I got my first cancellation for a musical the other day. The likelihood that all my events could meet with the same demise is growing more likely with each passing day.

How is everyone else's prospects? I thought about offering clients to film their event without an audience and sell videos like I normally would. I also thought about streaming it. I know there are other people who do streaming for weddings. Would it be hard or expensive to stream if the school provides the internet and how does one monetize streaming?

Both the video sales and streaming might not be a viable option if the show producers can't afford to pay for the venue without ticket sales...

Were drafting our plan and policies.

Most of our work is weddings and what happens depends on what the government policy is. Most likely banning gatherings of 100 or more. Which means weddings can still go ahead just a little smaller.

Thankfully we turned down some italian weddings as we didn't know how Brexit was going to play out.

If a wedding is cancelled it will most likely just move to another date. Ideally in the same financial year otherwise it takes a date away from next years availability (or most likely 2022).

If they cancel because they choose to not hold the event then they are entitled to nothing back. If its a flat out government forcing venues to close then we will most likely offer a full refund but will push them to just select another date.

Any shutdown is likely only going to be for 4 weeks or less. But with the current pace then in the UK that will occur in July/August time, just in time for peak season.

The great thing about weddings is they will still happen, just not at a time which financially would benefit us.

I see the most likely reason for cancellations is that bride/groom/critical member of the family gets sick. But then the same could apply if you get flu on your wedding day.

The virus isnt going to cancel much, just delay it or move it. Weddings will still happen, concerts will all still happen, just not when they planned them to.

Good news, China is now reporting single digit daily cases.

My daughter works at a UK largish hotel - weddings, christening and even funerals cancelling like mad. Music tours and performing arts tours cancelling quickly, and frankly - even though I usually don't worry, I've been buying equipment for the summer contracts and if they cancel, I'm stuck - badly stuck, because I've bought the equipment knowing a sizeable amount gets recovered quickly and I have to eat!

Video work in the pipeline worries me as my work is all linked to audiences, and they're now talking about banning events of over 100 people indoors. I have lots of school shows booked in May, and now they are talking about closing the schools - so bringing them all together for a show is risky!

I suspect that I'm going to be in severe difficulties if more events cancel. I'm self-employed and we get nothing from the Government if we cease work. I'm probably looking at using my pension fund to live. Grim prospect. I'm also in tribute band that mostly do corporate and outside event shows - Lost the entire years work bar 3, and these are not safe. It's going to get really bad.

Are you saying that the people having the wedding, canceled, or the government forced to shut them down?

Yes Ryan - they're cancelling the weddings! Here it's starting to get mad - toilet rolls in supermarkets being panic bought. An idiot on national TV mentioned carbohydrates are important so pasta is a good source - this afternoon, Facebook full of empty shelves in the shops. Handwash, painkillers, disinfectant all sold out. Just a joke gone wrong!

I cover mostly corporate events, and had three big cancellations for this month (so far). That's a serious downer for me. It comes on the heels of an announcement from the largest tech employers in the state that employees are being encouraged to work from home.
The only positive aspect of this is that rush hour traffic is pretty much pre-2001 levels now.

It's gotta be a boon for video streaming. For those of us with the gear, we should be able to sell it easily.

Andrew

I was thinking, much does it cost to professionally stream to hundreds of people and be able to monetize it? At minimum one would need a hardware encoder and host service. Then can the event holder afford to rent the theater without ticket sales and would they be legally allowed to stream copyright material?

You can always use a unlisted YouTube video as your stream destination, scaling up without you having to put effort into it. That's what I do, depending on the details.

As for monetisation, you get the client to pay for it up front as part of your service package. I'm thinking corporate info dissemination rather than school concerts.

Andrew

Is it considered panic buying if youre doing it cause youre worried the other panic buyers are going to deplete the stores for the next several weeks?

Is it considered panic buying if youre doing it cause youre worried the other panic buyers are going to deplete the stores for the next several weeks?
I just got back from the grocery store and had the same thought. I like to only buy what I need for 3-4 days. But every time I stop by things are getting worse. First people were binging hand soap now its food. Today I stopped by thinking i’d like burgers for a Friday dinner... all the meat was sold out. There no pasta!

I think pork is the secret, friend. It's the black sheep of white meats. There was quite a bit left where I just was.

In my area (Southern New Jersey), I have not seen any shortages or panic buying at the two Shoprite stores I use. I go early in the morning, so there are no crowds, but there are some people with very full shopping carts. I have stocked up, but not excessively, and only with items that I would normally buy every time I go to the store.

Our Prime Minister was on TV - he said that sadly many of us would lose loved ones - very true, but the statistics are being shouted out as terrible, but historically - the mortality rate is very low. The people at risk are the same group of people who would suffer from a normal flu outbreak - which we immunise against for obvious reasons. This one, with no vaccine is bad, but a new strain or flu that was unresponsive to the old vaccine would have a higher mortality rate. It's very difficult to be objective, but at hospitals here in the UK - NOBODY on staff is routinely wearing masks, visitors are still coming into the wards where the vulnerable are. Sure - it's spreading world wide, but all the previous ones did exactly the same thing, but response to this one has been understandable, but extreme.


