'I don’t sleep. I'm afraid to open the post': Covid's continued effect for film industry workers
The response to our callout in March for the experiences of people working in the film industry affected by the growing coronavirus crisis was overwhelming.
Many hundreds of people shared their stories with us; stories suggesting that the bigger picture back then – of Cannes continuing, of Chinese cinemas starting to reopen, of multiplex confidence holding up – might be optimistic.
Seven months later, the industry faces unprecedented challenges. The announcement that Cineworld, the UK’s largest cinema owner, would shut its premises until further notice has triggered a wave of similar closures from major chains – and many smaller venues.
Cineworld blamed its move on the decision to postpone once again the release of No Time to Die, the 25th James Bond film, until April next year. Was that the start of the final credits for cinema as we know it? Or is a new narrative beginning to emerge?
We caught up with the film industry workers we spoke to in March. They reveal how the summer that changed the sector forever has affected them.
‘I read film scripts, thinking, how on earth will these get made?’
Philippa Lowthorpe, director of Misbehaviour and The Third Day
What she said in March:
How she feels in October:
We were so sad about Misbehaviour, but as time went on and everyone else was having such a terrible time, it put things into perspective. Luckily for me I went straight from Misbehaviour to The Third Day, which is on now. We’d finished filming it and were just editing when the pandemic hit. The producers saw the it approaching like a juggernaut and were very quick off the mark to organise things. I was able to work at home in Bristol on this fantastic computer system, while the editor was in Surrey. It was amazing to reinvent how you work. The top of my house is now my little office: during the day I was doing The Third Day, then in the evening I was doing Misbehaviour publicity.
It did feel a bit weird being at home, with my family all here and the dog wandering from room to room, but we were so lucky to have a roof over our heads and something to do, and we are so grateful for the technology that allows it. As a mum and woman filmmaker, how much would I have loved to have worked like this in the past? I hope that some of these ways of working can be adopted permanently.
We finished the finale of The Third Day two weeks ago. Now I am sitting reading film scripts, thinking, how on earth will these get made? I doubt if anyone will want to make things about a pandemic, we are living in it and it is too close. The scripts that make sense to me are the ones that take you out of your life. Or the more urgent political ideas reflecting, say, Black Lives Matter.
Personally, I was very, very lucky I was doing something already. I feel so sorry for the people who were about to do something. I still have a cutting with all the review stars we got for Misbehaviour above my cooker. Just so I know it wasn’t a dream.
‘We’ve had six burglaries in four months. Even our garden tools were stolen’
Blair Barnette, film art director, who had all her future projects cancelled over a one-hour period
What she said in March:
How she feels in October: I’m still not working, I’ve tried a few things but they keep falling apart. In the film industry, some things have come back but not really to any great effect. There’s really not enough work for everybody, and it’s winding down again now. I have done some volunteering to keep my sanity, I’m helping out on a friend’s short film right now and I was shortlisted for a new BBC crime drama set in Liverpool – but Liverpool has just locked its doors so the show has just gone on hiatus. Because my partner is ill and needs my help I really have to stay in London.
Just as things seemed to be getting back to normal, everything reversed. Right now my aim is just to get through each day. Traditionally the film industry starts to slow down around this time of year – October through February not many people are doing things as the days are shorter. It’s very seasonal work – and it seemed like the season that our work is the busiest also happened to be Covid season.
I have been getting a furlough payment of just over £500 per month, for two of us to live on. It pays for our groceries so we are not starving. I got a bounceback loan, but that’s nearly all gone and I am not sure how I am going to pay it back. The credit card companies have been good and put a freeze on everything, so our outgoings were not so bad, but the rent was inflexible.
We had to move out of our flat, and we are living somewhere where the landlord is more sympathetic. The rent is delayed but we still have to pay it – so we get more in debt each week. I am absolutely stressed out. I’ve never been in debt before, and now I have a ridiculous amount. I just don’t sleep. I can’t see myself digging out of the debt – I am getting so many brown envelopes that I am afraid to even open. So I think I am going to have to wrap up my company and start again somehow.
On top of it all our particular neighbourhood in east London seems to have turned into the wild west. There’s been so much crime. We rented a van and within 12 hours it had been stolen, and we are being held responsible by the rental company, even though it was in a locked car park. We’ve had six burglaries in four months – even our garden tools were stolen. You just couldn’t script it.
