How has your company been impacted by concerns over the coronavirus–or the virus itself if a worker or client has been stricken–in terms of business, your staff, client relationships?
1) Harvest has certainly been impacted with the postponement of several productions. One shoot was postponed Friday, March 13th, 3 business days prior to shooting and one was postponed after scouting and casting had begun. Collectively, we were able to help navigate our agencies and clients towards postponement and get our one agency back to their families on the East Coast. We had all crew stop work and production for both teams helped wrap from home and when they came to Harvest, we were able to keep safe with social distancing and lots of disinfectant wipes. We postponed both productions until mid-April but of course that has been further postponed until mid-May. We’re keeping in contact with our agency producers and clients on when we all feel that we can resume business in a safe environment. That is our focus while our staff has been working from home. We’re on Day 21 in Los Angeles of mandatory “stay at home orders” except for essential items (i.e. food, banking, etc.) Our directors, Elizabeth Banks, Nicholas Schrunk and Baker Smith have led our postponed projects with an amazing spirit, keeping our crew, talent, agency and clients safe during these challenging times.
The well-being, health and safety of people is clearly top priority. What measures have you taken to protect your staff and collaborators during this challenging time?
We are all working from home and when I need to go to the office to sign checks, etc. we maintain a 6’ distance from each other and make sure in advance that none of us has a fever or any symptoms of being ill. We are in a blessed position to keep everyone employed as we figure out next steps. We’re sourcing different seamstresses in the L.A. area that are making masks and we’ll be sending those out to everyone once they’re complete.
How have you adapted your behavior, practices, policies, approaches, ways of thinking and doing business in response to the pandemic?
Honestly, we’ve been managing the shoots we have that are postponed and helping clients that have talent renewals, etc. coming up. We have been tasked with communicating what our capabilities are during this COVID-19 time and beyond letting people know that our directors could shoot in their home with what they have available to them in their immediate environments, our priority has been to keep everyone healthy and allow them the time to care for their families. That is a monumental task with school canceled, people with aged parents, grandparents, etc. It is time for us to spend these critical days and weeks in preparation for longer quarantines and making sure those that can’t get to the store are provided for. That has been our focus and that focus has left little time for us to engage on how to shoot content or facilitate work beyond our immediate social networking.
Were you in the midst of a particular project when the coronavirus outbreak hit and how did you manage to deal with that situation?
See above
What’s your biggest takeaway or lessons learned from your experience dealing with coronavirus concerns thus far?
Each day I have a different POV. Day 21 (today) is sad and I’m craving to hug my mom and/or a close friend. I miss sharing meals with people beyond my immediate family and having the freedom to go where I want when I want. Day 9 I was scared to go outside and Day 16 I felt OK after a long hike. Since then the authorities have closed all the beaches and the hiking trails and I’m hyper sensitive to everything in our lives being under intense control. I did plant a garden on Day 7. My biggest takeaway is being aware that I’m the type of person that rebels when someone tells me I can’t do something and my biggest lesson is to just ‘settle down’ and be grateful of ‘everything’ around me. I SUPPORT ALL OUR HEALTHCARE WORKERS AND MY MOM SO I STAY HOME.
What advice, if any, would you offer to your counterparts at other companies/agencies, your clients and collaborators?
The best advice I can give is don’t chase anything. Keep yourself grounded in a way that feels right for you and your company. Make smart choices about what serves ALL the people that surround you and make sure you’re geared up when things resolve. This will pass (at least that’s what Gov. Cuomo tells us each morning) and when it does we will be ready to create content that reflects what we’ve been through and feel proud that we were able to behave in a manner that fits our amazing community. The AICP has been stupendous these past couple of weeks by leading online forums for us to congregate via Zoom and give us access to each other and very interesting and knowledgeable professionals. I applaud the entire staff for their commitment and hard work in guiding us during these times.
It’s said that strength emerges from adversity. Do you see any silver lining or positive dynamic emerging for our industry/marketplace from this global health crisis?
I am the “glass is half full” kind of person so I believe that we will have a new found gratitude for the people we work with and the community at large. I hope that the content we produce stays aligned in that messaging and I hope clients will green light creative that speaks to what the world has gone through. I believe that our community of production companies will create some stellar content but we must stay true to our core values during this epic time in history. Not unlike death and taxes, we producers now have the weather AND global pandemics to add to the things we can’t control.
