How do you produce a film shoot ensuring everyone’s safety? What measures should you take to reduce infection risk? What’s legally permissible? 

All good questions and one’s we’ve asked time and again over the last few months as the goalposts of consensus and advice shift – sometimes on a daily basis.

As I write this, we’re in at an East London residential location, shooting a Christmas TV commercial for children’s book publisher. This is the first crewed shoot with a DP, lighting, director and talent since February. Our DP is changing his shoe-coverings for the second time, realising he accidentally wore them outside again.

We’ve produced a lot of ‘100% COVID-safe’ shoots with remote direction and talent at the end of a zoom call. Easy peasy but relatively dull. I think we’ve all seen enough of each others attic rooms and bookshelves don’t you? A notch up from the webcam zoom shoots are remote shoots where basic camera and kit are supplied to the talent and with careful remote direction, they assemble the lighting and shoot on a DSLR. All kit gets sent out double-sterilised. UV sterilising boxes have been a godsend and are a great investment for bits and bobs of kit to be handled by others.  

Today is the first crew attended shoot though and to make it work with full confidence has meant a few adaptations to the usual way of working. First of all, everyone on set has completed a health questionnaire asking the obvious questions about whether they are symptomatic, have been close to someone who is symptomatic, have recently returned to the UK from high risk areas abroad, etc…

Both our crew and our talent have ‘reserves’ – people we can drop in at the last minute if anyone suddenly becomes symptomatic the night before shooting. This is trickier to do with crew than with cast to be honest. Anyone casting for a production knows there are sometimes toss of the coin choices between two great options, so assembling our ‘B team’ there wasn’t too difficult. 

On-set masks are mandatory for crew, and for talent between takes. Hand-washing is enforced on arrival and between setups and single use towels are deployed near hand washing areas. Sanitiser gel and spray are placed everywhere around set and stricter than ever is the idea that no one touches anyone else’s kit. Earlier this year APA released safe shooting guidelines, I would wholly recommend following the advice within. 

Perhaps the greatest contention of the day has been around catering and snacks. On small footprint location shoots like this, external catering is discouraged – I forget the number of times I’ve seen a can of Coke placed down and then drunk from by multiple crew members thinking it was theirs. So homemade lunch, snacks and clearly named water bottles are a must. 

All the above best practices are observed and enforced by a dedicated COVID safety officer. On the whole though I’m impressed with how instantly adaptable the crew have become and how respectful they are of the adaptions necessary to work safely. I shouldn’t be surprised though – we’re in an inventive, can-do business right? Being open for business, whatever that looks like, is something to be grateful for this year.

In the words of neurologist Victor Frankl – ’An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour.’

Jay Woods is Creative Director for Thieves Kitchen.