What Every Filmmaker Needs to Know About COVID Compliance on Set
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What Every Filmmaker Needs to Know About COVID Compliance on Set
![Richard Greenhalgh](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.stage32.com%2Fsites%2Fstage32.com%2Ffiles%2Fheadshots%2Faea44afce9ca6db9cf81e70be137fd5d_1646508088_l.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
As the COVID pandemic started to wreak havoc around the world two years ago, the wheels of the film industry came to a grinding halt. This was a unanimous decision by the industry although not mandatory as film was deemed an “essential service.”
Facing the challenges of the pandemic, the question for filmmakers was how to return to work in this brave new world?
As a producer based in Vancouver, Canada, I worked on the last show here to complete principal photography before the shutdown. As my producing partner and I started to devise a return-to-work (RTW) production plan, I could already see the division on social media between my peers in film, between those who felt it was too risky to work and those who wanted to work with new safety protocols in-place.
We looked at this obstacle and attempted to find a way forward.
For the next three months, we digested every studio RTW plan. We had global discussions with partners in Europe. We had daily discussions with CreativeBC, DGCBC and WORKSAFE BC.
We reached the conclusion that it was time for a new department, Health and Safety, which was a long overdue position or department on the movies we specialized in at the time.
The newly-conceived department we imagined would comprise of one Health Safety Officer (HSO) and two Sanitation technicians. The HSO would be well-versed in communicable diseases, studio safety policy and government compliance. The Sanitation techs would be expert cleaners who would make sure high traffic areas and surfaces would be methodically cleaned. They would also help the HSO with various crew compliance, making sure mask-ups and hands would be periodically sanitized with their hand sanitizer bottles.
During this deep dive to find a return to work, my partner and I drafted a 27 page return-to-work plan for one of the world’s most prolific producers of TV movies: we called this the Gilles Manifesto. This plan we created included everything from how the crew would check-in to set, how hair and make-up would process actors, and how to transport the crew.
The process was refined to make sure the people we have been working with for years would be able to put food on the table and still keep their families safe at the same time. It was tedious at best and the amount of research and collaboration unparalleled, but we needed to get back to work.
V-SAN Sani-Tech crew members on the set of "Ready to Jingle", filmed in Kamloops, Canada
Before the phases started to lift, we were the first production in North America to be cleared to go to work by the City of Kelowna BC, Work Safe and three governing unions.
It was like a military operation. The cast and crew on A Wedding To Remember were diligent about returning to work. As we started to test our theory practically, the tension and fear at the time was palpable. Nonetheless, we were not only able to make our days successfully, without needing to shut down production, no illness and no backlash we began to feel confident we could repeat the process. The studio we crafted the Return-To-Work plan for commenced using the same principals in other production centers and we began to see other studios using our same protocols.
We were fortunate that few cases ever spread out of an individual department and this was only near the end of year one when the Delta variant of concern reared its ugly head. This was an exception to other shows where one case of COVID would amount to the entire department shutting down because the hysteria and fear took over.
In our own productions, we were pragmatic with testing people in those departments and contact tracing. If the person who had the contact tracing was asymptomatic, we sent them for testing. If their test came back negative, there was nothing to do. Most often people came back negative. If it didn’t travel within the department, how would it travel outside of the department? We really had to govern these situations when they happened because a lot of it was driven by fear.
We believed we had something to offer our colleagues as there had been heated debate on whether to return to work because no one had an idea of how the safety protocols would work.
We faced a lot of adversity. Not everyone was onboard with our methods. We had our share of hurdles.
COVID protocols on the set of "Family Christmas Tree", filmed in Kelowna, Canada
But as we proved successful in our own productions over and over again (we protected 27 movies in BC in year one of the pandemic), our positive results started turning the naysayers around and they began to embrace what we pioneered.
Not only did we have a solution, we had a system that could be repeated and implemented for our constituents in the film community.
And so we believed we could put together a company to navigate this for the producers who didn’t know how to navigate the dilemmas presented by the pandemic. This became V-SAN.
Our friends and colleagues engaged in our services and we felt we could do it with the system in place. Some of the shows who became our clients included the Netflix/Viacom series Maid, numerous Hallmark productions and many other big players.
A lot of the film houses in Vancouver adopted our system as a result. In the months that followed, we noticed a pattern of productions trying to synthesize the process on their own in order to save costs and it didn’t work out. Those sets had cases and had to shut down temporarily and they then asked us to come back.
I like to use the analogy of dealing with COVID is like being a boxer: always keep your guard up. When you get tired or lazy, that’s when you get the COVID punch.
A V-SAN employee in action on the set of the Vancouver production "Ties That Kill"
Best Practices for Producers to Employ on Set
- Going through the checkpoints: As cast/crew come up to the checkpoint at arrival, take their temperature.
- If cast/crew doesn’t have a mask, one is provided.
- Take a QR code for an affidavit. Scan it with a phone and affirm the cast/crew doesn’t have COVID.
- Administer a wrist band to cast/crew upon completion of prior steps. If the cast/crew member has green, they can access all areas.
- Send cast/crew to routinely wash face and hands at designated wash stations before sending them to catering.
- No buffet style catering. All food items are made to order. Utensils are wrapped individually. Everything the cast/crew asks for is given personalized, sanitized. The first wave will go through the line for lunch.
- A Sanitation Tech will come through and disinfect the tables before the second wave is sent through.
- Use of HEPA filters.
- Video village is limited to director, script supervisor and producer. Hair and makeup wardrobe have their own monitor.
- Crew can log into video village with their phones.
- One department at a time does their work for a scene. Camera, lighting and grips would come in one wave, and then the next department works separately. Be systematic in how people are brought in and moved through the set.
As a COVID compliance company, we not only aim to build an effective sanitizing and disinfecting service model for filmmakers, but we also work with productions to develop a broadly-encompassing communicable disease plan.
This is not a phase. Thinking like this is part of our future - it’s here to stay.
From our observation, the film industry is pivoting from COVID into communicable diseases prevention. In the future it might not be COVID. It might be something different, a mutation, some kind of super flu. Who knows.
Filmmakers should focus their time on making films and they want to entrust a company to manage this and keep them safe.
The takeaway is that you can’t cut corners when it comes to the health and safety of your cast and crew. With that said, we recommend that all producers work with experts in COVID compliance who take accountability for these measures so that they may focus on the core of their business: making movies.
It’s hard enough to do that on a good day. With the added weight of the pandemic, it should be trusted to experts who have navigated through these waters before so filmmakers can focus on just being creatives.
About the Author
![Richard Greenhalgh](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.stage32.com%2Fsites%2Fstage32.com%2Ffiles%2Fheadshots%2Faea44afce9ca6db9cf81e70be137fd5d_1646508088_l.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
Richard Greenhalgh
Producer
Richard Greenhalgh was born in Edmonton Alberta in 1980. He won a partial scholarship to VFS in 2001. Immediately after graduation he was working as a locations PA for Paramount Canada and Warner Bros on the television series Supernatural. Greenhalgh worked his way through the ranks in DGCBC to b...