IMPACT Creative Talks: 'Shooting will resume, but with greater care & cost'

After Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and few others from the TV and film fraternity contracted coronavirus, questions have been raised on whether it is safe for production houses to operate even with restrictions. Abhishek Bachchan testing positive for the virus has affected many shoots as the studio where he dubbed for his web series during the period has been shut.

In this episode of IMPACT Creative Talks, a panel of experts from both advertising and entertainment industry came together to discuss the topic 'Kabhi Health Kabhi Wealth: Ad Shoot Dilemma', to explore how the slowdown in production will continue to affect the ad industry and what can be the way forward to ensure the ad/film production industry doesn't suffer.

Moderated by Neeta Nair, Assistant Editor, IMPACT, the panellists for the webinar were Agnello Dias, Creative Chairman, Dentsu Aegis Network; Arun Iyer, Founding Partner, Spring; actor and influencer Anushka Sen, who played the lead role in television series Jhansi Ki Rani; Punit Malhotra, Producer, Dharma 2.0, who has directed films like I hate Luv Storys & Student Of The Year 2; and Anshuman Chakravarty, Head Marketing - Brand & Corporate Communications, Orient Electric.

Agnello Dias doesn’t agree that shooting should be stopped but believes that we have to try living with COVID-19 because it’s not going away soon. “There’s never going to be a point when one will able to say that it’s safe to shoot now. I think we’ll have to learn to live with it. So I don’t know whether avoiding the virus is the solution any longer. We may have reached a stage where the only solution is to go through it and not around it or going backwards because if it’s going to be a lockdown for a year then it makes no sense. So I think shooting will resume but with greater care and greater cost,” he said.

Speaking about the resumption of ad and film shoot, Punit Malhotra shared that he doesn’t believe in sitting at home and waiting for the pandemic to pass. “You have to go out and actually value the risk. How safe can you be and how safe is your crew and everybody on the set are actually very important questions and these are the only questions that we need to answer. Given those parameters, if you can manage to pull off the shoot, I don’t think there’s any reason we should be sitting at home. As long as you are safe, following government norms and doing the right things, you can go out and shoot.”

Arun Iyer highlighted why there’s no noise about the resumption of ad shoots as compared to TV and web series. “That’s happening because web series, films or TV shoot takes longer duration and large groups of people. In an ad film shoot, it’s a group of people who come together for a short duration, here you can control the environment a lot better. Yes, it’s risky and you got to measure your risks and make sure only people who absolutely have to be there should join. We need to keep minimum people at the set. So this is a new reality and now we have to find a way to work around this because we can’t be just sitting at home," he shared.

Speaking about the vulnerability of actors while shooting and getting back on the set, Anushka Sen said that actors are more vulnerable but with proper precautions, the risk can be avoided.

“It’s been four months since I went out and I really miss shooting. TV shows and web series shoot takes a long time and there’s always a rush because they have to create banks in order to launch their show as soon as possible. If I’m looking at shooting right now in this situation, I would not start with TV serials and web series. To some extent, I would be open to doing movies, ads and music videos as it requires less number of people. Actors are more vulnerable because they can’t wear masks or PPE suit while shooting. But with proper precautions and by following the rules, we’ll be safe and probably be out of the risk area. The most important part is not panicking and following the norms.”

Anshuman Chakravarty shared his views on the relevance of social media in the current scenario. According to him, audio-visual as content medium will grow and remain an important medium of communication with the consumers. He said, “Social media is becoming more relevant in the current context and will remain and continue to grow. However, the mainline cannot be ignored, and as things get normal, we will continue doing more of mainline work.”

“In the interim period, we figured out new ways of working. We worked with influencers and tech bloggers, etc for this launch and we also looked at how we can repackage our old content and use 3D as a format for storytelling and creating information awareness. We tried out different kinds of stuff during this period, including even GIF promotions, which is a non-static format of advertising. So all these were different ways of staying engaged with our consumers and I think that really worked that far. But will that always be a constant? I don’t think so. We’ll continuously evolve and find out new ways of engagement,” he concluded.