by Thinus Ferreira
At an Isono wrap party for ViacomCBS Networks Africa's likely cancelled first telenovela on BET Africa (DStv 129) producers for the first time revealed the "exceptional huge challenges" that the Clive Morris Productions show faced because of Covid-19 and that it oddly never discussed or told the media during its actual production run.
At a wrap party in Illovo in Johannesburg in late November for Isono, it now came to light how the production struggled with Covid-19 challenges.
Clive Morris Productions, ViacomCBS Networks Africa and DNA Brand Architects didn't want to tell the media about the wrap party where executives spoke and didn't bother to involve media, although Isono, BET and ViacomCBS Networks Africa's publicity and marketing division were eager for media support during the show's run.
The Covid-19 challenges of Isono is something that the producers and ViacomCBS Networks Africa for whatever reasons didn't talk to media about during Isono's actual production or broadcast run and that would have been helpful for South Africa's film and TV industry to know at the time.
Clive Morris who spoke at the event, reportedly said that "Covid is not something anybody could have predicted or planned for, so when you're working on a finite production budget, immediately when you have to start deviating in the way in which you produce it adds a lot of costs".
"So the very first thing was shutting down the production and trying to get some kind of timeline as to when we might be back in production. At that stage, nobody knew how long the first wave was gonna last, or the subsequent waves thereafter."
"Obviously Viacom being a global group, the American head office took a view around when they felt it would be safe for us to re-enter into production. And that was quite a lengthy period. We were off the floor for two months on the production."
"Through the partnership, Viacom was able to raise additional funds to help pay cast and crew retainers over the course of that time so that, you know, people still had income, which was an extra cost of production," Clive Morris said.
"Then because you're not producing the minutes per day, you still have got the running costs. And then over and above that we now had to start factoring in things like PPE, hiring additional space to be able to shift production off the sets so that we could social distance properly."
"We had to limit the number and rewrite scenes that would be deemed as unsafe Covid working environments, at that time."
"So all of that had an impact from the cost on the ground, we brought in a compliance company, which is a public safety company to do regular testing and to help us manage compliance on set.
"So all of these things were exceptional huge challenges that every producer had to work with across the board," Clive Morris said.
