[Tim Wilson]

In the category of “the job is gone, just plain gone”, the International Cinematographers Guild is reporting 120,000 jobs have been lost so far in Hollywood, and another 50,000 in London. That’s just for people on sets. It doesn’t include editors, VFX, sound, plus people in support businesses (say, catering, accounting, payroll, transportation).

So, as well as not including any of those folks, the 170,000 jobs lost so far are primarily centered in two cities. I can’t imagine that numbers in places like New York, Vancouver, and Mumbai are much better. We could easily be looking at a million people worldwide in the production business and related services who have no idea when they’ll be able to work again.

btw, I’ve been speaking to a lot of those folks, as I bet you have too, and they’re not especially inclined to hop on this thread to have Zelin yell at them to get back to work. (You hiring cinematographers, Bob? If so, I’ve got some names for you.) They’d also rather talk about nearly anything else, which is understandable.

And I know that plenty of you don’t care about the Metropolitan Opera, but it was very much a part of my life growing up in a barely working class Italian household, and I rode herd on our local edition of their broadcasts in my radio career. They’re also the largest arts organization in the US, and they’ve just laid off everyone. They’re paying health insurance for everyone, and instrument insurance for the orchestra, but no salaries for anyone for the foreseeable future. Amazing.

[Mark Suszko] “Nothing at all romantic or heroic about dying at your desk.”

Especially when, in your father’s case, if he’d been collapsed during normal working hours, someone would have been there to intervene sooner. Everybody dies sometime and somewhere (my mother had an aneurysm burst while she was stirring her tea at home, my father a few steps away: didn’t matter, she was gone before she hit the floor), but Bob’s romanticizing long hours is a death wish I don’t have, and romanticizing selfish public behavior in the name of productivity and job security is a murder wish I don’t have either.

It’s not okay to be this way. Rejecting your responsibilities as a member of human society isn’t funny and sure as shit isn’t noble. Glad to see that Bob’s employers are forcing some level of human decency, even if it’s over his objections.

I’ve been thinking for a while about another thread, turning the whole mental illness question on its head. We talk a lot about the toll that depression takes on creative people, and the challenges for introverts participating on creative teams, but we haven’t started to talk about the ways that our intensity feeds mania, and the grievous toll that extroverted “go go GO” leadership takes on our lives.

It’s no accident some of the most unpleasant people in ANY industry have long lived atop OUR industry. It’s been that way from the beginning, too. I think our industry was designed by mentally ill people who happened to have traits that are rewarded here, which makes it hard for people to prosper in this business while also trying to maintain any semblance of sanity.

My pique at Bob and millions of like-minded people notwithstanding, this thread is actually super-encouraging to me. I’m beyond delighted that so many of you here are finding ways to still work, and thinking creatively about solving the challenges of today AND make things better for the future. We need more of that, and less of a rush to return to a lifestyle taking an almost incalculable toll on all of us and our families.

[Tim Wilson]

[Bob Zelin] “So stop all this whining, and get back to work.”

This is seriously deranged, even for you. Almost everyone on this thread IS working, and the ones who aren’t working aren’t working because the job is gone. It’s just not there. There’s no more need to sniff around a movie set looking for DIT work than there is to fly to Las Vegas to look at vendors displays. There will be no postproduction equipment vendor displays to look at in Las Vegas in April, and there may not be a movie being shot anywhere in the world for considerably longer after that.

I also resent you bringing up Bob Turner in the way you did, and I know he’d have hated it too. I’m surely the last industry guy to visit Bob at his home in Scituate, MA before he passed away. I drove down from Avid’s headquarters (then in Tewksbury) from my home in a Boston with a full Avid Xpress Studio for him, with the Pro Tools hardware. I spent the day setting it up for him, and he died very shortly after that, before he could write anything up. I had a lovely day with him and his wife, and I can tell you for a fact that if he thought he could have lived one more day by stopping work, he’d have given up every moment in his career in a heartbeat.

What the hell do you think we talked about all day? THIS. Yeah, storytellers are the reason we don’t live in caves, but dying stinks, and dying early for the job is obscene.

(Shocking to me now to recall that he was only 54, quite a bit younger than many folks here.)

