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?
It all seemed to develop quite quickly and hit each of our offices (New York/Detroit/LA/Hamburg) with state/country mandated “Stay Home” orders at the same time. Luckily, our teams have the equipment needed to work from home easily. We also removed various pieces of equipment from our studios that would enable our composers, sound designers and mixers to set up makeshift studios at home. It took some time to get used to this new reality of mainly phone calls and video conferences, but the teams are finding their stride now. We have been a little nervous about a slowing of commercial content in general, but so far we are getting a healthy amount of music searches and new scoring projects in the door which we hope will continue.
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?
Before there were any mandatory stay at home orders, we decided early on to limit the number of people in the office and then quickly shifted to a full work from home in the days before the mandatory government orders. At this time we are only allowing people in the office one at a time for specialized work or to grab equipment. This is really reserved for aspects of our work that require a full studio setup. Otherwise we have advised that all teams work from home until further notice. The health of our staff is the #1 priority.
How have you adapted your behavior, practices, policies, approaches, ways of thinking and doing business in response to the pandemic?
Luckily for us, as a multi-studio organization, so much of the work we do between our offices is already online via web transfers, video chats and email. So, we are already well equipped to work in this type of environment. We have even been encouraging our clients to join us on video chats like GoogleHangouts/Skype/Zoom to give us all a sense that we are working closer together.
What’s your biggest takeaway or lessons learned from your experience dealing with coronavirus concerns thus far?
The biggest takeaway is that we have to take this new reality day by day. The situation is evolving quickly. It’s important to make proper preparations and plan out our agenda, but we have to be flexible enough, ready to change and accept that this situation is not going to have a clear path. Patience is a big part of the process and we are doing our best to navigate as the obstacles pop up. We have to have a plan A, B, C, D and E on a daily basis. There might even be a plan F on occasion.
What advice, if any, would you offer to your counterparts at other companies/agencies, your clients and collaborators?
We are all in this together. We have to make the most of this global situation and find better ways to work together and support each other. If anything, my hope is this will make us all stronger and more tolerant as a human race. We are going to learn a lot in these coming weeks and months, and the best thing we can do is to take note and learn. Going back to old ways will not help anyone. Let’s try to look at this as an opportunity to evolve society and make better decisions.
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?
We are certainly all going to learn how to use video conferencing services much more easily now. As a person who finds themselves on an airplane just about every other week traveling around the globe and dealing with various time zones, I have been able to find a working routine to get things done while on the road. Now that my wings are clipped, this is really no different. There is a learning curve to working remotely or from home. I think this is going to enable people to be very flexible in the way they work and collaborate around the globe. And hopefully in the long run, make things easier for all of us.
