This just in: our entire industry has officially met the quota for ads spliced with Zoom calls or haphazardly glued together by stock footage.
And while some brands have found cool, creative workarounds, we can finally, cautiously start making live-action video again.
As we emerge from Netflix comas and rejoin society (“Cast Away” beards, threadbare leggings, and all), here are some ways we can all stay healthy and helpful on shoots.
Hygiene stations
OUT: Crowded craft services tables. IN: Strategically placed hygiene stations complete with soap, hand sanitizer, backup hand sanitizer, emergency hand sanitizer, disinfecting sprays, moisturizing lotion (if budget allows), and auxiliary hand sanitizer.
If that seems like overkill for your thirty-second spot, just count your blessings (and do an elbow touch with your CFO) that you’re not dropping $5 million on temperature checks for CGI Velociraptors.
Live streaming
To keep crowds at a minimum, Favorite Brother, Brokaw’s sister company motion content studio specializing in kick-ass move-y things, set up live streaming capabilities for crew members in the next room over and for clients on the other side of the country.
As this message hits your inbox, we’ll be shooting a feed via tubes and wires to clients in San Francisco—we’d share the link but, you know, client confidentiality, etc.
(In the meantime, get a definitely-happening-right-now glimpse into our office through the Bro-cam.)
Personal protective gear
Put the “personal” in “personal protective gear” with a patterned mask that gives your on-set colleagues a little taste of your chosen pandemic style.
Sure, they’re inconvenient, and apologies in advance to the bespectacled community for the condensation to come. But ultimately, it’s an easy way to keep each other safe. And that’s what on-set camaraderie’s all about.
Not to mention, gloves cover up cracked, sanitized hands, which is an easy win-win.
We’ll be taking all these precautions (and more) as we inch back to normal.
Have a safely-cinematic weekend, everybody!
—Your ever-cautious-cinematographer-friends at Brokaw
