How Coronavirus Has Affected The Movie Production Industry

In a world that business and politics are somehow the rulers of society, a virus has changed everything. Coronavirus or Covid-19 that has started its journey from China and now lives in more than 120 countries, has forced everyone to quarantine themselves. As the virus has no limit, it’s changing our limits and plans about everything containing businesses, social activities and our lifestyle.

As the virus keeps people from going out into public, many festivals and film releases got canceled or had low attendees. In this realm, the biggest one is the cancelation of the Cannes film festival as the result of the country’s lockdown for the spread of the virus in France.

It’s a very rare occasion that an issue becomes so important that major events like Cannas, E3 the greatest game event in the world, Coachella, and NAB got canceled(NAB event is still undecided about having an online event) and some important events like Adobe Summit will be held online. The problem is that some events like SXSW are so important that canceling it will be a great hit to the economy of the city they held in which in the SXSW case, is Austin, Texas. A festival that gathers some of the brightest creators of music, film, TV, and technology to help the city grow financially.

On the other hand, the Mobile World Congress (MWC) conference in Barcelona, which contains companies like Sony, Amazon, Nvidia, LG Electronics, ZTE, and Ericsson has been decided to be canceled. As WHO states, Coronavirus is a global pandemic that must be taken seriously. This is why as time passes the number of countries that go into lockdown is increasing and governments ask people to stay at home as long as they can.

It’s not just festivals and cultural events that are shot down. There are also popular movies that we should wait for longer than we expected. Among all the upcoming movies in the world, the most important film releases that have been changed are Disney’s Mulan, The New Mutants, and Antlers that’s been canceled without any further date. The new James Bond movie called No Time to Die, that’s been delayed to late November.

Peter Rabbit 2 from Sony is scheduled for August. The latest movie of the famous Fast and Furious franchise, that is going to be held next year on April 2.

As the virus grows, it makes government officials ban every kind of event that includes gathering audiences. In the United States, many popular shows like The Tonight Show, Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and Daily Show from Comedy Central, are suspended as the presence of the audience would be risky.

Change in the Workflow

But one positive result of all this mess is that now the industry is relying more on some technologies like online video review and collaboration platforms like Postpace.io, which is designed for bringing production and post closer on tasks like file transfer and storage. And also acts as an online virtual post-production house for all the post-production team members to collaborate, review, and provide feedback on the film, simple and fast. And the coronavirus pandemic is bringing up such platforms and technologies due to the situation we deal with in the world, and this is becoming a catalyst for change in the film industry.

In Seattle, Facebook encourages its employees to work from home as one of the employees had contracted the virus so the rest of the employees should stay at home at least for the incubation time as well as stopping new orders for its latest Oculus Quest VR headset.

As three Amazon employees have been infected by the virus so far, the company did the same thing in its Seattle and Bellevue, Washington headquarters with near 50,000 employees and allowed them to work from home if it is possible.

Many important stores owned by companies like Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, and Tesla, have been closed throughout China to protect their employees and prevent their stores from being a risk for public health. Google which shows extra care on the issue, has even closed its offices in nearby Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as China while the closure of Foxconn and Pegatron, as the producers of iPhones and AirPods, will stop the supply chain for these popular products.

So All in all, everything in the world is now affected by the fear that the Covid-19, a semi-deadly virus has created. Every business from businesses in the video industry to cultural institutions like New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to airlines and travel agencies is going to have a hard time. Some believe that the crises of the Coronavirus will turn into global financial crises. A crisis that may change the position of financial power in the world.

What’s clear to all of us is to stay home for our health, and try to find new ways to conduct our businesses. Maybe it’s time to work in safer ways like new online collaboration platforms for the video industry to collaborate on our videos without physical presence. So let’s stay creative AND healthy!