Producing

Theater Strategy Post-Covid

I’ve been watching how theater and film productions have been coping with the pandemic (as you can see from June, July, and earlier in December). Safely producing new works is important not only considering my role in running Jabberwocky Audio Theater, but also thinking of my many colleagues whose livelihood requires being on stages and sets. So this article in Fortune, not my usual source for theater news, was an interesting read. Author Michael Barra…

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Various and Sundry

Bidding 2020 Adieu

Julie Nolke’s four-part time-travel series documenting 2020 has been great (links to part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 here). And Turner Classic Movies’ remembrances are great (even though they often make me verklempt). This year, I’ve delved into the briar patch that can be Reddit — and I have to admit, their video is pretty good: UPDATE: After debuting on their Twitter feed and via Facebook, TCM has finally put their annual…

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Various and Sundry

Pandemic Lockdown: CGP Grey Edition

Evidently I’ve hit a wall with binge-watching TV shows, as I find I’ve drifted into checking out various YouTube channels and their bite-size videos. That includes revisiting CGP Grey‘s obsessively researched, and always entertaining, videos. As probably comes as no surprise, he created a video about how to organize your lockdown life: And then he also did a follow up a couple months ago: Hey, I can’t be the only one who found this still…

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Various and Sundry

Movie Break – 2020 Edition

This was released back in April, but I feel like I could use it even more now, as there’s no end to the quarantining in sight here in the U.S. (also, I’m beginning to try and watch some “muse-see” films in prep for my biennial Favorite Films exercise). One of the things I love about the Cinefix videos is that they love rattling off any number of films in the run-up for the official Top…

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Producing

More on Getting Back to Set

Earlier this week, Cirque Du Soleil announced it was filing for bankruptcy and Broadway said it was going to be shuttered until January 2021. It’s grim for folks in the entertainment industry. Still people are trying to figure out how to get some productions back in gear, especially film and TV. Last week, I shared some guidance the film industry has been working on. This week, catching up on Scriptnotes, I heard their late May…

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Producing

Guidance for Filmmaking in a COVID World

Starting last Friday, Hollywood began starting to tentatively resume work since basically all major productions shut down. This does mean a fair number of changes, from face masks for audience members to ending buffet meals on set. The industry has created a pretty detailed white paper (note the link is a PDF) that covers recommended actions from personal hygiene to food on set to particular production concerns. For those of us that aren’t major studio…

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Producing Various and Sundry

Business, Heal Thyself

I know a lot of self-employed and small business folk who are hurting during this pandemic. And for my own business, we’ve needed to rethink how and what we’re doing. One of those entrepreneurial, self-employed friends, Russell Nohelty, wrote a post about how he retools his business… as he has done many times. It’s a non-trivial amount of time –especially if you haven’t done it before– and figuring out how to best attribute the costs…

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Acting Producing Writing

Theater in the Time of Coronavirus

All sorts of physical businesses are suffering during this global pandemic and I know many people, dependent on in-person gigs for their livelihood who now have no income stream (to say nothing of creative freelancers, as one Nation article notes). So this video posted last week by Joseph Haj, artistic director of the Guthrie Theater resonated: I was lucky enough to grow up going to the theater and live performances frequently, something I’ve tried to…

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