The week when we made COVID contingency plans
Last Friday night, we premiered our first #42SecondShorts film. "Okay" offers a glimpse into the life of Jenny as she confronts her deepest fear—ordering over the phone. If you haven't had an opportunity yet, check out the microshort, and let us know what you think!
Over the holiday weekend, we also started pre-production for our second series. Like most things right now, filmmaking in a pandemic has presented its challenges. After waking up to headlines announcing more COVID-related production shutdowns and whispers of March-reminiscent stay-at-home orders in California and elsewhere, we're trying to be even more diligent about maintaining low on-set numbers and proper social distancing guidelines.
We've already started thinking of the "what-if" scenarios—what if Delaware follows California's nod and return to springtime's lockdown rules? Even though we've already stripped production needs down to its bare essentials, what if we had to roll back even more or shut down entirely?
Because of that, the writing process has been interesting. I've been careful to get comfortable with concepts and storylines—not plots or characters—in case the two-person scene has to be cut down to one, changed in format, or scrapped entirely.
Not going to lie—it's added another level of difficulty, but I think it's been a good challenge. Sometimes, creativity needs to be pushed up against a wall to have room to grow.
Planning for the unknown
Quarantine restrictions have forced us to rebel against our standard, linear instincts and explore the projects more abstractly than we would have if we were doing this during "normal times." I hate to put it in writing in case anything changes, but we've even been experimenting with different mediums—like stop motion—for a few of these projects.
As it stands, we have a production day scheduled next week, and then we'll probably take a break of in-person production until after the holidays. Of course, it all depends on the numbers and what Delaware's governor does, but we'll continue to operate as planned until we can't anymore.
I'm not too keen about putting our #42SecondShorts on pause when it's still in its infancy, but I have to recognize that filmmaking is so insignificant in the grand scheme of thing and not worth putting anyone in an unsafe or uncomfortable situation.
How things have changed
It's wild to think that, just a year ago, our biggest concerns were about how many pages we could get through that day or if we ordered enough coffee. Masks and face shields and—let's be honest—hand sanitizer were foreign concepts.
We'll stay flexible and, in the meantime, hope for a day in the hopefully not-too-distant future where we'll all be safe and healthy and can do what we love without these 2020-branded fears.
I'll be working solo for the rest of this week, wrapping up the final edits on our second microshort, "Woman." It premieres Friday at 7:00 p.m. EST on TikTok and Instagram, so be sure to follow us to catch it when it goes live.
Stay well!
- J