Page 38 - AdNews Magazine Jul-Aug 2020

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Production pivots
In the wake of COVID-19, creatives and production companies have had to shift the way they work. Big shoots with lots of people are no longer viable as social distancing and health and safety guidelines become paramount to curbing the spread of coronavirus.
Instead, the industry has seen everything from a rise in animation and stop motion to campaigns shot entirely across a video call.
Production company Photoplay says while there was a partial shut- down in place and it saw a rise in animation campaigns, a number of its clients were still hoping to go ahead with shoots.
Oliver Lawrance, executive producer at Photoplay, says this just meant introducing new protocols on set - something the Commercial Producers Council has been drafting up for the industry.
“It was really about having safe practices on set to make sure all our crew weren’t in any danger, keeping crews as small as possible and [social] distancing,” Lawrance says.
Staggering crew and having clients live stream into the shoot instead of physically being there are some of the ways Photoplay has been doing this. “We did three shoots in the last month and on two of those the client
and agency didn’t come,” he says.
“They just watched the live stream of the camera and called up with
any notes or feedback if they wanted any other shots done.”
Across the globe, many are looking to the Australian and New Zealand production industries as both nations slowly come out of the pandemic. Lawrance says team has been receiving numerous requests
to do jobs for US clients.
To help clients navigate the restrictions taking place around the
world, global creative platform Genero has pulled together data from 80 markets it works in to build a Global Production Status Map to help guide brands and the industry on the rules in place for each location. There are four different statuses, starting with post-production ser- vices like animation, augmented reality (AR) and editing, which can easily be supported remotely, through to full-scale live action shoots with some light safety measures and precautions in place.