Are you ready for your 2-metre close-up? Eight tips for filming in the time of COVID.
With changing regulations, and personal safety of paramount importance, how do you keep generating the film content you need so that your TV appeals continue to inspire support? DTV’s Annabelle Forde gives her insight from recent shoots.
At the risk of stating the obvious, it can be hard to create new DRTV appeals without new footage. Once the archive has been used, re-used, and reconfigured in various formats, you will find yourself wanting to commission a shoot for new footage. But how does that work in these times?
Filming is a vibrant part of what we do, in the UK and internationally. Recently we’ve shot in UK, Korea and Australia. People, places, logistics, creativity all brought together, and now with added PPE and regulations. Every shoot requires lots of who, what, where and, importantly, “is the catering van here yet?” With Covid-19 featuring across all our lives, we knew that filming would be an area of challenge.
In the UK, when filming was halted through the first phase of lockdown, the whole industry was waiting for updates, advice and guidelines. Even once guidelines emerged, we were determined not to put anyone in a position of risk. Clearly there is no room for risk.
Masks and sanitiser at the ready!
After immersing ourselves in the solid industry guidelines and training courses, we were ready to roll. We treated industry standards as a minimum level, and beyond them we developed our own stringent guidelines to cover issues such as:
PPE equipment: an entirely new issue requiring supply management, monitoring of use, disposal protocols etc
Sanitised locations: before, during and after the shoot and within individual scenes.
Staggered call times: helped to ensure social distancing in and out of venues.
Crew bubbles: ensuring these are defined, understood, adhered to.
Table for one lunches: avoiding the shared buffet free-for-all that can be part of a typical shoot!
Safe kit drop-offs: extending all safety measures to the delivery and collection of lighting, screens, props etc.
Bagged wardrobe: any items brought onto the set must be treated as carefully as people, kit, props. No exceptions.
Constant temperature checks: for our own team, for the crew, clients and talent.
Is that an exhaustive checklist? Of course not. It’s merely a top-line intro, especially with regulations continuing to change at national and regional levels. But those eight areas give you a good place to start. Beyond this, we have developed meticulously detailed protocol guidelines to help clients needing to shoot during lockdown. Please do drop us a DM to find out more.
Duncan, Deputy Creative Director, directing from afar on a recent shoot.
Plus Matt, one of our Directors of Photography, filming with his own children during lockdown in the UK, to enable our clients’ creative to get on air.
The bottom line is, with the right preparation and eyes on the detail, you can keep the cameras rolling effectively to generate the content to keep your TV fundraising effective.
We’d love to hear your tops tips for filming during 2020.
Bio
Annabelle Forde (Bella), Senior Creative Producer at DTV Group. Annabelle oversees our creative production and works with our talent, voiceovers, music and shoot production. Equally happy in a sound studio or on a set and will pull on all resources to find what sounds great and looks perfect.
