If there is one phase to sum up the year in film at all levels, be it Hollywood or the independent and micro-budget filmmaking scene for the year of 2020, it would have to be ‘geeze, never saw that coming, mate’.
With the Covid-19 pandemic beginning to spread worldwide as early as February and still raging now to varied degrees across the globe, film distribution and releases, both in cinema and through streaming platforms went through a major shift, and the playing field between Hollywood and independent filmmakers was almost levelled out as nobody quite knew what to do.
This was due to most cinemas in North America shutting down earlier in the year (unfortunately some went into bankruptcy and closed their doors permanently), causing big budget Hollywood films that were planned for release like Black Widow and the latest James Bond installment No Time to Die to be pushed back until 2021. Also halted or delayed were anticipated films which were to move into production at the beginning of 2020, such as Mission Impossible 7 and Thor: Love and Thunder.
The only upside was that there was now room for smaller independent films to take a chance as they filled the gaps left by Hollywood, who did not want to take the risk of releasing films in pandemic. Entrepreneurial filmmakers like Guy Davies cold-called cinemas to get his coming-of-age romance Philophobia shown all around the UK, proving that independent filmmakers were risk takers and that the drive to succeed and be adaptable is part of our creative makeup. It also proved that as much as we love attending cinema as an experience, we were already moving online with film releases and the pandemic gave everyone a big push towards embracing this direction instead of fighting it.
With cinema, the biggest risk this year for Hollywood was Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, which was set to be released in the United States during July, but was delayed three times. For a moment there was talk that Tenet would save cinema during this pandemic – a lot of Hollywood bigwigs were reassuring us that it would. It didn’t.
Taking a different approach, and moving with the 2020 pandemic wave was the Patty Jenkins directed DC comic book Wonder Woman 1984. The superhero film was first to be released in 2019, but ended up having the release date delayed twice that year, finally landing a release date for June 2020. Of course, that didn’t work out either. WW1984 adapted again, released via streaming on HBO Max in the United States and via Premium video-on-demand in Canada the same day as the film’s new US theatrical release date – Christmas Day 2020. When Warner Bros. subsequently announced plans to simultaneously release all of its films in theaters and on HBO Max throughout 2021 it became clear the hybrid release of WW1984 would be a pivotal moment for years to come.
For us at Nexus Production Group, our feature film In Corpore was completed and ready to start screening to the world in February. But our dream of premiering the film in New York was cancelled by the pandemic too, and we too had to adapt. But we were not sure how.
The world was changing. The world had changed. But we were not alone in isolation, uncertainty, fear and confusion. Obviously every filmmaker or artist was in a similar situation and just like other filmmakers worldwide who were stuck indoors, we adjusted our methods to continue to make films.
In March we had a shutdown of businesses and offices here in Malta, we were told to work from home. So with In Corpore in limbo and us being the proud new owners of a new Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K we were itching to film something. That led to us testing out our camera on the many stray cats that roam around the island, tracking and recording the felines as we played with settings and functions, both in daylight and at night.
This then snowballed in the most incredible way as we had this b-roll of random cat footage and to add to the madness I started to think like a producer after Ivan suggested we film a cat documentary. At the same time I was scrolling Instagram and an account I followed shared a picture of a giant cat sculpture in Sliema, a seaside town of Malta, with the artist, Matthew Pandolfino, painting a new undercoat. I was straight on the phone to him during my lunch break and an interview was set.
Matthew Pandolfino paints his cat sculpture in Cats of Malta.
On Facebook, an actor named Polly March who I had worked with on a short film just before shutdown in February was struggling to feed her cats due to the situation – I had found my next interviewee. So we kept filming interviews as safely as possible, with our two person (sometimes three person) crew from March onwards, slowly but surely, finishing off production with more b-roll cat footage and drone shots in September. Our first feature documentary, Cats of Malta, was wrapped.
During this time of shutdown and experimenting with the camera and doing interviews for Cats of Malta we were aware of a lot of online ‘pandemic/lockdown’ competitions as well as festivals asking filmmakers to submit films shot creatively at home. Still keen to experiment with our camera, play with new light kits and write improvised stories, we added two new titles to our micro-short YouTube Life Improvised series, Hiding (about the feelings surrounding isolation and fear in lockdown) and then the follow up, Hoping (a more positive look at the situation). These films were made with just Ivan and I, and it was the former micro-short that served as the spark of creativity that would lead to our next improvised feature, Machination.
Machination was a film we managed to make through a pandemic in four months, from concept to wrap, including in-depth rehearsals. It was our usual style; micro-budget, improvised, written outline but no screenplay, a dramatic character piece with limited cast and locations. Our filmmaking style, it seems, adapts very well to pandemic conditions.
Later on in the year, after waiting for the right opportunity and the best way to release In Corpore, we finally put the film out there on November 26th on Australian cinema-on-demand platform Lido at Home. Just yesterday as I write this, on December 26th, In Corpore was released worldwide on Amazon Prime and through our Vimeo channels. We’ve learnt the best way to look at changes in the industry and the current situation is to view it as an opportunity to think outside the box and adapt, even where there are surprise changes to the forecast.
Still from In Corpore - Henri (Frank Fazio) and Julia (Clara Francesca) share a funny moment.
At the beginning of his career, Joe Swanberg (one of the directors who influences our own improvised character driven work), had a business approach which allowed him to write, direct, produce and sell his films ultra quickly back in the mid-2000s. It was possible for him to make a profit because he formulated a process that allowed him to shoot and sell film after film by simply taking advantage of the current climate the indie film industry was in at the time. I’m talking about a time when DVD was still a viable distribution method and traditional distributors were still offering minimum guarantees for indie films. Still, the principal is the same; like Joe and the few clever filmmakers of the 2000’s you just have to be smart, think about how you can make the best of the current situation and find the hidden advantages to make work you enjoy and work you can sell.
The best we can do as filmmakers is keep making films, anyway we can, and keep finding ways to get them out to the world, no matter which way the industry twists and turns.
The bottom line is that the industry is always changing. So is the world. What’s next for the film industry and film distribution? Who knows, but Covid-19 has certainly fast tracked the online approach that cinema was heading in to begin with and the smart filmmakers will be using this change to their advantage, while Hollywood also shuffles to change the way they market the blockbusters.
Let’s see what 2021 brings. Ourselves, like the filmmakers and studios who used this ‘pause time’ wisely, are ready to charge through the gates like a bull with a temper, pushing through with fresh projects to sell and distribute come the new year.
There is power in adapting. And there is always room to adapt in filmmaking.
Written by Sarah Jayne