Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States. For a lot of people, that means eating so much turkey that they pass out on the couch due to excessive consumption of the amino acid tryptophan. For others, it means watching a parade on television while arguing with relatives about politics. But when I was a child, it meant watching movies all day long—Godzilla, The Wizard of Oz, King Kong, Laurel and Hardy films, you name it. So it’s kind of sad to reflect on the fact that as we reach Thanksgiving this year, the film industry has been massively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Film studios halted production for most of 2020 and have only recently begun working again, though the latest surge in cases threatens to shut it all down once more. Theaters are closing left and right, and those who work on film sets spent much of the year without a paycheck. Meanwhile, films like No Time to Die, Black Widow, and Wonder Woman 1984 have been sitting in the can and collecting dust—fully completed yet unable to be watched due to it being unsafe right now for people to occupy theater seats.
While enjoying my morning coffee today, I read an article published by The San Diego Union-Tribune explaining how one film company is successfully making a movie during the pandemic (see Commentary: We’re Making a Movie with a Crew of 500. Here’s How We’re Staying Safe.). As writer Jeronimo Bertrán explained in the article, RFID technology helped the cast and crew of the supernatural thriller Geechee, from director DuBois Ashong and producer Jamie Foxx, stay safe during production.
Bertrán, hired as the set’s COVID-19 supervisor, was tasked with coming up with tools and protocols that would enable the team to resume production on Geechee at Pinewood Studios’ facility in the Dominican Republic. Despite a limited budget, he needed to maintain efficiency so the studio could complete the project in a timely, cost-effective manner while still protecting everyone on the premises from contracting the coronavirus. RFID played an important role in achieving that goal.
“The film industry constantly faces new challenges, and the COVID-19 pandemic poses a particularly difficult one that needs to be overcome in a safe and efficient way,” Bertrán wrote. “This pandemic has upended the global film industry, halting most film production, and closing cinemas all around the world. In early March, it was predicted that the global box office could lose $5 billion because of the pandemic. The overwhelming feat of adapting and incorporating new technology to face these challenges head-on will be undertaken by filmmakers who are committed to continuing to make movie magic.”
The challenge was to enforce social distancing and provide contact tracing during production, and to minimize the number of people on set at any given time. A typical movie set can employ thousands, but for this production, that number was limited to around five hundred due to safety concerns. Making that happen was no easy feat, I’m sure. Studios have been losing money hand over fist, as filmmaking is an expensive venture and COVID-19 has been a particularly nasty obstacle. Keeping a set moving during an outbreak requires innovative thinking. But, then, innovation is at the heart of moviemaking, just as it is in the technology sector.
With a focus on adhering to the CDC’s safety and hygiene recommendations, Bertrán put in place strict protocols for the cast and crew to follow. This was vital, as the filmmakers needed to obtain approval from actor and labor unions before production could resume. To that end, his team deployed software to coordinate testing and monitor access control, and they provided contactless RFID cards to those on the set, which were read throughout the day as everyone went about their business.
The result? According to Bertrán, not a single person contracted the virus during filming, illustrating once again how vital a tool RFID and other Internet of Things technologies can be during a time of crisis. I look forward to someday going back to the cinema once I feel safe doing so again, though it may be a while. Maybe I’ll watch Geechee.
Rich Handley has been the managing editor of RFID Journal since 2005. Outside the RFID world, Rich has authored, edited or contributed to numerous books about pop culture.