This week: NYC Film & Media Commissioner Anne del Castillo lays out the rules around Phase 3 Productions in NYC. RIP to composer Ennio Morriconne, and digging into (and digging) the work of Michela Coel.
[Header Photo by Memories on 35mm on Unsplash]
NYC Phase 3 Production Rules
NYC entered Phase 3 of its reopening this week, albeit with altered rules regarding indoor dining (you can’t do it right now). What does this mean for productions though?
Anne del Castillo, the commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, laid out the protocol for film production in the city in this interview.
Permit requests for location shooting opened on July 1 with a 10 person crew limit as per Phase 2 rules. Phase 3, however, allows for 25 person shoots. Applications are open for permits now, but shooting can’t begin until July 17. You can find more info on the permits page of the NYC Media & Entertainment website.
With these official regulations in place, the responsibility is still on you, the production, to figure out all the health and safety logistics of your set. According to del Castillo:
Our agency is responsible to make sure you are following the laws. You have to follow protocols. We have make sure they are in adherence with the city and state for public health and safety. But we can’t tell you how to organize the shoot.
Which makes sense. As smaller shoots start coming back with more frequency we want to help you remain safe. If you are renting gear we wrote this guide to help you safely rent. If you are trying to coordinate a production of your own, we recommend looking at both the LA County production checklist and the Production Safety Guidelines from the Hollywood guilds and using those as a starting point for building your own safe production workflow.
RIP Ennio Morricone
RIP to musician, composer and film legend Ennio Morricone.
Edgar Wright tweets:
Where to even begin with iconic composer Ennio Morricone? He could make an average movie into a must see, a good movie into art, and a great movie into legend. He hasn’t been off my stereo my entire life. What a legacy of work he leaves behind. RIP.
What I want to focus on is not his expansive catalog of music–the world over has done an excellent job showcasing the best of his work. What I want to briefly zoom in on is how Morricone is a shining example of one of KitSplit’s own core values: “Create And Be Weird”.
The “Create” part is obvious–look at Morricone’s output over his lifetime! I am always curious about the daily habits of creative people, so it was great to see Morricone describe his daily routine in this interview with Dazed:
In the morning I wake up at 4.30, I clean the house, I work out, I walk four or five kilometres, I go out to get a newspaper, I come back, I read the newspaper until about 8.30 or 9, and then I start composing. If necessary, I work through to the evening, otherwise I stop composing at lunchtime.
He also describes a very relatable and valuable lesson about being too close to your work:
A long time ago I really loved a film that I was working on and I became too involved. That was kind of unbalanced. It made me realise that you can’t love things too much if you want them to work.
The “Be Weird” part of “Create and Be Weird” isn’t as obvious. You could say he was weird in his experiments with music, adding clanks and noises from the real world into his recordings back when no one else was doing it, but that’s only part of it. This question in the interview shows how interesting Morricone was:
Is it true that you collect hotel soaps?
Ennio Morricone: How do you know? That’s true! It’s been ten years now and all my drawers are full.
Do you meet other collectors to exchange soap?
Ennio Morricone: Never, but I once met a doctor who collected the ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs you find in hotels. He had hundreds of them covering his walls.
Sign me up for that sub-Reddit! RIP Ennio Morricone and thanks for the inspiration.
ICYMI
Hamilton, now on the small screen.
Incredibly deep profile on Michela Coel, showrunner/director/writer/star of I May Destroy You, out now on HBO. Interesting throughout, but I found this quote striking regarding Coel’s BAFTA-award-winning show Chewing Gum:
The show launched her career, but making it was marred by professional challenges that highlight the inevitably complicated dynamic of institutions trying to bring in “outsiders” — people with no television experience whose very cachet comes from the fact that they don’t look like you — without actually empowering them.
I have a tendency to deep click down a rabbit hole of links: also check out Coel’s speech at the Edinburgh TV Festival in 2018 or read the transcript. What a powerful speaker and amazing storyteller!
“Please scream inside your heart.” Japan has reopened amusement parks but asks you not to scream on roller coasters.
See you next week.
