"The show must -and will- go on." The show must (and will) continue. This is how Ted Sarandos, content manager at Netflix, sums up the state of mind of the platform in a column at the Los Angeles Times . If the latter paradoxically benefited from the coronavirus epidemic, in particular by garnering nearly 16 million additional subscribers, its filming, on the other hand, was brutally interrupted. But they begin to recover little by little, by adapting to drastic health protocols.
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The watchword is caution. Filming only resumes in countries where the coronavirus epidemic is under control, such as South Korea, Iceland and Japan. They are also expected to return to Sweden at the end of the month, and to Norway in July.
Tests in Iceland, temperature measurement in South Korea
Each time with productions that adapt to local recommendations. In South Korea, for example, screening tests are only available for people with symptoms of Covid-19. The technical teams and actors of the Love Alarm and Move to Heaven series therefore regularly take their temperature and at the slightest sign of infection, a test will be requested and the shooting stopped while awaiting the result.
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In Iceland, where Netflix is filming the science fiction series Katla , it's the opposite: tests are massively available. Everyone has therefore agreed to submit to it, which does not prevent, again, regular temperature measurements. People are responsible for checking the number of individuals on the board at all times to prevent this from jostling. And everyone goes to the filming location with an individual vehicle.
Strict protocols ...
For the Love & Anarchy series , filmed in Sweden at the end of May, the actors, makeup artists and costume designers went further by agreeing to place themselves in quarantine for 14 days before filming ... and 11 days after .
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Everywhere on the set, Netflix ensures the availability of hydroalcoholic gel, masks and gloves for the teams. Individual packed lunches have also replaced traditional lunch buffets and costumes are washed daily. Protocols that require revising the shooting times since they provide for a mandatory break every two or three hours so that everyone can wash their hands and the sets are disinfected. "None of this is easy to set up," said Ted Sarandos in the Los Angeles Times . "And there are a lot of unanswered questions."
... and scenario changes
The scenarios in the days of the coronavirus are likely to make some disappointments: directors and showrunners are asked to integrate fewer intimate scenes or crowds, impossible to shoot. "Some series will have to be rewritten or seek to add special effects instead of what we would have filmed" in normal times, details Ted Sarandos. In some cases, the calendars are adjusted, for example by shifting the action scenes ... but while no one can say exactly when the epidemic will end, nothing says that it will be enough.
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Not surprisingly, these constraints are also taken as opportunities by some. Netflix has thus entrusted to Jenji Kohan, the creator of Orange is the new black , a project entirely filmed ... in confinement. The actors will be directed from a distance and will film themselves. This new series, which should be in the form of an anthology, has not yet been released but already has a title: Social Distance , of course.