‘I’m converting our third screen into a high-end luxury screen, with little tables and food service’
Kevin Markwick, owner and manager of Picture House, Uckfield, East Sussex, which closed in line with government advice a week before lockdown, and remained shut for more than four months
What he said in March:
How he feels in October:
It’s tough, there’s no denying it. Not least because we’ve been abandoned to our fate by the big studios, who seem content to sit back and let it happen. But there’s enough content out there for us to be able to cobble a programme together. We’ve also been doing eventcinema’s greatest hits, and that’s kind of saved us. Audiences for things like the NT Live’s Present Laughter are quite significant – we actually had a sellout the other night. As long as that sort of thing keeps coming we can keep our head above water.
We are down to a skeleton staff yet we are still not breaking even. Our reserves will run out eventually but we can can keep going for a while and will be OK should the BFI step up with the cinema part of the culture recovery fund. We will need some of that to get us through until … well, who knows how long?
The outpouring of support from the local community has just been really heartwarming. [Now we just need to] keep the supply of films going. Rebecca has been looking strong this week, and it’s our older audience that are coming, not the younger audience, which is counterintuitive. But we’ve worked really hard: keeping everything clean, one-way systems, all that. We’ve had no problems, people are very relaxed about it. The restaurant is also holding its own.
We were lucky we had something in the tank, what with the opening two months of the year being the best we ever had. Not everyone was fortunate enough to be in that position, so some have gone to the wall. But I think the independents can be pretty resilient because we can be fleet of foot and move quickly, unlike corporate behemoths like Cineworld and Vue. But we need the multiplexes to survive, because no one is going to release big films to a handful of independent cinemas.
Studios don’t seem to understand there is a wide world out there, and that we’ve all got to take a hit. So the Bond only makes half a billion dollars – why can’t they make a billion dollars on the next one? They seem to think they can make money by sitting there doing nothing. It seems such an odd way to behave.
This may be genius or a disaster but I am actually converting our third screen into a high-end luxury screen, with little tables and food service. We decided to do it after lockdown, to improve the offer as well as take advantage of social distancing. I want to do everything I can to help us survive. This place has been here for 100 years, and we as a family for 55 years. I’m not going down without a fight.
‘If there’s another lockdown in the next four weeks we’ll be blown out of the water’
Rebecca O’Brien, producer of Ken Loach’s films
What she said in March:
How she feels in October:
I’m in the Scottish highlands where we’re just about to go into production on a remake of a French thriller called My Son, which is being directed by Christian Carion. It’s an eight-day shoot starting at the beginning of November, and while Covid does make it even more difficult, I am delighted to be just working on something.
Ken and I had had been planning to make a film in August. But we needed to have been getting the show on the road when the first lockdown started, so we had to call it off. Sixteen Films is only a small company, and we make one film a year, if we’re lucky. Without Ken’s film, we’d have struggled to keep going. Then I got a call from some French producers about My Son, and that was an absolute gift: now we have a film for this year, and it has made a real difference.
To do it we’ve had to take over a whole hotel, and everybody who comes in has to be tested. We are a bubble, which is a good thing – knowing everyone has been tested makes you feel secure. People need to be reassured, especially off the beaten track where we are. They are concerned that outsiders will bring the illness in.
But the problem with Covid is that we are still not guaranteed we’ll get to the end of the shoot. It depends on what the Scottish or UK government do: we might be in lockdown any minute. To make a film you need certainties and there are no certainties with Covid. If there’s a lockdown in the next four weeks we’ll be blown out of the water. Because it’s a French-British co-production, half our crew are French, and it’s been particularly difficult for them, what with the quarantine and that they are so far away from home. And now we can’t even go to the pub.
‘Perhaps we’re glimpsing a future where cinemas aren’t flooded with films with infinite marketing spend’
Tricia Tuttle, BFI festivals director What she said in March:
How she feels in October:
In March, when I reflected on the overnight, forced pivot to digital of BFI Flare, our LGBTQI+ film festival, we assumed the worst of it – the dreaded Covid restrictions – would be over by autumn. Little did I imagine we would be delivering the London film festival in an ambitious hybrid digital/physical form all over the UK. As we were planning the LFF this summer, we occasionally wondered if people would be so fatigued with zoom and screens that it would diminish the festival. But everyone who loves cinema wants good news stories, and LFF really has been one.
Across the country, a “full house” of 800 people watched the LFF digital cinema premiere of the restoration of Mohammad Reza Aslani’s 1976, presumed-lost Iranian gem, Chess of the Wind (the “Persian lovechild of Tennessee Williams and Ingmar Bergman”); together we dried a tear after the premiere of Harry Macqueen’s Supernova, a gay love story about a couple struggling with early onset dementia; and Elisabeth Moss wowed sell-out physical and digital audiences as a wickedly funny Shirley Jackson in the epo