Chinchina, Columbia.
Tens of masked peasants stay still in the midday sun in a coffee plantation in the city center Colombia.
Suddenly, a voice exclaimed, “Mask, let’s record! ” TV series invigorated in one of the major references of this industry in Latin America, after pandemic paralysis.
woman’s fragrant coffee, an adaptation of the famous soap opera written in the nineties by The Colombian Fernando Gaitán, is registered in the municipality of Chinchiná, Caldas, in the center-west of the country.
soap operas are aseptically produced, covid-19 testing, capacity restriction, masks, anti-fluid suits, tight budgets due to the crisis and a permanent risk, far from romance which characterizes their stories.
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In May, when the country was going through the second month of a blockade that paralyzed shooting, this day seemed distant.
“When we can really start recording is because everything happened, because there is a vaccine,” he said at the time. AFP Guillermo Restrepo, advisor to the presidency of the RCN channel, where this soap opera will be broadcast.
But in September, government-imposed restrictions were eased from March 25, and production companies began a gradual return to studies under strict protocols. Colombia currently has more than 1.5 million cases of covid-19, with over 42,000 dead.
– Sudden blow –
“We were going to start filming in April, which is just ten days before it started (…) we were in quarantine for almost six months,” recalls Yalile Giordanelli, executive producer of “cafe“.
Conformable National Media Association the closure ordered by the government at the end of March forced RCN and your competitor Worm to stop 38 productions.
Many of the 270 employees you have woman’s fragrant coffee They were on a recording set when the news broke.
“They told us to pack everything, that we were going home, but at that moment it was temporary (…) As time went on, it became a bit gloomy”, remembers Adriana Ortiz, a makeup designer.
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According to Ortiz, the channel maintained its contract during the months of inactivity, although with a low salary. “She had to tighten her belt a little bit,” recalls the 54-year-old makeup artist.
Several of his colleagues did not face the same fate.
According to the National Administrative Department of Statistics, the arts and entertainment sector was one of the hardest hit by the pandemic: a total of 203,000 jobs were destroyed between October 2019 and the same month in 2020.
– Confidence test –
Audiovisual productions in contradiction with social distancing.
Make-up artists, clients and actors rely on physical proximity to do their job, and dozens of people gather to illuminate and record each sequence.
On the other side of the room Laura Londoño and William Levy, protagonists of “Café”, converse without a mask a few inches away, anticipating the romance that will unite their characters Paloma and Sebastián.
“If we were astronauts, then we would have other distances, but we are actors, we work with the voice, with the body,” comments Katherine Vélez, who plays Carmenza, his mother. Paloma.
Given the impossibility of distancing, the entire team is subjected to a PCR test on Monday.
Although most sleep on the farm where soap opera, el shooting it’s not a balloon: everyone can go out on days off to see their families.
According to Giordanelli, regular testing has had “enormous costs”, but it is necessary: a contagion could force isolates one of the actors and it would delay all production, an even higher price.
Mauricio Cruz, the director of the soap opera, considers it vital to perform tests so that the actors feel comfortable in close contact scenes.
“Yesterday to do some promotions there was a kissing scene, but (…) the exam was the day before yesterday (…) we were very sure,” says Cruz.
Actress Vélez knows it’s impossible protect your shot from viruses, but ensures that when he is in front of the camera “everyone (is) without masks, confident that the production is in control of the situation as much as possible.”
– Fact and fiction –
Industry of TV series its survival is at stake in a certain contradiction.
“As people are locked in the house, they see more TV (…) but on the other hand, let’s say that the industry in general, the companies (…), have stopped investing in advertising “due to the economic crisis, explains the producer Giordanelli.
This has meant reduced production budgets, which also face logistical costs multiplied by the pandemic.
But the virus not only disrupted revenue and programs, but made its way into fiction.
The librettists from „cafe“They had to rewrite the scenes of parties and big social events to host small family gatherings.
The new version is, in the words of its producer, “a much more collected, more intimate story”, a true reflection of the difficult situation in which it was recorded.