Marvel Films and Other Big Productions Will Have Issues Restarting Production
By George Robbins
Production studios have had a lot of issues over the past few months since the coronavirus pandemic was first announced. Since mid-March, companies have been doing their best to come up with a battle plan to move forward when they are able to start working again. This has resulted in many different productions having to try and find the best chances they have to actually film their movies. Recently, for some movies, there was a small ray of hope in the fact that Hollywood was given the go-ahead to be able to start up productions again. Of course, this comes with a lot of restrictions since the pandemic is still a very real threat that people keep trying to ignore, but ultimately can’t.
Some of the restrictions for movie and television sets include the enforcing of the social distancing rule for all cast and crew. Even while on camera, the cast is still supposed to maintain a certain distance from one another while the camera operators are supposed to change the angle to make it seem like they are closer. On top of being forced to use movie-magic to create illusions in scenes that no one would have expected them to have to do, crews must also be cut down and limit overall capacity. This will ultimately lead to many people simply being too far from where they should be or there will be skeleton crews on sets. Some parts of the crew such as craft services will not even be allowed to be there just to limit the number of crew on set.
On top of these on-set restrictions, there are a number of restrictions that must be followed off of the set while there is a production. Before films can even start up again, there is a period of time being adopted called the quarantine period that cast and crew must be isolated for a couple of weeks before productions can start. There are also other restrictions that they must follow involving cast and crew moving around outside of set boundaries. They aren’t really allowed to leave the place they are filming in until the filming is complete to prevent the risk that they get sick and bring it back to the set by accident. With these restrictions adding up, it can be pretty easy to see why it will be difficult for some movies to even start up again to begin with.
After the announcement that the UK would be loosening restrictions to allow things like movie productions to pick up where they left off, many thought movies like ‘The Batman‘ would be able to resume as soon as possible. With these restrictions in place, this is turning out not to be the case and not just with that one movie, but with most if not all big-budget films. Studios will be having a hard time just getting everything together since they have to make sure they are following the safety protocols without making any mistakes. There will be an inspector on-site at all times in order to make sure that the cast and crew are following the rules at all times so that they don’t slip up. With the exception of ‘Avatar 2’ there is no guarantee that many productions will even be able to restart any time soon.