Look, if you want to die, nobody’s stopping you. It might be nice if you didn’t kill anyone else who might care to stay alive. It might also be really nice if you could at least bother to read the posts you’re replying to, becauses not one person here wants to be out of work or even underworked. We’re all here because we’re more alike than not in wanting to go until we drop….but if there’s nowhere to go, there’s nowhere to go.

Teamviewer is a nice tip, though. Thanks for that.

[Tim Wilson]

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. 🙂

[Tim Wilson]

[Pat Horridge] “Remote editing of secure content is possible. I’ve used it before but it’s not ideal.”

I don’t think the question is whether or not it’s possible. The point is that for upwards of 100TB for a single episode of TV like Shane’s case, it may not practical, and that in Britt’s case, major studios doing blockbuster post don’t care whether it’s possible or practical — it’s just not going to happen, period. Nothing is worth more to them than their IP. I don’t see that changing any time soon.

Getting more specific to your experience, though Pat, are you setting up companies to do this? Not that you can name names, of course, but you’ve been designing broadcast workflows for over 30 years, so I’m curious. What are people asking for this week, or maybe this month, that weren’t part of the pre-CORVID conversation? How have pressures like social distancing or productions shutting down affected your life as a consultant?

[Tim Wilson]

[Mark Suszko] “I love the TED talk format for making presentations. I am also a huge fan of Pecha_Kucha Night presentations, which are timed talks linked to 20 powerpoint slides.”

I think we can definitely agree as a nation and a world that TED has really helped its speakers hone the art of a 15-minute talk. None of it is accidental. They DRILL people on it, and in fact have some fantastic resources on their channel, YouTube and elsewhere to teach you how to do a presentation exactly like this. Here’s one from TED Official, but there are a bunch of others that honestly every speaker should take to heart.

[Mark Suszko] “And I want all the panels open to view, all the keynotes, white paper presentations, round table discussions, no paywalls. NAB is not just the hardware show floor but also the experts talking about the industry and where it is going. That’s the simplest part to share online.”

I don’t think they could do it for free free with their major source for funding educational effort no longer in play, but they could definitely get corporate sponsorship out the wazoo, and should — and then, yeah, make the content free. It’s a model whose ongoing viability we can testify to ☺ (with thanks again to the many of you who turn your ad blockers off in the COW).

But Mark, I love these ideas! And maybe it really does take this kind of thinking — NOT assuming that you’ll be so sad sad sad if you can’t have beers with your buddies from far away and have engineers from your favorite companies treat you like you’re important to your face, and that the only problem to solve is to figure out how to be that hung over and have people still suck up to you rather than treat you like a hobo. LOL

It’s ultimately as simple as you’re making it, I think. There’s lots of people ready to share lots of information, and we have lots of ways to accomplish that while we’re in a set of conditions that might be around for another 12-18 months in some part of the world

[Tim Wilson]

[Mark Suszko] “Can you make it in VR so I can put on a pair of goggles, some too-tight shoes, and watch it on my treadmill? :-)”

You read our minds!

Okay, kidding aside. You’re now in charge of the NAB Show. What are you thinking about for the rest of 2020?

The Twittersphere was circulating a rumor about rescheduling for the summer, which strikes me as a bad idea for a number of reasons (not least of which is THE DESERT IN THE SUMMER), doubling down on NAB NY in October (assuming that it comes to pass), or NAB marshalling their vast resources to record and stream presentations of….something/anything. (I’m sure that they could get Todd Rundgren to help if they asked.)

The challenge isn’t just for NAB alone, although it certainly starts there. We’ve already heard from SxSW that the revenue loss from canceling their three Austin festivals (movies, music, and tech) has led to cutting a third of their staff already, and serious questions over whether the festivals will be back next year. That’s surely not going to be quite the case for NAB (right? like I know, though), but we’ve considered the folks who run the show and conferences to be our friends, and we sympathize with their challenge.

But there’s also the responsibility that I know that they feel to the many partners who time their product development and release cycles to the April show. Some of them clearly have the resources to mount major streaming initiatives on their own, but some of them could use a boost from NAB…somehow…to help them recoup the investment they’ve made in development in ways that support NAB, and now look to NAB for support in creating something resembling the splash they would have made during the show.

(I won’t even try to count all the press releases we’d already gotten from folks announcing what they were bringing to the show. Some, I’ve been able to edit and still have them make sense, say, for products with a firm ship date, or shipping now. But quite a few were speaking about specific things they were planning to DO at the show. Those stories are going to have get rewritten after the strategies do.)

