skill.
Speaker 1: It was. It's a whole, very clearly delineated set to
Speaker 1: protect the jobs of as many people as possible. Well,
Speaker 1: on a set where you want to minimize the number
Speaker 1: of people who are in a closed space together, that
Speaker 1: could possibly mean that people are double or tripling up
Speaker 1: on jobs in sort of contradiction to some of these contracts.
Speaker 1: So that is something that I think is going to
Speaker 1: be a major sticking point and as far as I
Speaker 1: understand right now, there's no wheel clear or sense of
Speaker 1: how that is going to be able to move forward.
Speaker 1: There's so much involved in this, and as you wrote,
Speaker 1: a lot of this is going to be a shift
Speaker 1: in mindset. There is going to be risks throughout this
Speaker 1: whole process. It's about minimizing it and really just kind
Speaker 1: of making things as safe as possible. We've already seen
Speaker 1: that a lot of pre and post production can be
Speaker 1: done from home. My wife works in prose production and
Speaker 1: she's luckily thankfully been working still throughout some of this,
Speaker 1: and that part can be done. But the filming obviously
Speaker 1: is the tricky part with so many people involved in there.
Speaker 1: We're talking about costs major movies can see as much
Speaker 1: as increases. We talked about health departments, expanded health departments
Speaker 1: that could be fifteen or more extra people involved in
Speaker 1: all this. So this is a lot of stuff. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about briefly, large scale productions versus smaller scale productions
Speaker 1: and TV on the larger side, these big productions are
Speaker 1: gonna be harder to come by, and as you wrote
Speaker 1: as well, some people are saying we could see a
Speaker 1: resurgence of indie filmmakers because of this. This is one
Speaker 1: of the examples of how the current circumstances the industry
Speaker 1: is facing. There's no real clear good options because on
Speaker 1: the studio side, you've got the studios have been making
Speaker 1: all of these giant hundred two hundred three hundred million
Speaker 1: dollar movies that require hundreds of people to make them
Speaker 1: happen and often historically have shot in multiple locations across
Speaker 1: the world. Those kinds of productions, it's almost basically prohibitive
Speaker 1: to be able to move that kind of production forward
Speaker 1: in the current environment, or at the very least, the
Speaker 1: costs to make those productions safe we're going to be
Speaker 1: enormous or possibly taking on like an untenable degree of
Speaker 1: personal risk. On the flip side, you've got these independent
Speaker 1: productions that are leaner, smaller, often kept to just a
Speaker 1: few small locations that are much easier to control, and
Speaker 1: you can see that being very attractive to people who
Speaker 1: want to turn out content so that there's stuff for
Speaker 1: people to see. The issue there is that all of
Speaker 1: those productions have to get in short before they can
Speaker 1: move forward. They have to buy insurance for a whole
Speaker 1: host of reasons that we're getting into but the companies
Speaker 1: that sell that insurance are not putting in any provisions
Speaker 1: where they cover a shutdown based on a COVID outbreak.
Speaker 1: So you're then assuming in a great deal of risk
Speaker 1: as a producer, because there's a fairly good chance that
Speaker 1: a lot of these productions will have to shut down,
Speaker 1: at least temporarily if one or more of the people
Speaker 1: working on them tests positive for COVID while they're in production.
Speaker 1: So that becomes for these small independent films that are
Speaker 1: running on a very lean budget and tight margins, it's
Speaker 1: unclear whether that's going to keep them from also being
Speaker 1: able to move forward. So it's in both directions. The
Speaker 1: circumstances of the COVID nineteen pandemic are really putting the
Speaker 1: industry in a tight bind. You spoke to dozens of
Speaker 1: people throughout the entire industry, studio exacts, actors, directors, producers.
Speaker 1: All that tell me a little bit about kind of
Speaker 1: the difference in mindset where maybe some studio executives might
Speaker 1: be wanting to get production back and going, I know
Speaker 1: there's some that are saying we're moving a little too
Speaker 1: fast though, and where the actors are, because obviously they
Speaker 1: will bear a big brunt of this, whether they're doing
Speaker 1: romantic scenes really up on somebody or I think you
Speaker 1: spoke to Zoe Kravitz, who was going to be in
Speaker 1: the new Batman movie, talking about getting in the catwoman
Speaker 1: suit and having multiple people toucher just to get started
Speaker 1: with the day, not even the acting part of it.
Speaker 1: That is a common experience for any actor. Zoe Kravitz,
Speaker 1: she was talking about how she's had more people touching
Speaker 1: her than she's ever had in her career, in part
Speaker 1: because she cannot get into the cat suit alone for
Speaker 1: that movie. She needs people to help get her into
Speaker 1: that costume physically. But it really is just a very
Speaker 1: common experience for any actor, any actor working in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: how people touching their bodies multiple times a day as
Speaker 1: a matter of course, whether it's touching up makeup or
Speaker 1: their hair or helping with a costume fitting. And so
Speaker 1: I think zag After especially is really looking hard at
Speaker 1: how to minimize that experience for actress. Is they're moving
Speaker 1: forward the first part of your question on the studio side,
Speaker 1: everyone wants to get back to work as soon as possible.
Speaker 1: It is an enormously painful financial hardship for everyone to
Speaker 1: not be working. Just figuring out how to do that
Speaker 1: in a way that's safe is the question that everyone's asking.
