How has your company been impacted by concerns over the coronavirus--or the virus itself if a worker or client has been stricken--in terms of business, your staff, client relationships?
Social distancing has had an enormous impact, including the postponement or cancellation of any live-action productions. Otherwise, the most significant effect has been isolation. Zoom, Join.me, and various voice chat applications have allowed us to approximate the work environment and continue the riff sessions that bring out creativity. While productions are delayed, we can continue seamlessly with our graphics jobs from home both through working locally as well as utilizing our secure servers and render farms remotely.
The well-being, health and safety of people is clearly top priority. What measures have you taken to protect your staff and collaborators during this challenging time?
Early on, we instituted a reminder policy about health and safety. We posted signs everywhere humorously reminding people to wash their hands or sneeze into elbows etc. We also posted lyrics on bathroom mirrors to give everyone a little assistance on the 20-second hand washing. Incidentally, it was at this point we realized that Prince wasn’t known nearly well enough by the younger members of our crew.
Over the last five or so years, we have been developing processes and adopting technology that freed us from our desks. Despite falling into the exempt category, when the mandate came down to work from home, we were, for the most part, already there. Today, we use screen sharing and video conferencing for all of our meetings.
We have been working with our production partners to secure capabilities that can be used with a small or limited crew maximizing social distancing, which can be tough on set. While State and Federal directives limit most of our production operations, our first mandate internally has always been to operate safely and responsibly using available information and common sense to guide decision making.
How have you adapted your behavior, practices, policies, approaches, ways of thinking and doing business in response to the pandemic?
The technology in use at our office was initially purchased to aid in security. We also wanted to free people from their desks to check on renders or make quick fixes from home. Through this pandemic, we have found it robust enough to accommodate a much broader use and has been instrumental in keeping us alive and kicking.
One thing we have missed, though, was the connection of the team. Being able to lean over and ask a question of someone in the mosh pit on a technique or just the typical banter about shows seen or stories about the weekend is a luxury of the past we have taken steps to overcome. We have our team standup meetings on Join.me or Zoom every morning, but then we have a Discord server that the team can log into throughout the day for that social connection.
It’s not the same, but it helps, and so far, I think judging by the morale of the team seems to be working pretty well.
Were you in the midst of a particular project when the coronavirus outbreak hit and how did you manage to deal with that situation?
Yes, we were in the middle of several. We managed to move forward with the graphics-only projects and proceed on aspects of most of the others. Two of our projects included live-action productions that we postponed days before the shoot date. Another project is attached to a now delayed film release.
Leading up to the postponement, we were changing everything daily from crew counts to locations to even our approach to craft services and catering. Every morning my producer and I would get up, read the news, and then discuss what had happened overnight that would affect our shoot and then start working on building the production. Sometimes this involved rethinking whole aspects of the production that we had already solved and booked. I think I drew up 4-5 sets of shooting boards in one week for the same production, all to accommodate the daily changes.
With the live-action postponed, we focused on graphics components as our design team could continue working remotely. We have several animation and branding projects are still moving forward, full steam ahead.
What’s your biggest takeaway or lessons learned from your experience dealing with coronavirus concerns thus far?
I think the steps we made in becoming less reliant on the centralized workplace will continue. I would love to believe that this was a one-time event, but I don’t think that is the case. It may be the only pandemic for a while, but I think there will be other issues we may need to deal with that would encourage us to work remotely.
One thing specifically that will change is the environmental impact of not having everyone commuting daily. Encouraging people to stay home has helped air quality, and if people can work in their pajamas even just a few days a week with that kind of positive offset, why wouldn’t they?
What advice, if any, would you offer to your counterparts at other companies/agencies, your clients and collaborators?
The best advice I could give for anyone right now is to listen to the actual doctors and scientists rather than spinning into and spreading conjecture and political agenda-driven rhetoric. For my clients, colleagues, and peers, I suggest continuing to explore technological solutions for your operation. Stay flexible, accommodate, and accept change in process; over the next few months, expect your “normal” to continue to evolve. I’m personally hopeful that this unfortunate situation we are finding ourselves in will be looked at as an opportunity for growth and will be remembered as a significant turning point for our industry and society as a whole.
It’s said that strength emerges from adversity. Do you see any silver lining or positive dynamic emerging for our industry/marketplace from this global health crisis?
The pandemic response seems, among other things, like a massive retraining exercise in how to embrace working remotely. Not is the industry learning how to solve for long-distance clients but also remote teams. I have had the benefit of working on amazing projects with amazing people, but I know that wasn’t just due to my skills and capabilities. A lot of those jobs happened due to location and proximity to the client at that time. I think any last vestiges of that way of thinking are being destroyed today.
The emergence of the cottage industry workforce that we saw start back in the early 2000s is going to hit its stride because of this pandemic.
And, maybe we will finally see widespread gigabyte bandwidth available in the US.
Have you deployed your company’s creative and communication skills to address the pandemic (PSAs, educational videos, other initiatives)? Please tell us about these efforts.
We haven’t actually; We have been slammed with trying to get our existing clients’ needs met given the changes they have had to deal with. The restructuring of projects to fit within guidelines etc. has been an interesting exercise that changes daily. Now that things are settling down on that end, it is easier for us to look forward to what’s next.
For us, that will almost assuredly involve doing our part to help the country weather this storm.