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The Future of TV Briefing this week looks at how far digital video and commercial productions have come from the days of fully remote shoots.<\/span><\/p>\n Fifteen months after in-person shoots took a hiatus in the face of the coronavirus crisis, digital video and commercial productions still don\u2019t look entirely normal, but they\u2019re getting pretty close.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe have a couple upcoming shoots that are going to be in-person, and the shoots themselves are going to feel relatively normal,\u201d said Jack Foster, art director and film director at creative studio Stink Studios.<\/span><\/p>\n To be clear, \u201crelatively\u201d is doing a lot of work in that sentence. A producer time-traveling from 2019 would still not see today\u2019s commercial and digital video shoots as normal. Mask mandates, testing requirements and distancing measures remain in place, and they will likely continue to be a part of production at least through the end of 2021, said Dani Hiravy, head of production at creative agency Mustache. Compared to the projects being shot entirely remotely in spring of 2020, though, productions are approaching normalcy.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIf it\u2019s on a scale of 1 to 10 normal or not, we\u2019re at like an 8,\u201d said Gabriella Mangino, executive producer at food publisher Food52.<\/span><\/p>\n The key hits:<\/b><\/p>\n Digital video and commercial productions began their return to normal last summer. When companies initially resumed in-person shoots, they typically limited themselves to shooting outside and with less than a dozen \u2014 at times, less than a handful \u2014 people working on location. Since then, as coronavirus case numbers have dropped and vaccination rates have risen, they have eased toward shooting inside and expanding their crew sizes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe are doing maybe not large-scale [productions], but we\u2019ve got crew sizes exceeding 40 [people] at times,\u201d said Hiravy, noting that the agency continues to limit sets to only necessary cast and crew members. The average commercial project has 40 to 60 people working on set, she said.<\/span><\/p>\n The production return\u2019s latest phase is coming at an opportune time. Summer is typically a busy season for commercial shoots, and companies are already seeing brand activity pick up and even exceed pre-pandemic levels. Stink Studios is slated to have four to five projects going into production over the next few months, which is roughly double the number it had in production during the summer of 2019, Foster said.<\/span><\/p>\n For Food52, last year\u2019s shift to remote production has helped with the resumption of in-person shoots. The publisher developed and refined processes for being able to shoot in the homes of its shows\u2019 stars, like Sohla El-Waylly, Erin McDowell and Rick Martinez. So rather than having its stars return to shooting in its studio, which began reopening last summer, Food52 has continued to shoot in their homes with a limited number of crew members, such as a director and a couple people to manage lighting, IT and sound. That has enabled Food52 to produce more editorial videos \u2014 \u201cBefore with Sohla, we would only do one a day. Now we\u2019re up to three videos in a day with her,\u201d Mangino said \u2014 and has freed up Food52\u2019s studio for branded video productions.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOur brands partnership work has been scaling up, so it means we can do three shoots for brand partnerships every week. Previously it was like one day a week,\u201d said Mangino.<\/span><\/p>\n However, even as production ramps up, companies are taking care to not race toward risk. Many of the health and safety protocols put in place last year, particularly mask-wearing and testing requirements, continue to be a part of production, but that has enabled companies to relax some measures as government- and\/or industry-mandated restrictions lift.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t want to lighten up too much too soon, but the things we\u2019re lightening up on are putting multiple people in vehicles,\u201d said Adam Zimmer, executive producer for West Coast at production company Valiant Pictures.<\/span><\/p>\n Productions typically rent out 15-person passenger vans to transport cast and crew members to and from locations. Valiant Pictures had been limiting its vans to only carry two or three people but has started to allow a few more people in each van, said Zimmer. The company had also been limited its lunch tables to seating two people at a time to each six-foot table and has similarly expanded that to a few more people per table. As a result, Valiant Pictures does not need to rent out as many passenger vans and tables for shoots, which has lowered its production costs by 5% to 10% on average, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n\n