LESSONS LEARNED FROM COVID-19

Film making industry involves a huge cast and different stages of production for a single project. It is a tedious process of producing a film but the outcome is what entertains us in theatres. The tedious process includes an initial idea, scriptwriting, casting, shooting of the film, sound recording, pre-production, editing, and screening. What we get to see on the large screen for 2 hours is nearly a year's hard work by the whole cast & crew of the production team.

The Indian film industry, directly and indirectly, employs more than four million people. But due to the pandemic, the production houses in the industry have been affected in such a way that they are trying new options to get back to their business and put it on track. Production houses are planning to begin working again while deliberately following all the safety measures. They also want to keep their pace a little slow in production to ensure maximum safety from COVID while working. The whole film industry faced severe losses during this pandemic. The sudden lockdown in March last year was a big strike at the industry and all the projects were put on hold. Although now production houses have started filming their projects, still a lot of films and shows are facing further delays.

COVID has painted dark clouds over the film production house industry. The film industry claims that the safety of the cast, crew, and technicians is their priority. Though there are a lot of shootings that are pending and need to be completed within a span, they are just ensuring the safety and security of the people who work there. They are clear in a point that they cannot wait till the situation clears up and it doesn’t seem to. The coronavirus still has a grip and control over everything and the only smart move to avoid coronavirus is social distancing.

During this unavoidable pandemic situation, most of the population of the world was in lockdown. The basic needs of the people remained unsatisfied for a number of days during the outbreak. So being an industry of entertainment the production houses were not the priority of the government as people could adjust for a while without keeping themselves entertained by watching movies. Minimum of 17,000 people and television freelancers lost their job as the activities of the film industry was stopped and the pandemic resulted in making a large number of people jobless.

Production houses are planning to open and follow various safety measures in a very slow manner as they don’t want to put the industry back in the hands of COVID. The production house industry has been affected by the shock created by the pandemic and still, they are taking actions to adapt to the situation as it is not safe yet to gather such a large crowd and continue shooting at different spots. Nobody is aware of what would happen in real-time if they had a massive outbreak while shooting and yet people just know that the consequences are really very bad and tough for people of different age groups to survive through it.

Many shows that are audience dependent were stopped and they did not see any future in that because all of a sudden everything was stopped and it was tough to coordinate such a huge cast and crew again. They might have been shooting in various locations depending on the situation in the script of the film. Different areas are affected in a different way by the outbreak of the pandemic and still, certain regions of different countries are under quarantine due to the second wave that originated recently. A lot of staff from the production side suffered a great loss and the situation forced many of them to quit their job and find an alternative way to make money.

The production house is planning to recreate certain important locations as set properties so that they can continue their work. It may not be that realistic as the original location. Still, the safety of every individual counts, and the government is very clear and keen not to put any life at risk especially for the purpose of entertainment. There were certain actors and directors who started their own production house in recent days and suffered huge losses. Production houses are planning to open and follow various safety measures in a very slow manner as they don’t want to put the industry back in the hands of COVID. JSR Productions are contributing a lot towards the fulfilment of the production industry and are also helping and keeping track of everyone who has worked with them. They are also following state of the art precautionary measures on set to keep everyone safe.

The film industry states that the safety of the cast, crew, and technicians is more important. A lot of people from the production side suffered a huge loss. They faced severe loss during the period of this pandemic. Still shooting of all the movies has been stopped for a while and now the whole industry is waiting for the government to approve their norms.