So, you’re NAB, thinking about what you can do for your own organization, and what you can do for some of the companies who count on you…what would YOU do?

[Tim Wilson]

[Mark Suszko] “I can imagine holding a virtual NAB show floor right here on the COW. Come on, Tim!”

Discussions already very much underway, Mark. ☺

We don’t talk about this often, but every month, 10 times more people come through the COW than attended the biggest NABs, so we can definitely get a few things cooking.

I don’t mind saying that we’re not looking to cash in on this. We know that everybody’s money is going to be tight, so we’re looking to advance the interests of the entire community here. Yes, we were hoping the show would be canceled this year, but we don’t have any illusions that anybody’s life is going to be easier as a result, or that they’re suddenly going to have more money in pocket as a result of not going. Quite the contrary.

Details to follow, of course. People are just starting to think about this stuff, and it’s still 5 weeks from NAB’s originally scheduled date, but whether folks are going to be holding their own online events (say, AJA and Adobe, who’ve already announced that this will be their approach), or need some help putting something together, we’ll be accommodating them.

More soon!

Tim

[Tim Wilson]

Well there it is, the other shoe dropping. I actually love NAB’s announcement, which Craig linked to above. Here’s a couple of sentences:

In the interest of addressing the health and safety concerns of our stakeholders and in consultation with partners throughout the media and entertainment industry, we have decided not to move forward with NAB Show in April. We are currently considering a number of potential alternatives to create the best possible experience for our community.

This was not an easy decision. Fortunately, we did not have to make this decision alone, and are grateful to our NAB Show community for engaging with us as we grappled with the rapidly-evolving situation. This Show is as much yours as it is ours, and it is important to us that we move forward together.

They basically admitted that they’d probably have gone forward if they could have, but a lot of their partners were asking them not to. I get that. SxSW is laying off staff because they rely on the show to give them revenue that they use all year, and I’m sure that our friends in the show division of NAB (as opposed to the broadcast political lobbying organization) are going to be feeling some pain. They have our sympathies, for sure. We consider those folks friends, have worked on many projects together, and hope to do so again soon.

Of course, we’re still five weeks out from the scheduled date. I suspect that in another couple of weeks, this decision would have been made for them by larger forces, apart from the momentum that’s going to be keeping people working from home.

Lots more to say about this, but I’m also looking forward to what you cats have to say. 🙂

[Tim Wilson]

As noted in previous threads that I’m hoping to consolidate here, this is now a thread to talk about EVERYONE….and I can add one more, Ross Video. I especially like what their announcement said, specifically:

Ross has been at every NAB since 1974 and this has not been an easy decision to take, but we have a clear duty to our employees, our customers and families.

And here’s the link to their press release.

Speaking for me personally and NOT for CreativeCOW.net officially, me personally, this is exactly how I’m coming to see this. It’s not about NAB. It’s about duty.

Even if you’re not going to bow out for you, even if you’re happy to kill every old person and baby and diabetic (8% mortality) and person with high blood pressure (6% mortality) or cancer (5% mortality — that’s right, high blood pressure is riskier than cancer) that you know or might come in contact indirectly, how about at least pretend for a few days that there’s something more important than money or ego or another week of partying, and stay out of airplanes and six-figure gatherings for a couple of days and let doctors and nurses try to get on top of this thing.

Instead, let’s party at NAB NY in the fall (it happens) or NAB 2021, and fulfill our barest obligations to our fellow humans to not intentionally make their lives worse or shorter just because we’re feeling macho about the hustle.

(And yes, I recognize that there are other reasons to attend NAB than the ones I passive-aggressively described in the worst possible terms above. LOL In general. But this year, maybe, maybe not. LOL)

[Tim Wilson]

Adding an admin note here: once we’d gotten up to a dozen different threads for every new company making an announcement, we’re now requesting that ALL posts related to NAB 2020 to be added to one thread, here: All-purpose NAB Cancellation Thread: From Adobe, AJA, and Avid to Zaxcom.

This was originally Oliver’s AJA thread, but, so many more companies have been added, it just makes sense to consolidate all the information in one place.

Thanks for your understanding! Please feel free to contact me directly with any questions or concerns.

Regards,

Tim Wilson
Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW