Not long ago, medical professor Adam Lund might have just watched Netflix programming. But now, in the midst of a pandemic, the University of British Columbia academic is advising the streaming giant on how to safely produce movies and TV series.
With the onset of the pandemic last March, the global feature film and TV production sector went into a pause that left thousands of workers unemployed. In B.C. alone, about 70,000 people work in the industry. However, production has gradually resumed with new protocols and approaches to allow production while trying to ward off the risk of COVID-19 infection. It has been a challenge given the nature of close-quarters work on a film set.
Of his work during the pandemic, Dr. Lund said, “You’re there as a resource to chat about scripts and scenes that have a higher risk where people are coming close together. Or there are stunts or dancing or intimacy where, creatively, you have performers without masks who, through the nature of what they are doing, would meet the definition of close contact.
Much has to go right for a production to be successful. It’s one thing when work is under way in the relatively predictable environment of a soundstage or studio, but then comes the challenge of moving out to location.