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How’s business right now? (Also, what and where?) And how are YOU doing?
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I’m working concurrently on two PBS cooking shows with a small team of editors, one in Pennsylvania, one in New York, and two in Boston. We each have duplicate raids for each series (32 TB and 24 TB) and swap project files (Ppro and AE) as needed . We upload our cuts to Kollaborate, where the producers, who work out of the main office in Boston, review and post their notes.
As of today the Boston office is closed and all the producers are working from home. From the perspective of our editorial workflow there has been no change to our output or efficiency. We have been working this way for many years, and I have been editing at home for the majority of the last 30 years.
On the other hand I am also the Director of these shows, and originally we were scheduled for a 3 week shoot starting in May, with rehearsals and meetings scattered throughout March & April, all of this at the Boston main office where we shoot our shows. First we cancelled all the March rehearsals and then as of yesterday we postponed the shoot for 3 weeks. I’m guessing this will not be the last postponement.
With a stay at home population desperate for entertainment and distraction, I’m fairly confident that these shows will get made sooner rather than later. As an out of shape and overweight elder I’m hoping that I will be available when the call comes. As the husband of a hospice nurse who cares for those most susceptible to this virus, and an idiot son who is staying in NYC rather than coming upstate to live with me out of fear of getting me sick, I have bigger worries to think about.
As for the future, I believe in de-centralized editing, as long as you can trust your editors. Production, by it’s nature, cannot be anything but a high contact sport. Content is in demand, money is honey, and if they had TV during the bubonic plague you would find newsmen/women out in the field covering it. With garlic around their necks.
Good luck to us all, and I think everything will work out fine (the virus is not the plague.)
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
[Morten Carlsen] “normal Influenza which BTW kills 70.000 people per year in Germany alone”
I wouldn’t be so cavalier about it just yet. Remember that based on what we know so far, COVID has a higher mortality rate by percentage, is more infectious, and survives longer in the air and on surfaces. The flu numbers are based on a full year or season. We are only at the beginning, so all the numbers aren’t in yet. Not to mention that flu kills that many people in spite of vaccines and 100+ years of some level of built-up immunity as a population. None of that exists yet for COVID.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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Work has virtually stopped for me in Los Angeles. I wrapped a show in February but nothing is starting up and all production has completely halted.
It’s not looking good.
Warren Eig
O (424) 293-1164email: info@babyboompictures.com
website: https://www.BabyBoomPictures.com
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/babyboompicturesFor Camera Accessories – Monitors and Batteries
website: https://www.EigRig.com -
I work as video/mograph expert for a medium international company – luckily I was able to transition my motion graphics from onsite to home from personal effort prior to COVID-19 outbreak becoming reality. Three months ago I built a PC system that is equivalent the one I use at the office and I was able to mirror all my work files to a offsite backup service prior to all of this happening.
It amazes me that IT was upset that I was taking on responsibility and preemptive-ness with backing up and mirroring my work so that I could work from home whenever I choose, and now it’s saved my own ass and is letting me work at 90% efficiency when most of my colleagues are caught off guard and IT can’t give me the time of day they’re so busy.
Alex Printz
Mograph Designer -
I have been working from a room at home for 2 decades this year, when I am free, I also freelance for events as video operator or power-point operator here in Singapore.
Just before this virus hit, a fellow friend recommended me to news editing which I do on an ad hoc basis. As you can imagine, I am busier than ever. The event work has virtually stop here in Singapore, many freelancer are out of work and I heard production people are hard hit as well.
I also have project lined up till August and will be very busy till then. Decision to work from home 20years ago to save on transportation and sleep longer before walking a few steps to work has paid off.
When I am free, I go shooting some B-roll and hope I can sell them to news outlet. Finger cross.
Budget always not enuff.
https://www.dogbonepost.com -
For the past year I’ve been a full time contract editor for the in-house agency of one of the tech titans. The on-set of the coronavirus coincided with the expiration of my one year contract and so I’ve returned to working on freelance projects from home.
Meanwhile, the in-house agency has shifted to all remote work for it’s team and all productions have been put on hold so post has primarily ground to a halt for them.
I had a stable of corporate production clients before signing on for the one year contract and so I feel lucky in that I was able to return to those clients. I’m currently working on two projects at home and I’ve recently been contacted to potentially sign on for a large virtual conference project.
I feel for the folks in tv and film since remote working just isn’t possible.
I agree with Tim that the repercussions of this pandemic will be large for our industry. Once we get a handle on the virus and return to work, the ramping up of production will take time and for post folks there’ll be a period of little or no work.
What should be discussed openly is how best to cope with that down period. I’m old enough to have experienced the economic pain of 911 (as well as the emotional of course) and more recently the 2008 crash. I was a full-time freelancer during both of those periods and it was very challenging to keep working and to stay positive and calm.
If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that these periods will eventually pass and life will get better. If you’re a full time freelancer it’s imperative to have a solid rainy day fund (3-6 months of savings for monthly expenses.) Have trust in your skills and your network. And in the interim period before things get better, try to enjoy life. Go do things that take your mind off of the situation and which release stress – hike, bike, golf, etc. Staring endlessly at your computer monitor scouring job boards will only lead to depression and crippling anxiety.
This is truly uncharted territory for us as a nation and the world but I have confidence in that old adage, “This too shall pass.”
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tmprods
tallmanproductions.net -
I’m seeing an urgent need for a secure telemedicine phone/tablet app so doctors and therapists can see patients virtually. Facetime would do it but it has to be secure. I see an instant booming market for this particular kind of thing. And it’s needed: therapists and such should be able to work remotely with patients and that’s especially useful in a stressful time like this. They shouldn’t have to go to an office just to facetime with a patient. And the more remote facetime-like diagnosis for Covid we can do, the more we can reduce the influx on hospitals.
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It’s a reality that, for some of us, working from home just simply isn’t an option.
I do 3d animation and motion graphics. I do a bit of that on the side which I’ve always done from home, but my full time gig involves work that is, in some cases, literally classified. As the COVID-19 issue heats up and becomes unavoidable, we’ve been having meetings and discussions on what things we might be able to do from home and the answer is “not much”. Even if a project isn’t sensitive at all, there are rules against moving assets off of the secure server to a different system and it makes things very complicated for any attempt to work elsewhere.
We can be a bit flexible in taking some “training time” to go through some of those tutorial series we’ve been putting off. (Like Division 05’s excellent master classes and full courses.) But we only get allotted a certain amount of time for that.
Otherwise, I guess we can try to offset our schedules a bit so we overlap as little as possible. Otherwise, there’s not much else we can do.
This is an unprecedented situation.
But we’ve faced unprecedented situations before. When 9-11 came, our whole country shut down for a little while. Planes were grounded, events were canceled, etc., but most of us survived it. As it faded into the past, we adapted to a new normal and that is what will happen again. What sort of long-term changes to our daily lives are brought about by this pandemic is currently unknown. Maybe, once this is all over, we’ll avoid handshakes and just opt for bowing like they do in Japan – who knows?
The best advice I can offer is to stay calm, take all necessary precautions, and then live your life as best you can. Or, to borrow from Frozen II, don’t obsess about the difficulty of planning too far into the future, just do the next right thing.
– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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Not to derail this thread into COVID mortality rates, but this is something we’re watching carefully, as we have several severely immunocompromised folks both in the house and in our extended family.
Worldometers.info is one of my favorite sites on the web. They count stuff. How many people born today, how many died, how many bicycles manufactured, how many Tweets, how many cellphones sold, you name it — all updated in real time. It’s wild, and wildly addicting candy for stats nerds.
