HOLLYWOOD GOES BACK TO WORK
How productions are resuming during the pandemic. Spoiler: very carefully.
HOLD ONTO YOUR butts — film shoots are getting back underway, with Jurassic World: Dominion leading the charge. In mid-june, 90 days after productions around the world were shut down to halt the spread of coronavirus, Hollywood finally got the green light to get back to work, with Colin Trevorrow’s trilogy-closer the first movie to resume shooting in the UK, from 6 July. At the start of lockdown, industry insiders questioned how movie sets would be able to safely function in a post-covid world. After all, bringing to life hair-raising T-rex attacks and tense velociraptor stand-offs requires busy sets, full of hundreds of people. How do you manage that in a socially distanced manner?
“Dominion was already the biggest creative challenge of our lives, before the lockdown,” says Trevorrow, whose latest instalment of the dino franchise is able to resume shooting under strict new safety measures devised by the UK government. Meeting these new guidelines has meant installing 150 hand-sanitiser stations and 1,800 safety signs around Pinewood Studios, as well as antiviral “fog” machines, deployed nightly to deep-clean the set. Masks will be compulsory for everyone but the actors, and physical distancing will be encouraged. “It will take some getting used to, but film crews adapt to changing conditions for a living,” continues Trevorrow. He reveals that the production has even benefited in some ways from the lockdown. “The shooting schedule really worked to our advantage — the first four weeks we put to film were mostly sequences with dinosaurs in them. So that allowed us to get a head start on VFX and workshop some of the newer elements without the pressure of a looming deadline.”
Following in Dominion’s Brachiosaurus-sized footprints at UK studios will be other eagerly awaited movies. Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid remake, The Batman (starring Robert Pattinson as the Caped Crusader) and the third instalment of the Fantastic Beasts franchise are among other titles due back into production in the UK imminently. It’s not just in Britain that cameras are starting to roll again, though. In New Zealand, where the virus was quickly contained, production was able to resume early on James Cameron’s Avatar 2, while Los Angeles County have also announced new guidelines, allowing studios to open their doors once more this summer.
With Covid-19 still looming large, sets at home and abroad are doing everything to ensure safety of cast and crew. Even in New Zealand, where only 1,163 cases have been recorded at the time of writing in contrast to Britain’s 304,000, precautions are thorough. “To keep the maximum safety levels and mitigate risk as much as possible, we’ll be rethinking everything — even things like catering,” says Annabelle Sheehan, CEO of the New Zealand Film Commission.
Major movies haven’t been shut down entirely — Trevorrow has been in contact with his Dominion production designer, editor and VFX team on a daily basis. But although they’re now out the other side, the director admits that the next few months are unlikely to be a walk in the (Jurassic) park. “I’m confident our guidelines
will keep us safe,” he says. “The hard part will be constructing a creative environment within all the precautions. Once the cameras roll, we have to forget our world and live in the world of the movie. That may take some practice.” Sammy Sheldon Differ, costume designer on upcoming Marvel blockbuster The Eternals, agrees, saying that big question marks exist over how exactly film-industry employees will be able to do their jobs while maintaining a two-metre distance. “I’m not sure how, for example, I’d be able to do a costume fitting without getting up close.”
Many challenges lie ahead. But Trevorrow, for one, is confident that they can be overcome. “When a production like this stops, it affects hundreds of people,” he says. “I’ve been really moved by the way everyone has shown support for each other. These past three months have been met with a collective strength and resilience that I’m deeply grateful for. We’re all fired up to get back to work. This is what we do, and we’re all eager to get back out there and do it.”