At some point this hot mess will be behind us and I'm intentionally trying to be better about thinking ahead. I do expect to have entirely different financials for 2020 compared to years past. March and April are typically busy months where I make a decent amount for the year. Who knows if that work and revenue will be made up anytime soon. Thankfully my stock footage numbers are up these last few months considering how live production work has fallen off a cliff.
Money-wise, we're still going thanks mostly to our savings and some invoices still out. Our 2019 tax refund still hasn't hit our accounts, but we did get our stimulus check. Also, this past week I applied for and got my PPP SBA loan. As a business I'm setup here in New York as a S-corp and I'm my only employee. I'm fairly certain I'll not fire myself anytime soon so that PPP money – by no means a windfall – will be used to keep my payroll going a few more weeks and will magically turn from a loan into a grant.
Looking back at the last few years, most of my work has been shooting interviews and small commercials with crews of less than five to eight people and a good deal of solo run-n-gun work. I also do a solid amount of live event work with big crowds of people, but I'm not expecting those to return any time soon.
Film Florida came out with their Recommendations for Clean & Healthy Production Sets. Filmmaker Jim Cummings wrote a piece called Hollywood vs. The Virus that was making the rounds last week. That dumpster fire of a possible reality kept me up at night, but after another read or two the flames died down and I remembered the kind of work I do and the types of sets I'm on – nothing even close to major studio projects.
I'm seeing more and more come out about what production life could possibly be like once the world gets up and spinning again. Director Ryan Booth had this McDonald's spot come out a couple weeks ago with Pulse Films. According to their Instagram post they worked remotely with 16 DPs across the country shooting the arches in their local areas.
There was also a spot to come out this past week that was shot by Simon Reinert with his family as cast. I'd reached out after he'd posted about it and he mentioned that the gear was dropped off at his door by the production company and he did all the gear prep and shooting himself. His wife is a nurse and the hero of the piece so it's not like they were going against social distancing guidelines.
Closer to home I finally saw the edit from the Empire State Building shoot a few weeks back. I didn't know at the time, but it ended up being for CVS Health and the entire spot seemed like a potluck of stock footage and internal CVS footage. I'd sent over nearly a dozen different Manhattan skyline and hero shots of the Empire State Building while it was lit up red for the health workers. The shot of mine they ended up using is in the piece around :56.
By all means I'd love to comment and pretend to expert my way though all this nonsense. There's absolutely no shortage of people making their predictions about what you should be doing and how to land on your feet after all this. No queston there are smart people in and around my industry making serious efforts to get all this back up and running. I make most of my revenue on commercial projects followed closely by live event work and stock footage sales. I absolutely miss working and can't wait to get back to live production projects. In the meantime I'm still shooting what I can here around the apartment and neighborhood.
Honestly though most of our quarantined time has been absorbed by making sure our two house fires don't burn the place down and take us with them. It's not like I have big projects to prep for or even anything close to a 9-5 job. Good Lord I can't imagine what it'd be like for both Anne and I to try and attempt all this while both working full-time.
Our days normally – even before all this mess – start around 6am with blood curdling screams coming from somewhere in the apartment. Saint Anne the Wife is the frontline worker in chaos of our home, but we both finally get out of bed just before that tipping point where one of our nearly-domesticated tornadoes stabs the other to death. Long ago we gave up on the boys ever sleeping in; God-awful children's programs on Netflix aren't going to watch themselves apparently.
There's the seemingly apparent calm after breakfast and coffee where Anne has The Kid v1 locked into one laptop with his remote learning for the day while The Kid v2 is mainlining a $10/month subscription of ABCmouse.com via iPad. There's also the morning trips to the park which are nothing more than a desperate attempt at dissipating some of their perpetual motion.
The rest of the day is mostly cooking, dirty dishes, and laundry interrupted by that sweet, sweet relief of House Fire no. 2's afternoon nap and our day drinking. Sometimes I'm able to write and be somewhat "productive" during that blessed couple hours, but then it's back to cooking and dirty dishes before the day's main showdown: "getting ready for bed." After that both Anne and I – normally bloodied and bruised – collapse onto the couch praying for mercy and that the boys sleep at least most of the night.
On a serious note, turns out you can get a discount when you buy wine by the case. Oh, and we just started re-watching Band of Brothers on Amazon Prime. Anne wouldn't even attempt to watch The Midnight Gospel with me. I know she loves me, but that weird show falls into Rick & Morty territory for her.