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?
Our company was in the middle of prep on a national ad campaign and a television project, both of which were shut down. Like most other production companies, a number of projects that we were bidding have been put on hold as well. While none of our staff have been directly impacted by the virus, some of their family members that live on the mainland have tested positive for the virus.
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?
At this time all of our staff are working remotely finishing up projects, bidding new work and preparing for, what we hope, will be a strong return of production to Hawaii in the coming months. The ability to communicate visually (Zoom, FaceTime, etc.) and to edit remotely have allowed our company to keep working, albeit at a much slower pace.
How have you adapted your behavior, practices, policies, approaches, ways of thinking and doing business in response to the pandemic?
For us, like most, this Pandemic has given us time to re-evaluate how and why we do what we do. Maybe this will guide us to do more of “what we like” and less of “what we don’t like” in the future. Or maybe we will be back to hair-on-fire production schedules. Probably both.
Were you in the midst of a particular project when the coronavirus outbreak hit and how did you manage to deal with that situation?
We were in prep on a movie for a major cable network which would have been a great project for our local crew, many of which were on hiatus from Hawaii 5-0 and Magnum P-I. The network put the project on hold on March 13 and we went through the process of wrapping things up with the goal of returning to production in the next few months.
What’s your biggest takeaway or lessons learned from your experience dealing with coronavirus concerns thus far?
Well, we certainly seems to have taken a lot of things for granted, both as a production community and as citizens. Hopefully we will learn from this experience in a way that benefits our industry and our world.
What advice, if any, would you offer to your counterparts at other companies/agencies, your clients and collaborators?
We have made it a priority to pay all of our vendors for goods and services provided to date. That way, when things turn around, our vendors will be more likely to be in business to support us and our customers. When the larger companies don’t pay the smaller companies it weakens the foundation of our industry.
Contingency plans have been prepared by many in light of the situation. Please share any aspects of those plans or tell us how your short and long-term business plans have been affected.
Our contingency plan is that we are going to get through this crisis (i.e. there is no plan B). In the meantime we are reducing our expenses, applying to various grant and loan programs, and continuing to develop and bid future projects for Hawaii.
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 think a silver lining may be that we will continue to move away from the use of independent contractors/1099 workers in our industry. When we try to cut corners to reduce budgets to meet client/agency demands, we do so at the expense of these crew people, our friends and colleagues. Lack of health insurance, workers compensation insurance and unemployment insurance is a poor foundation on which to build an industry for the future.
Have you deployed your company’s creative and communication skills to address the pandemic (PSAs, educational videos, other initiatives)? Please tell us about these efforts.
Workin’ on it (go Joe)!
