BTS: Covid tried to derail our shoot.
Good ol Covid 19.
That’s about all there is to say when it comes to the current crazy outbreak. It seems like everyone who’d been avoiding it until this point was no longer able to hide. My family included. Normally that’s not the biggest deal as a lot of what we do at AV Collective is editing and that can be done from anywhere. BUT. This positive test came… 1 day before I was supposed to leave for a big 2 day shoot out of town. So here’s a little behind the scenes look at how we pivoted and how it all played out.
About 2 weeks before Christmas I had a discovery call with a client. They wanted to do some filming, and edit together 12 videos. I had a rough idea of their budget, and I knew what this was going to cost. So after going through everything, I sent them the estimate expecting it to be rejected and that would be that. But they were good with it, and we were moving forward. Only caveat was everyone was going to be out of the office in the 10 days leading up to the shoot. We like challenges, so we got started.
It was a lot of long nights of shot lists and call sheets and tracking down locations, a last minute request to add talent, booking crafty, all that fun stuff. But just as it all locked into place and we were a few days out from the shoot… a local PA tested positive for Covid. Our team was traveling for the shoot, but I like to book a local PA so someone is more familiar with where we are at. His positive test got me thinking that with everything going on, if I were to go down with Covid, we were stuck. So I quickly got working.
The joy of doing what we do, when we do it, is that there are a lot of resources, message boards, referrals, subreddits, etc so I reached out to the network and found a couple of options for companies available for a shoot that was literally 72 hours away. Good thing too, because the next morning, I got a positive test result.
Some might argue that doing a shoot like this during a massive outbreak of Covid, the day after a snow storm (did I not mention the city got 6”+ of snow they’re not used to getting) isn’t the most responsible thing. But I would say to those people that with planning and precautions in place, it’s still possible to execute at the top levels and get stuff done for your clients. By having a plan, when things went sideways it was a few calls and texts to get it resolved. And by encouraging regular testing and safety practices, we caught things before they got to set.
While I’m not there in person, I’m able to remotely check in on the shoot and handle anything from the production and planning end that might come up. We’ll get a hard drive in a few days and the project will continue as if nothing had gone sideways. Keeping the client happy and delivering quality work.
