This is substantiated by Producer D, who theorised that the quality could have been affected if there was a need to save money as a result from a production stop: “if we had to stop in the middle of a production, then you probably would have to save some money and that will damage the quality” (PD, 2021).
Although Producer C fundamentally disagreed with other producers and executives concerning the impact on quality, the analysis has shown that this seemingly is not due to differences in subjective perceptions, but rather to opposing methods of dealing with the extra expenses. More precisely, Producer F elaborated that “we just had to overspend on the production. So, it doesn’t take away [from the quality], it’s not like I say to the director ‘Now you have to save 1.5 million Crowns. But maybe some of the smaller companies would have to do that, I don’t know” (PF, 2021). He further explained that “we geared up on the whole safety apparatus around the crew and the cast and brought in more makeup people, brought in more cars. So, we tried to keep up the pace to give the director the same amount of time that he would have had anyways” (ibid.).
It can be recognised that Producer F’s approach could pose problematic for smaller independent film production companies, since they may not possess the financial stability to simply overspend by such a significant amount. This was substantiated by Producer A, who explained, when talking about the extra expenses arising from COVID regulations, that “you have to pay in advance for a shoot and you don’t have the money. This means that you have a cashflow problem and have to take out loans” (PA, 2021). Furthermore, by acknowledging the lengths Producer F took in order to ensure that the quality was not affected negatively, it can be recognised that, for him, achieving ambidexterity most likely favoured creative considerations:
“I think that the quality hasn’t gone down, but it has taken a lot of money and effort. Because […] the season has changed before they could shoot, so, they were doing Winter in Midsummer.
But again, we have the resources to make the scene so that you will not notice that they have been shot in another place. We built their own set once again and all these things” (PF, 2021).
Overall, the data analysis has indicated that both, creative and quality concerns, may restrict the adaptability and flexibility in the industry in times of adversity.
incredible uncertainty regarding who will cover the additional costs arising both from the government-imposed lockdowns and the compliance with regulations. Second, because of the nature of film projects as temporary organisation between several independent entities, reaching agreements on how to handle and ensure a potential production restart was imperative.
4.3.1 The Issue of Additional Expenses
The issues regarding the additional costs arose because existing contingency insurances, which, as aforementioned, are a centrepiece of any film production, did not cover any COVID-related issues. Producer E mentioned that normally “the production always has insurance that, if you’re the actor and get a blue eye for some reason, we can call it and we can break for a week until your eye heals and then we keep on shooting. But COVID was an exception. So, you wouldn't get an insurance if you had a corporate shut down” (PF, 2021). As a matter of fact, Executive C remembered that his insurance company quickly clarified that they would not be covering anything COVID related: “I think the day after the lockdown, we got an email from our insurance broker saying, ‘Just to be 100% clear, your insurance is not covering any of this’” (EC, 2021). Similarly, Producer B, explained that “I think from the beginning we knew that there was not much we could do about insurance because COVID will not be taken into account in terms of insurance” (PB, 2021). According to Producer A, this issue was the most critical, because in every other case “[where] I can’t shoot for two weeks because an actor is ill, […] as long as you somehow behave normally take damage-reducing measures, it will be paid for. Everything. All additional expenses” (PA, 2021). As a result, there was an overwhelming lack of clarity regarding who will be covering these extra costs. Executive C elaborated on this issue by stating “you know, all the film workers want their salary anyway because they’ve been booked for this job. Same goes for the actors and everybody, but you haven’t shot anything, so, you have to pay them again when you open up. So, I think the main thing was, who’s going to take that bill?” (EC, 2020). “Is it the film institute, the broadcaster or whoever? […] or are we going to take it out of what we should have made on future projects or do we get some extra funding form the state to cover this?” (ibid.). The situation was further aggravated by the overheads that were incurred as part of the safety measures employed to comply with government regulations. More precisely, as illustrated by the case of Producer D, postponing the production alone “cost around 1.5 million Danish Crowns. […] And then on top of that, on this production of [their TV series], we have approximately expenses around 1 million Danish Crowns in terms of COVID-19, security, tests, nurses on set [etc.]” (PD, 2021).
