Pandemic shuts down film/TV industry
Pandemic forces shutdown of TV, film productions
A week or so ago if you walked around a block in Downtown Vancouver there was a good chance you would see a member of a film crew pulling cable, setting lights and just generally getting on with the multibillion-dollar business of shows that are produced here in Hollywood North.
Now, cut to this week, and the scene is very different as the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the industry to go dark. According to the Union of B.C. Performers and ACTRA, all 42 of the productions they had listed are now shut down.
“I don’t know anybody who saw this coming,” said Vancouver actor/producer/director John Cassini. “I know when there is a writer’s strike or something, you have a lot of lead up and people know, so, you tend to backload or front-load, whatever the term is. Everyone knows, ‘Get-as-manygigs-as-you-possibly-can,’ before the strike hits. There’s a little bit of planning. But, here in this case, people were just sent home from set or told it’s not happening — all I think within 24-48 hours.
“Things were just going, boom, boom, boom. That’s it, full stop. That’s it. There’s no way any of us could have planned for this.”
Cassini, who you can see now on Netflix in the classic Canadian and Vancouver-shot crime drama Intelligence, was set to start pre-production on a TV movie March 16. That was tabled. The threat of spreading COVID-19 also led Cassini to temporarily close the doors on the non-profit Railtown Actors Studio that he co-founded eight years ago.
“I thought this was going to be a bit of a sanctuary for everyone,” said Cassini about the studio that has three instructors and teaches 70 students each term. “I thought,
‘OK, the business is going to shut down, maybe, and this is a place where we can come and really dig in to the work. And wait for the business to come back,’ but of course, thinking a little deeper it is now that the gatherings have to be smaller, and the gatherings are no more than 12, 13, 14 in a class sometimes. But still, I personally felt if I could do anything that’s going to help this is it, besides staying home.”
Van Helsing showrunner Jonathan Lloyd Walker of Vancouver returned from shooting the first three episodes of Season 5 of the hit Syfy channel show ready to begin filming the show’s last 10 episodes in Vancouver.
“It came on really quickly. Literally, this time last week we were coming back from Slovakia,” said Walker. “While we were shooting in Slovakia there was an awareness that it was happening in places in the world and it was happening on a fairly small scale, in terms of local impact. So, it didn’t really affect us.”
But all that changed in an instant when they returned to Vancouver on March 9.
“By the time we got to mid-week all of a sudden things were changing at such a pace I was like, ‘I don’t know what we are going to do?’ It did come on very suddenly and took us all by surprise. Certainly we were monitoring the situation, then we reached the point when we just had to shut down. We made that decision, officially, over the weekend.”
Walker’s show, like many, will re-evaluate the situation in twoweek’s time. Others are waiting a month, and some have just ended their shoots early. While two weeks seems like a short period, it isn’t in an industry that already comes packed with volatility and uncertainty.
“There are a lot people worried about their livelihood. For instance, a lot of actors and background performers I know that have said, ‘I’ve got five or six days of booked work and now I have nothing and I live paycheque-to-paycheque, what am I going to do?’ Walker said.
“From that standpoint, they are all nervous. They don’t know how long the industry is going to be suspended. There is no work and there won’t be for the foreseeable future. We’re all going to have to calm some nerves and figure out a plan to take care of each other.”
The plan now isn’t clear. Industry unions have sent messages to the federal and provincial governments reminding them not to forget about the arts when it comes time to distribute emergency funding. Union websites have posts suggesting members apply for government benefits (a lot of actors, in particular, are self-employed so they don’t qualify for unemployment benefits) and seek out groups that help artists in need. The unions have also told members that upcoming dues deadlines will be pushed back and reviewed over the course of this economic downturn.
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