The New Normal
Everything has changed and nothing has changed. That would be one way to describe the current situation at Sparkly Light, as I write this, in the opening weeks of 2021. This time last year we were working through a relatively quiet January and looking forward to the work booked over the coming weeks and months. Like everyone else, little did we know how those plans were going to change.
A January live stream from Buckingham Palace seemed like business as usual but by February and a CBeebies OB in York, the city where coronavirus was first identified in the UK, social distancing and being Covid safe had definitely started. In early March, armed with only hand sanitiser and being told to take no more precaution than to avoid shaking people's hands, we found ourselves as planned at Shakespeare's Globe in central London, getting ready to film their Playing Shakespeare production of Romeo and Juliet. Thinking about it evokes strange emotions. Conditioned as we are to social distancing, the closeness of everybody in that theatre might now shock us and be enough to make our hands sweat. As usual our team was rammed in close to seated audience members while in the yard in front of the stage hundreds of people gathered and jostled together, sneezing and coughing in the chill March air. Yet I also feel a sense of sadness looking back (only 10 months ago but it feels like a different era). Travelling to the theatre on public transport, setting up our cameras, having a lunch in a bustling cafe, seeing the joy and excitement of a group of strangers gathered together, sharing an experience... all those memories now feel like they belong not only to a different time, but also to a different place, one that feels alien to the world in which we are now living. That was the last old 'normal' filming job we did. A few weeks later lockdown was upon us all..
As months of our work began to be cancelled, like so many companies, not just in the film and TV industry but across many sectors, we wondered how we were going to cope and how we would have to adapt. Tentative answers began to suggest themselves not long after the first national lockdown had started. We were commissioned to make a series of films for the BBC about museum exhibitions in lockdown (Museums from Home). At first we had little idea how we were meant to be able to do this successfully without actually filming the exhibitions (which the lockdown prevented us from doing). Yet, by using only existing stills and some pre-recorded footage, we created compelling, entertaining films that gave a sense of the exhibits people were no longer allowed to visit. In normal circumstances we would never have made the films this way - yet interestingly the resulting films were not any the worse. They may, in some ways, have actually been better.
We also found new work because of the lockdown. For example, we worked with Immarsat and their agency Ogilvy in late April, filming at a London studio for a live streamed event. Social distancing regulations meant that an already logistically demanding project had a greater share of challenges than usual (not to mention having to get used to wearing a face mask all day for the first time!) but we and everyone involved managed to adapt and produce over seven hours of live content that was viewed globally by the aviation industry.
Despite the uncertainty running through the industry, we, like many companies, simply had to adjust to the new situation and continue. The BBC, for example, found ways to make it's established programmes (albeit with some key differences!) which meant that Glenn found himself spending several days in May directing The Adventure Show in Scotland.
One of the memorable projects we undertook during the summer was broadcasting a live stream of The Oxford Choral. This was our first experience of delivering a professional broadcast designed around standard video conferencing software (in this case, the ubiquitous star of lockdown - Zoom). Our initial worry and indeed mild scepticism that Zoom would work as required turned into quiet admiration. Zoom proved to be far more versatile than we expected and adaptable beyond the normal needs it was designed for.
The remainder of the summer was quieter than usual. We would have been at the Farnborough Air Show, which, like most large, busy events had been cancelled. Similarly, our June trip to Cannes for the International Festival of Creativity was cancelled as was a live Opera for the Royal Opera House and our work on the 2020 Proms. As summer progressed, the national lockdown had lifted but social distancing measures were still in force. By this stage, several months since the start of the pandemic, we were actually starting to get used to the new measures...
Before the summer combusted into the fiery hues of an unseasonably warm autumn, Ian directed One Man and his Dog while Glenn was stuck on holiday in France because of a last-minute regulation change! Strength in numbers was always part of the plan we made with the BBC. After the uncertain start, a new confidence was beginning to grow as we tackled programmes and jobs in what was now beginning to feel like familiar ways. A new normal had begun to arise and settle over us, pushing the way we worked only a few months ago into what felt like the distant past.
With our confidence refreshed, Glenn directed some of the Covid-safe live episodes of AutumnWatch while Ian and I tackled setting up a socially distanced green screen set for the BBC's Ten Pieces. Glenn then approached the familiar role of producing the new season of The Adventure Show, from the unfamiliar position of having to do it all from home - given the subject matter, an irony that wasn't lost on him!
As the year drew to a close and we once more had to live under the darkening shadows of both shorter days and a resurgent virus, we again worked on several live streamed events that took us across the country and were watched across the world. More filming with Ogilvy/Immarsat, advising The Kendal Mountain Festival how to set up their first ever live stream event and helping to produce a global feed for the 2020 Booker Prize from London's Roundhouse. The experiences and techniques we had learned on previous jobs throughout the year proved invaluable in ensuring that all these new live shows were a success.
That doesn't mean that everything we worked on was easy or smooth to produce. The projects still offered unique challenges that required dexterous thinking if they were to deliver what audiences expected. Ian's final job of the year, directing the Carol Service from King's College, Cambridge, presented just such a situation, where social distancing and positive testing drastically changed the production. This required calm and rapid re- planning in order to adapt to a situation that was constantly evolving. Indeed, it seems like many familiar productions on TV have risen to similar challenges and delivered content that should make every person involved incredibly proud.
As 2020 turned into 2021 and events around the world took an even darker turn, it has given us time to reflect on both the past year and on what the future holds. Everything has changed in ways we couldn't have expected; yet everything has remained the same in that content still needs to be made and we are still here to help ensure creatives and companies achieve their visions, all with an added sparkle of quality and originality.
Yet we also count ourselves incredibly lucky to have been able to continue working throughout the past year when far too many others have been less fortunate. There were points where our bookings looked worryingly bare, but with a degree of luck and an adaptability to new working methods, we were able to find work that helped to keep us afloat. A potential benefit of the pandemic and all the changes that have come in it's wake is that while some traditional work has dried up, a world of live streaming and remote operating has arrived that presents a host of new, fresh opportunities.
We hope to continue such work but still wonder sometimes what's in store? It is hard not to believe that a preference for live streaming will remain as the pandemic subsides; already growing in prevalence before COVID-19, it's importance and usefulness can now only have been cemented across many thousands of companies.
Traditional filming will also return and there is no doubt that it will feel just as strange to not be wearing masks and once again to be able to shake hands as it did when we first had to adhere to social distancing rules. For myself, I look fondly back on that day at Shakespeare's Globe in March 2020 not just with the warm nostalgia of recalling a time seemingly gone, but because I can use those memories to envisage a future that contains so many creative possibilities.Till we're all back to normal, stay safe and let us look forward to this dark winter ending and the light of summer that is once again approaching.