Producer C mentioned that on his production, the safety measures incurred “an additional cost of around €40,000 just for that small production, and we were only shooting for four weeks.
That’s a lot of money on a small production in that sense” (PC, 2021). According to Producer A, the biggest challenge was finding a way productions could be continued amidst this cost issue: “because either everything stands still and nobody shoots or there is a way to cover the risk somehow with some means that you can still somehow think about shooting again” (PA, 2021).
Producer D and Producer B mentioned that in the case of TV series, the issue was rather straightforward. This is because unlike for feature films, the financing structures are less elaborate since “if you do a series for a streamer, then you make a profit from producing it, but then you don’t have any rights. […] It’s more like doing a commercial, I mean, you make your money from the production, but afterwards, you have no right to the product” (PF, 2021).
Therefore, it can be recognised that the broadcaster or streamer may potentially be the sole investor and may even commission the product. This is reinforced by Producer C: “you can go to one of the public broadcasting companies and get your advance there or some of the streaming services” (PC, 2021). While Executive A mentioned that for corporate filmmakers, the extra costs were born by the customers, for whom “it [did] not matter if they have to pay 20% more, if they’re able to actually communicate in a pandemic” (EA, 2021), it was not as simple concerning TV series. However, as Producer B and Producer D emphasised, initiating the dialogue with your broadcasting partner was often sufficient in such cases. [It] is an extra cost we have paid and we have asked the television station involved to also pay their share, what they have agreed to, according to what I know” (PD, 2021). “We have a really good conversation with the broadcaster about how to handle this and they have been very open to say ‘OK, it’s also us asking for this production in Christmas, we will help you.’ So, it’s not that we’re bearing all these costs ourselves” (PB, 2021). Also, Executive E explained that they accumulated overheads of €3,000,000 and “we’ve financed that partly through the broadcasters, partly through the Norwegian Film Institute and partly by putting in extra funds ourselves” (ED, 2021). Based on her answer, it can be recognised that government support packages played an essential role in mitigating financial consequences, as they did for many other industries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, it correlates with the understanding of the European film industry being inherently dependent on state support as highlighted by Murschetz et al. (2018).
However, as already hinted at, for feature film productions, the situation was a lot more complicated. Producer A explained that in Switzerland, “a few producers who were super directly affected, like me” and film lawyers created a Corona Taskforce to engage in conversation with film funds to tackle this problem (PA, 2021). The situation becomes increasingly more difficult because there are a lot more institutions involved in feature film financing. Alone for Producer A’s production in Hungary, the investor pool consisted of a television station, a local film foundation, the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, as well as private investors (ibid.). Therefore, unsurprisingly, finding a solution was difficult: “of course, I also approached our funding partners […] and talked to them bilaterally, and talked, and talked and of course we couldn’t find solutions bilaterally because it had to work for everybody” (PA, 2021). As a result, these productions often relied on government remedies, which, at times, may already be a patron of the production through public film institutes. “I remember what we got from the film institute was around 5,000,000 Danish Kroner, and as I recall, we got 130 extra for Corona” (EC, 2021). “I think they tried to get some additional support from the film institute and I think the claim there was around 3,000,000 Danish Crowns for the closure” (PF, 2021).
Similarly, Producer A mentioned that the additional costs had been covered by such subsidies (PA, 2021). Producer E implied that the earlier such state guarantees were introduced, the better, the industry responded to the crisis. More precisely, he mentioned that “in France, I think they've finished over 300 productions during the pandemic” which he attributed to the fact that
“[Germany and France] put up government guarantees like, I think, after a month or two that any production that couldn't afford to pay for a shutdown or a production insurance for COVID would have a guarantee from the government or from the EU in case of lockdowns”, while “in Norway, that didn’t come up until six months into the pandemic” (PE, 2021).
