Wow. A friend who does lighting installation for large events says all of his gigs are getting cancelled....

https://nabshow.com/2020/attend/onsite-services/coronavirus-update-and-resources/

"In the interest of addressing the health and safety concerns of our stakeholders and in consultation with partners throughout the media and entertainment industry, we have decided not to move forward with NAB Show in April. We are currently considering a number of potential alternatives to create the best possible experience for our community. "

Same here, all my gigs coming up were cancelled to.

Should I go ahead and make a feature film with the corona virus pandemic? I was going to try to go ahead this year, but now that other film shoots are being cancelled it seems, all over, I wonder if it's a good idea, or as many cast and crew would want to therefore. It's just that aside from that, it's been perfecting timing for me, and some things seemed to have been falling into place, budget and access wise, so wonder if I should.

What do you think

Not much use if your actors and crew fall ill during the shoot. I suspect you won't get insurance cover for this. I notice in Bavaria, Germany, there's going to be an emergency ban on film shoots..

I was speaking to a friend who lives in a small town in the USA that has gone into lock down after a party last week - out of roughly 30 tests about 20 were positive.

Oh okay, but one of my fears is that this thing will get worse later and there will be more bans later for who knows how long. So I feel that maybe I should shoot a project sooner, rather than later before it gets worse? As for insurance coverage and bans well so far the movies I have made, I got them made without insurance, but is that bad?

Given the content with car chases etc and you're talking about employing people, you'd need Insurance these days.

Well even if I have insurance and you say it won't cover if someone gets ill, insurance never covered illnesses before did it? I thought insurance only covers people if they get hurt from stunts or from something related to the movie making. An illness that is not related to the something in the filmmaking process, wouldn't be covered anyway, would it?

It probably depends on the insurance you take out, there is extra cover you can take out on policies. Coronavirus won't be covered at this stage on new insurance policies, since it's now a pandemic.

You had to take extra cover on your business insurance, since business disruption seemingly doesn't cover it.

Oh okay the insurance I had a look at before never covered diseases in the past though. It only covered things related to the filmmaking, not outside unrelated things. Unless diseases were covered too, and I didn't know about it.

As I said you won't be insured, if you were going to get cover for illness, it would probably only be for major film stars on high end productions, not the whole cast and crew, who can be replaced.

In your case, it will be a matter of if the whole cast and crew are willing to work on a film (probably for little or no pay) and risk catching coronavirus. Also, if one or two catch it the knock on effect on the production may cause problems.

You don't get cover for illness, you get cover on the project - and if something happens that ruins it, they pay. So if an actor becomes ill, or has a car crash - proper business continuity insurance steps in - BUT - knowing the virus is active, could mean the insurance won't cover it, unless you declare it?

Yup. SXSW was cancelled in Austin, TX so I took my high school students on a field trip to The University of Texas at Austin instead. That was Monday March 9.

Was that not kind of crazy, when the reason the thing was cancelled was to keep people from meeting other people? Taking your kids to meet others seems a very odd thing to do - perhaps, even reckless.

What were those stats. 1 person passes it to 3, those three pass it to 9, the 9 to 81 and so on?

We're doing similar crazy things here, because people think it's something that happens to others. It's not!