Pandemic Series
In March 2020, media and entertainment companies across the globe and throughout the industry began to face realities and disruption of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Amidst this public health crisis, companies abruptly confronted extreme technical and workflow challenges while continuing to create and distribute content.
During this historic outbreak, Signiant launched “The Pandemic Series,” a collection of conversations with the broadcast and production community about their experiences in the early days of the pandemic, the transition to remote production, and the leadership challenges they faced.
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Twain Richardson | Owner/Operator | Frame of Reference
“This definitely opens up the market for us. We’ve been pushing remote work for a number of years. We’ve been laughed at for trying to do remote work. Now, the only way to work is remote. Now we can say, ‘Okay, there is talent in Jamaica that can give you the same quality of work as if it was someone in the States.'” -
Katie Hinsen | Executive Producer for Dailies and Digital Intermediate | Nice Shoes
“We’re living in a moment in history that is going to have enormous impact. I very much hope that we can take the momentum we’ve begun in pushing and embracing technological change, pushing structural and systematic change, and embracing that as well. That is what I’d like to see. That’s what’s been exciting to me.” -
Shaina Holmes | Assistant Professor, Syracuse University | Owner, Flying Turtle Post
In a remote environment, a lot of places are ignoring the need to continue to invest in people who are entering the industry today. It’s important we continue doing that and finding ways to keep them involved. -
Julian Day | Director of Business Development | ZOO Digital
“We adopted the cloud very early on and we’ve made it central to our operation right from the get-go. This has just proved to people what we had been banging on about the last seven years actually makes sense. Having a cloud infrastructure should be standard. It should be front and central in your planning. You shouldn’t be reliant on on-premises hardware anymore.” -
Helen Stevens | Operations Officer for Content Supply and Delivery | ITV
“There’s a real fundamental life-change for people, which will be part of the workplace as well, which will mean everybody doing things completely differently. There are some quite profound changes that are coming about because of this. Not all of them are bad. They’re just different, and they’ll change our lives.” -
Ryan Salazar | Editor-in-Chief | Broadcast Beat
“Two different networks who want to come to our facility and shoot over the next two to six weeks, one of the first questions they asked was, “What is your COVID-19 policy? I never really thought about that, but we have to come up with one.” -
Louisa Lockett | Head of Operations and Projects | Endemol Shine UK
“We’ve worked together in ways that we didn’t deem possible. We’ve known the tech can do this all along, but it’s never been tested at scale in the way that it has. That gives us such a positive platform to build on. I’d be really sad if we didn’t continue to grow those areas.” -
Richard Welsh | Founder and CEO | Sundog Media Toolkit
“I think the impact of this episode has been to accelerate the entire industry towards that kind of cloud future. Maybe faster than some people would like, but realistically, it takes things like this to catalyze adoption of technology.” -
“If history is to be any lesson, we need to be very, very careful about what ways we relax any of these policies.”
As The Pandemic Series moves to that new challenge, we conclude our remote work chapter with an interview that, while optimistic, reminds us to not forget what happened and how the return to work will be anything but normal. -
Eric Grau | Manager, Media Asset Management | Joyce Meyer Ministries
“Just take it a step at a time. Because in the end, whatever that may be, that’s all we any of us can do.”