4.3.2 Enabling a Production Restart
Building on Executive D’s aforementioned declaration of a general lack of rules governing anything COVID-19 related, it can be recognised that the second issue that is necessitating collaboration between various stakeholders, was determining how a production restart should be handled. The interdependence is implied by heavily publicised incidents of actors on hit series, such as The Big Bang Theory or Friends, delaying productions amid stalling salary negotiations (BBC, 2014; Lowry, 1996). Therefore, due to film productions relying on the cooperation of a variety of specialised personnel with potentially neither past nor future affiliations, a failure to agree on how the work should be carried out could prove to be
disastrous. This is substantiated by Producer A, who elaborated that “[there were] around 10,000 things” that needed to be resolved “down to the smallest detail”, ranging from topics such as “How many people can be transported in a minivan?” to “How do you do catering?”
(PA, 2021). Another imperative concern was the handling of the contractual situations in case of a shutdown (EC, 2021) or a COVID-mandated isolation period (PB, 2021). Producer F, who represents his company within the producer’s association, explained that “we started negotiating with the actors and with the film pros about getting specific COVID clauses into contracts that would make it easier for the producers to initiate a new production. I mean, to lower the risk if we initiated a new production, so that everybody could contribute to a continuous production” (PF, 2021). According to him, the main objective was to “encourage the producers to keep on trying to start productions” (PF, 2021). The fact that such agreements were reached, can be attributed to the overreaching interdependence within the industry, summarised by Producer E as “if we do not shoot, we’re all out of work” (PE, 2021). He further explained how this was the general feeling since even “the actor agents [who] are usually […]
quite a pain in the ass […] came through and were really flexible with their clients and trying just to work it out somehow” (PE, 2021). For Producer C the fact that “[these unions] found some sort of middle-ground where they can meet and have some sort of agreement that if anything would happened to the production, we could freeze it from that day, give the guys and girls their salaries and then continue for a lesser salary in the end”, was essential in “trying to keep things happening and wheels turning and stuff like that” (PC, 2021). Additionally, the research showed that, aside from ensuring these agreement on how to handle COVID-related issues financially, the producer’s association even served as contact point regarding new regulations: “every single time with these we […] had to go back to the producer’s association to make sure that we can still work, that we’re not a part of whatever it is, we’re not in that category, [that] we can still work” (ibid.). While Producer A confirmed that clarifying the rules amidst this uncertainty was handled similarly in Switzerland, where this was dealt with by
“[the] Corona Taskforce along with the film technician associations” (PA, 2021), Executive D explained that for her productions it had to be handled differently, since “there were no agreements between the organisations in Norway” (ED, 2021). She emphasised that this, in fact, complicated matters as it required “a lot of negotiations directly with each individual or their agents or their organisations” (ED, 2021). Therefore, it is not surprising that “it has been a massive amount of work to get the agreements in place” (ibid.), considering the fact that, for
example, in Producer A’s feature film production “at least 250 people were involved, if not more with all the suppliers” (PA, 2021). However, regardless of how the uncertainty regarding the restart was resolved, it can be recognised that the cooperation of several stakeholders was a precondition, which highlights the contextual embeddedness of film productions. Producer E even added that “there was a lot of cooperation”, not just between the unions but in general, and recalled an incident where he helped out a fellow producer to do some extra shoots while they already shipped their equipment back home and explained “It came down to practicalities, I think, really fast” (PE, 2021).
5 Discussion
The objective of this thesis was to determine how resilience manifests itself in the film industry’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and whether the industry could be classified as resilient. In addition to that, the aim was to elaborate on resilience in the context of temporary organisations and if constant exposure to uncertainty facilitates coping with unanticipated events that cannot be prepared for. This chapter is structured as such that first the proposed research question will be discussed in relation to the aforementioned findings. In doing so, the extent to which the film industry can be considered resilient is highlighted, while it simultaneously is emphasised how resilience in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic became manifest. Subsequently, the theorisation of two distinct but interrelated levels of resilience is suggested based on the contextual embeddedness of temporary organisations. Finally, some practical implications are addressed.