Film and TV Production Given Greenlight to Restart in Los Angeles County

Film and Television production has been given the green light to restart in Los Angeles County. The news comes as a part of the announcement of the reopening of a bunch of locations in the California city. LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer had some public comments about the decision. The announcement was made and streamed online for the public to see as well. Press was on-hand to ask some questions about the logistics concerning the scale of such a move. There are a lot of moving parts, and that is further complicated by the dizzying scale of a place like Los Angeles. Gyms, museums, day camps, pools, zoos, and professional sports arenas without fans in attendance are all allowed to reopen on Friday. Ferrer stressed that this is a collective effort that has to be upheld by everyone.

"I feel confident this is a community effort," she explained. "We're all in this together. We all want sectors to reopen. We're desperate to make sure people can get back to their jobs, we just need to do it in a way that adheres to the modifications."

"A month ago, we were hovering at about 1,800 people in the hospital every day. Today and for most of this week we've been about... 1,450 people in the hospital every day," Ferrer said. "So these, again, are signs that, while we have more cases, it's not necessarily resulting in a dramatic increase in hospitalizations, which again, would be a sign for major concern for us, but we're going to have to watch the data really carefully going forward… No, we are not completely out of the woods and we are still in the middle of the woods. This is not a time for parties or gatherings at your house."

All of this follows the announcement that movie theaters could open in the state earlier this week. Gavin Newsom, California's governor. Gavin Newsom made the decision official. Movie theaters and other "family entertainment" businesses are able to reopen should they abide by new social distancing measures effective June 12th. But, it seems as though abiding by those new regulations could take some businesses longer than this week.

"The reality is I don't think we're going to be able to get into a full-on rhythm again of product cycles and all that we had prior to COVID-19 until 2022," Cinemark CEO Mark Zoradi mentioned last week. "That's more production-related than our operation-related because as studios have had to adapt to not being able to do filming and do post-production, they've had to move their schedules. Therefore, we're going to adapt as well."

Do you think this is too much too soon? Let us know in the comments!