As productions gear up again with more cameras starting to roll, it’s likely that sets won’t look the same as before the pandemic. COVID protocols have emphasized working with smaller crews and experimenting with virtual and remote filming.For the show she’s working on , Levine has mainly communicated over Zoom and FaceTime, since she could bring only a smaller scouting crew with her. “It was hard,” she says.
Levine wonders if she’ll soon be using her new iPhone 12, which has Lidar light detection and ranging capability, to scout locations. “I know I’m probably going to have to use it at some point,” she allows. Levine says she has witnessed other changes on set, not just in scouting. For instance, before COVID-19, up to 100 crew members at a time would dine on craft services in expandable trailers. “Now we put six people in [the trailer],” she says. “One show I was working on outfitted those trailers with shower curtains as separators, and they were used as hair and makeup stations.”