By Wendy Mitchell
During the Scandinavian Films webinar on June 22, Pandemic Production: Lessons Learned in the Nordics, producers, filmmakers and executives discussed lessons learned and best practices in restarting film shoots during the pandemic, working across all kinds of shoots and budget levels.
Lars Bredo Rahbek, head of production at SF Studios Denmark, has two features shooting now: Charlotte Sieling’s Margrete - Queen of the North and Bille August’s The Pact. Margrete is a very large pan-Nordic production – originally budgeted at about €9m and with another €1.2m added for COVID measures (they are hoping to finance part of that surplus budget through the Danish Film Institute). The shoot brings together crew from 9 countries, and can have as many as 150 people on set per day. The production, currently based near Prague, was shut down on March 12 before resuming on June 15.
Rahbek said, “All decisions we have taken were evaluated from these three vantage points: To always keep cast and crew safe; To keep our investors’ money safe; And to always take into consideration the human factor. Because one thing would be for countries to decide to take themselves out of lockdown allowing us to shoot, but another thing would be how to handle individual anxieties and take these seriously.”
Each cast and crew member was tested for the virus twice before coming to the Czech Republic, and everyone is temperature checked on arrival at set every day. One actor tested positive for COVID but luckily was clear of the virus just a few days later. They have instituted colour-coded teams within the crew and diligently disinfect the set as well as all the period costumes.
He said paying for all the testing was one huge cost, as was transport (especially because most commercial flights weren’t running regularly).
Aage Aaberge, producer at Nordisk Film Norway, is currently in production near Oslo for Narvik, the World War 2 epic directed by Erik Skjoldbjærg. They had to significantly change the film’s shooting schedule—the film had been slated to shoot the rest of the summer to be readied for a Christmas 2020 release. That release is pushed back a year, to give the crew time to shoot the bigger war scenes (also needing snow) starting in April 2021. They were able to renegotiate some terms of their insurance with Hiscox. “We had 10 weeks of shutdown,” Aaberge said. “This is an extreme situation but we did a lot of things to secure the shooting, first we had to wait from week to week to see when we could start up again, against the risk of one of our own getting infected. And we had to see if we could finance the extra costs – we got the positive signals that the Norwegian Film Institute would help with 65% of the extra costs. And we had to figure out how to shoot in a safe way. Health was the first priority.”
Sara Young, writer/director of Most Unwanted, was able to keep her smaller, lower-budget action comedy in production even in March, because Sweden never totally locked down. She had to make changes day to day and used a “guerilla” spirit. “We were constantly rearranging and being very very flexible, changing locations,” she explained. She noted that most of her cast and crew was young and there was rarely more than 12 people on set. And “we used a lot of hand sanitizer.” Some members of the crew came down with a feverish illness during production, and without COVID tests available in early March, they would all sit out from work, and the rest of the crew, even interns, would step in to help with their roles.
Young added, “I think for me as a director, the most stressful part is the part where you couldn't go close to each other, and you have to give directions from a distance. You could feel that somebody was stressed out, and I couldn't put a hand on somebody's shoulder.” The silver lining was that most actors weren’t working in March, so she could call in some bigger names for cameos.
Nina Laurio, producer at Dionysos Films in Finland, is currently shooting 70 is Just a Number, a heartwarming comedy about an older woman. Thankfully they were able to shoot all of the scenes in senior homes before the lockdown. They had to make some of their own rules. “There are general rules from the government, but also we made up our own instructions, based on our government rules and the few industrial rules, we also adding what we saw in Norwegian guidelines and elsewhere.” She noted that every day the producers would look at the number of COVID cases near where they were shooting. “The biggest challenge is to keep the set and environment safe, so that we could eliminate the risk of infections,” she added.
They tried to rotate crew and on off set so not everybody is on set at the same time. A scene planned with 300 extras was rejigged to include 20 actors and more filled in digitally in post. Laurio estimated the film’s budget had risen just 5% with extra COVID-related costs, mostly because of extra staff or extra hours.
Kristinn Thordarson, head of production at Truenorth in Iceland, said as of June 15, Iceland’s border is opened, and the government tests everyone coming into the country. Even back in late April, Baltasar Kormakur had safely resumed shooting his Netflix series Katla near Reykjavik.
“It’s now getting more back to normal,” Thordarson said of shooting in Iceland. “But we still have special personnel checking on everyone [on sets].” He noted that one big US studio project is already planning on coming to Iceland to shoot in the autumn, and the country is now open for business, also for smaller shoots. Since Netflix announced on April 21 that Iceland was one of the only places in the world it was safely shooting, Thordarson said, “the phone has been ringing off the hook, since spring in terms of foreign production. We're definitely seeing a huge spike upwards in interest.”
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