Speaker 1: One studio exact told me that he thought that what
Speaker 1: might end up happening is movies that can be done
Speaker 1: in a sort of more self contained way on a
Speaker 1: sound stage where it's like with your an emotion capture
Speaker 1: suit and you're in front of it, or you're in
Speaker 1: front of a lot of green screens where a lot
Speaker 1: of the work is done in post production and visual effects,
Speaker 1: that you're able to do that more safely, that kind
Speaker 1: of movie may end up becoming more common, at least
Speaker 1: in the next year year and a half as things
Speaker 1: begin to open up again. You were talking about minimizing
Speaker 1: kind of exposure to a lot of people in some
Speaker 1: of these plans, and even in Tyler Perry's plan, it
Speaker 1: just seems like it does make sense to have the
Speaker 1: cast and crew basically living together a period of time
Speaker 1: while they're filming, and some of these movies can take
Speaker 1: a long time to shoot at Somewhere in the article
Speaker 1: that mentioned something about six months possibly that could be
Speaker 1: really tough for a lot of people. That's what I
Speaker 1: sort of was getting at when I was talking about
Speaker 1: these big, big, big movie productions are too big to
Speaker 1: get made right now. They require that kind of person
Speaker 1: power and time frame to get made. It just doesn't
Speaker 1: seem possible to then also house them for that long.
Speaker 1: And television it's even more dire because even for shows
Speaker 1: that have a sort of shortened season from the twenty
Speaker 1: two episode seasons that we were used to on network television,
Speaker 1: even when you're looking at a show like that has
Speaker 1: a ten episode season, those shows still often take many
Speaker 1: months to shoot per episode, and you've got casts in
Speaker 1: every episode for that who then have to commit to
Speaker 1: being in isolation for the duration of that. And that's
Speaker 1: going to be also a big thing for the industry
Speaker 1: to sort of sort out as to how to do
Speaker 1: that in a way that is both safer people's physical
Speaker 1: health and also their mental health, you know. As a shorthand,
Speaker 1: the entertainment industry is often referred to as Hollywood obviously,
Speaker 1: but it's countrywide and worldwide of industry. How's this playing
Speaker 1: out in other countries? Because I've seen things that are
Speaker 1: gonna be opening up soon in the UK. I've seen
Speaker 1: things about France starting possibly up in June and July
Speaker 1: and we've been talking about these big productions. A lot
Speaker 1: of the globe trotting productions might be put on hold
Speaker 1: for quite some time, but they're still already gearing up
Speaker 1: to get started as well. Several different territories, especially in Europe,
Speaker 1: have been moving forward with their own sets of guidelines.
Speaker 1: Some countries have already started production up again. Sweden and
Speaker 1: Denmark film film television production is already underway. The soap
Speaker 1: opera Neighbors, which is hugely popular, long running soap opera
Speaker 1: in Australia that started up production in April. British Columbia,
Speaker 1: which is the province in Canada that basically where Vancouver is,
Speaker 1: which is a huge hub for production, they announced that
Speaker 1: that production could begin studying in June. But anybody who's
Speaker 1: coming into the country for those kinds of productions have
Speaker 1: to go through a two week quarantine before they can
Speaker 1: go anywhere, so that might delay things starting up there.
Speaker 1: Are they taking some of the same precautions, let's say,
Speaker 1: for example, as Tyler Perry Studios might be taking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're seeing a lot of very similar styles of precautions
Speaker 1: in trying to maximize testing and safety and minimize social
Speaker 1: interaction and very similar kinds of things across the board,
Speaker 1: with a little bit of variation here and there. But
Speaker 1: there's a difference between a globe trotting production which going
Speaker 1: over multiple countries or multiple locations, and some of these
Speaker 1: productions that are starting up that are staying put there,
Speaker 1: starting in an international location, but they're staying there. This
Speaker 1: is such a huge conversation just because of how big
Speaker 1: the industry is, how many people they employ, and then
Speaker 1: beyond that, the entertainment value that it provides the people.
Speaker 1: There's so much that goes into this. The last question
Speaker 1: I have for you is what about all these productions
Speaker 1: that were halted when the pandemic started and hit really
Speaker 1: hard rehiring people Because we're talking about costs, it's just
Speaker 1: such a huge part of this. What about rehiring all
Speaker 1: those and restarting those productions. That is a really good
Speaker 1: question that I think a lot of people are trying
Speaker 1: to sort out. You had a movie like one of
Speaker 1: the Marvel Studios movies, Shoung Chi and The Legend of
Speaker 1: the Ten Rings, that was in the middle of production
Speaker 1: in Australia when the pandemic hit and its director destined.
Speaker 1: Daniel Creton even announced that he went into self quarantine
Speaker 1: because he had been exposed to somebody who had tested
Speaker 1: positive for COVID. He did not end up testing positive
Speaker 1: for COVID. But when your director has to take two
Speaker 1: weeks off, that automatically shuts things down at least for
Speaker 1: those two weeks, and that production hasn't started up again yet.
Speaker 1: Any production that shuts down you have to then rehire people,
Speaker 1: you have to re establish your location. Sometimes that can
Speaker 1: piles on costs on top of everything else you're doing.
Speaker 1: On a smaller scale, we talked to a producer in
Speaker 1: the UK who estimated that the costs of halting a
Speaker 1: show and then starting it up again based in Manchester,
Speaker 1: who's going to run her three dollars roughly in American money,
Speaker 1: and that's just a small television show. You can compound
Speaker 1: that amount of money several times over for the bigger productions.
Speaker 1: Like I said, there's so much going to this. We're
Speaker 1: starting to get back and seeing the plans formulate, but
Speaker 1: it's still very much seems like it's going to be
Speaker 1: a slow rollout for the entire industry to get back
Speaker 1: up to whatever the new normal will will be for
Speaker 1: the time being. As soon as we get started again,
Speaker 1: so we'll definitely have to see how this rolls out.
Speaker 1: Adam b Very, Senior entertainment writer at Variety, thank you
Speaker 1: very much for joining us. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: having me. I'm Oscar Ramrors and this has been reopening America.
Speaker 1: Don't forget today's big news stories. You can check me
Speaker 1: out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday,
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