Coronavirus - Impact on live/recorded shows

There's some interesting stuff in this article about how entertainment producers in America are planning to return to production:

https://deadline.com/2020/06/return-to-reality-non-scripted-summer-production-restart-1202948388/

Lots of shows planning to return to production in July and August, including Love Island, with AGT hoping to film at the end of this month. It'll be interesting to see what that ends up looking like and how it could apply to the UK (both in terms of what works and also what doesn't).

There have been rumblings about table-seated audience for Strictly as a way of ensuring social distancing (though I suspect they'd still need people sitting at each table to be in their own 'bubble' and that could be very difficult to manage in reality)

The big issue is going to be setting and lighting if crew have to stay 2m separated, plus working on some equipment like Technocranes where some crew often need to be closer than that.

Plus the obvious hair, make-up and wardrobe challenges (fitting costumes would be challenging on a show like Strictly if wardrobe have to remain 2m from talent)

Testing is likely to be part of the solution I guess (as long as we have the capacity). It's going to be challenging for all TV production for sure.

A number of West End theatres appear to be abandoning any plans for performances this year entirely - as they don't think social distancing for an audience is feasible or financially viable AIUI.

Although they could downsize the Technocrane crew slightly from five to four - two grips swinging rather than three, one grip on the arm and a camera op on the head - and add the extension arms for swinging and you could have everyone 2m apart. This would reduce the amount they could swing and the speed, as well as reducing the access to the dancefloor for set pieces.

Rigging heavy moving lamps is another matter since, unless you are the Hulk, it is neither safe nor practical to hang them on your own. There are quite a few family lighting teams so perhaps that's a solution... probably not.

The difference there of course is they need the ticket sales to pay the wages, something Strictly doesn't have to worry about.

This is devastating though for the many people employed in the live performance industry.

Interestingly Motsi just said on Loose Women the German version continued throughout by isolating at a hotel, only ending a month ago.

Including one of the Golden Buzzer acts. The producers have a real headache to deal with there.

Could they quarantine the group acts? They put the contestants up in a hotel for the live week anyway, although I guess doing it for an additional fortnight in advance would cost a lot more and be harder to organise.

The international acts are another headache, will they be able to fly them over?

Bottle Yard in Bristol is reopening so I assume Tipping Point will resume filming next year’s series. It’ll be interesting to see if the show changes, I imagine they’ll be increase the distance between contestants as well as no handshakes or hugs by Ben at the end of the show.

They could always switch to three players like the celeb version and scrap the round 1 elimination.

I wonder if The Chase might to more family episodes initially as I think socially distancing a team of 4 strangers for the final Chase wouldn't really work. Not sure if they usually film The Family Chase with an audience or not with it being a primetime show, but it doesn't need one at all.

Really though with both shows they repeat so well they could probably hold off until sometime next year if they needed too. I guess both probably have new episodes in the can anyway as they've been on repeats pretty much since lockdown began when usually I think both would have new episodes through to the summer.

I think The Chase has plenty of episodes in the can because of Bradley's other commitments and the newer ones will feature the new Chaser so they're probably waiting until September to show those episodes.

It's probably worth noting that there is a high chance of the social distancing being reduced from 2m to 1m within the next few weeks. This will presumably have a lot of benefits behind the camera, as well as the visible on-screen differences.

You could have a reasonably sized audience with a 1m distance, but not really with a 2m distance. Presenters and contestants on shows are often around a metre apart, so things could look reasonably normal with that distance, people do look unnaturally separated at 2m.