There’s a lot of questions about how Hollywood is going to bounce back after the COVID-19 production stoppages. It would appear that in a post-COVID-19 world, film production is tricky, to say the least, with all sorts of safety precautions that have to be followed. For cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, he knows all about that, as the DP for one of the first big productions of the “new normal,” Taylor Swift’s “Cardigan” music video. And apparently, he’s learned some lessons that will help with his next project, Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
Speaking to Vanity Fair, Prieto talked about how difficult it was to shoot the new Swift music video given the requirements for safety that productions have to follow nowadays. And these are not precautions that are to be taken lightly.
“Being one of the first shoots to happen, if, God forbid, someone got sick, that would be bad for the whole industry,” said Prieto. “Let alone, of course, getting sick. But suddenly it’s like, ‘Okay, now we have to shut down filming.’ So that was another thing we all talked about . We’ve got to make sure that we all adhere to all these policies.”
And those policies were strict enough for a short-form music video. So, you can only imagine how difficult it might be to shoot a big-budget thriller from one of the most iconic filmmakers, starring some of the biggest names in Hollywood. That’s exactly what awaits Prieto now with Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” starring Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio.
According to the cinematographer, the difficulty isn’t even the inconvenience that the new safety requirements bring with them. Instead, it’s the fact that he’s working with a director that would most definitely be listed amongst the “high risk” people for COVID-19.
“Certainly, that movie will be very delicate too because, well, even Martin Scorsese as a director, he has asthma. So we have to be very careful with him,” Prieto said. “That’s the kind of thing that I learned in the video that I think I will keep on applying, especially in a film like that. We don’t want De Niro or anybody to touch anything right now.”
Obviously, we’ll have to see what the post-COVID-19 world brings for the film industry, as productions like ‘Killers’ begin under new guidelines. Hopefully, for the sake of everyone involved, the precautions being taken are enough to ensure the safety of those involved.