I can’t emphasize enough the extent to which I have no political stake in this conversation. I really don’t. I’ve spent most of my life as a stats nerd. I studied sociology and anthropology as both an undergrad and a grad student. Give me the numbers and keep your politics to yourself, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned as I enter my seventh decade on this shiny blue ball, the numbers have more to tell me than anybody’s politics.
Anyway, Worldometer.info has a couple of pages for COVID, and they’re just numbers. That’s all. Numbers. It’s your job to draw the conclusions, and I can tell you, looking at the numbers, people are drawing conclusions that are at best incomplete.
Like we’ve all heard something like mortality rates of 3%, but that’s as a percentage of everyone who’s gotten it. And btw, that number is going up. Yesterday it was 3%, today it’s s 3.4%, and that’s
up from 2% when I first started watching this page. But still, because it’s so early on, most of the people who have coronavirus still don’t know it, and most of the ones we know have it, well, whatever else we know, we know that they’re more likely to recover than not.BUT.
What’s staggering is when you look at the numbers for CLOSED cases. One outcome or the other has been achieved. Cured or dead. The good news is that yeah, most people recover. But when you look at the mortality rate for CLOSED cases, it’s 10%!!!! Not 2 or 3 percent. TEN.
And that number is going UP! It was just over 9 yesterday. We’re not getting any better whatsoever at saving people who have it, which is why the emphasis is so strong on stopping the spread.
(btw, compare this to .002% for swine flu, which is more virulent than the typical seasonal variety. COVID-19 is not that.)
You’ve probably also heard that the real trigger is underlying conditions, and yes, that’s absolutely true. No underlying conditions = mortality rate of .9%. Not bad! Under one percent.
But what are some of the conditions that are problems?
Being male is one of ’em. Ooops. If you’re a male, older than age 9, you’re already higher than the average rate, at 4.7% mortality, and going up as you age. By the time you hit 70, it’s over 8% — a number which still includes women, who are dying at about half the rate men are….but it’s still higher than average in your 40s and 50s.
You’ve surely also heard that cancer is an underlying condition that’s increasing coronavirus mortality, right? Yes, of course: 7.6%. But you know what’s even more dangerous than cancer? HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE + coronavirus is DEADLIER THAN CANCER + coronavirus, at 8.4%.
Respiratory ailments including asthma: 8.2%
Diabetes: 9.2%. (This number is one of the few going down, but then again, millions of people with diabetes don’t know they have it. Are you SURE you don’t?)
Cardiovascular disease: 13.2%.Some forums at the COW skew older than others, but our average here is just under 30. Folks around that age and younger (Millenial and Gen-Z for those keeping score) have wrapped their heads around the idea that healthy people, lower-risk people, are isolating themselves so that they won’t become vectors carrying the disease to more vulnerable people — which include all men, anyone in their 40s and up, anyone with diabetes, asthma, HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE….
….oh yeah, and if you take corticosteroids for rheumatoid arthritis or a variety of common allergies, you’re compromised. If you take anticonvulsants (epilepsy and bipolar), you’re compromised. Says right there on the label, and whispered in the “fine print” sections of all those commercials.
Again, I’m not wanting to derail this very productive conversation about our lives in this industry, but especially as a community just over half of whose visitors are men (even if more like two-thirds of our posters are men) and are disinclined to contemplate our mortality, the numbers are vastly more serious than you’ve considered.
No need to panic, though. I’ll take 9 out of 10 odds for anything you care to throw at me. Some folks are talking about vaccines by June. This isn’t the end of the world. But it can be the end of YOU or someone you love if you’re not paying attention or treating this like it’s the same as the flu.
Returning you to talking more about work than life and death, even if the three are a bit tangled up for me just now. 🙂
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[Tim Wilson] “if there’s one thing I’ve learned as I enter my seventh decade on this shiny blue ball, the numbers have more to tell me than anybody’s politics.”
Thanks Tim. And for those that need charts to back up the numbers, this article seems to do a good job of laying out what the U.S. is about to face.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tmprods
tallmanproductions.net
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