The media hype has made people panic.

We created a page for our concerned brides. Within 5 minutes of Boris's speech we had emails and phone calls from people asking if they can re-schedule their wedding (to a yet unknown date), people asking if we are going bust (dont think so, do they know something we dont?), how are we going to cope if we get sick (from what I can tell the symptoms for someone my age are actually very mild).

So put this out https://www.mintyslippers.com/covid-19-coronavirus-update/

No point playing the blame game or fuel the xenophobia paranoia. As I understand it theses outbreaks start in poor third world areas of the world through no fault of their own. Given the amount of travel these days their problems quickly become our problems. Times like these we should be thinking of ways to support and help one another.

Yet another cancellation this morning - an audio and video recording of an opera in a church. The extra equipment bought for it also arrived this morning too. Damn! This year seems to be lots of purchases for jobs that aren't happening, and an almost total loss of income. Luckily, I find purchases from previous years income, not loans - thank goodness.

Inevitable Note from Admin -- I have withdrawn from public view several posts in this thread which were primarily political in nature, or just incredibly poor advice, or made in very bad taste.

I have edited the thread title from "Coronavirus" to "Corona Virus Cancellations."

Please try to stay on topic. Please keep in mind that I will not tolerate political grandstanding on this forum.

No, the Corona Virus is not Obama's revenge nor is it a liberal conspiracy to overturn the 2016 election.

Yes, it's a good idea to follow whatever guidelines that have been established by your local / municipal governments.

Meanwhile, we're still open for discussion. However, when the bullshit meter pegs over to offscale high, then I have no choice but to get the scoop shovel going.

Please put the conspiracy theory crap on social media where it belongs and reserve this forum for helpful, intelligent discussions related to our business.

Please and thank you. Carry on.

2 April wedding reschedules the last 2 days. Fortunately it was easy to simply move the date and I was available. Season starts here in New England May/June. It really hurts to think about what that will look like if this all continues and government forces these cancellations due to attendance numbers, etc. I totally get it and this is a great short term approach to limiting this virus, just hope it works! :)

The mortality rate may seem low but it could be an order of magnitude higher than normal flu. And the transmission rate is high. If it infects 20% of the US it could kill half a million people. If it spreads too fast it will overwhelm the health system.

I work on an hourly basis at two universities doing audio, video and stagehand work. Their event schedules have been essentially wiped clean for at least the rest of this month and possibly for the rest of this school year. Some events will get rescheduled but some are tied to a specific cohort of students. The work I'm losing now can be only partially made up.

We have a 12 week old people lock down in the UK coming up now. Seems the period they feel will be of the most impact.

In those 12 weeks we have 6 weddings.

1 has already gone for a new date next year

1 bride is flipping between 'its on' to 'Oh F'it lets just cancel the lot' and then back to it's on.

The rest are playing it by ear.

We have reduced our balance payment terms to 7 days prior from 30 so we dont have to refund too much. If the wedding takes place in the next financial year we want the money in that year to keep things simple.

We're taking a few chances - we're going into closed venues and getting stuff from our stores into the venues so that if the production happens at the last minute, we have time to do them. My lighting guy remarked that we can actually do things properly too. Neither of us are getting paid for two full days work each, and hopefully, we'll recoup it later. I suspect that things will be totally dead - then, when the brakes are taken off, everyone will want instant productions - and I don't want to say no, we've not got the time.

Ive had a few cancellations (most of my work is crew on corporate/ENG/events/commercials), BUT, now these medical PSA shoots re: virus prevention are popping up. It’s all very surreal.

my business is dead - wedding & commercial has dried up completely. weddings are a max of 5 people, funerals 10 (not sure if you have to count the deceased) it's a fun time.

I knew all my theater work would be canceled or postponed but I wasn’t anticipating all my legal work to cancel (which is like 5 people in a room). I haven’t had a job in 3 weeks with no end in sight. I’m starting to look to see if I can get any job even if it’s mowing lawns or delivering packages.

I've decided to use my pension, not due to be touched until 5 years from now, for day to day living. Our Government have agreed that self-employed people like me will be given a grant of 80% of our earnings - based on 3 years tax submission records - based on your profit, before tax, NOT turnover or invoice totals. This will be paid in June, and will be March, April and May's figure. It's not going to be mega money, but will be handy. We're expecting the Government to of course ramp up tax in the future to recover all the money they are paying out, but hopefully we can recover and deal with this.

Of course - some people have circumstances that make the plan bad for them. Those that have perhaps minimised what they pay themselves to avoid paying too much tax, and this has come back and bitten them, because it's based on what they told the Government they earned - but it is what it is.

I've still got a contract standing for November, which hopefully is long enough away to go on, but nothing at all up till then still.

After a lot of indecision in the days before, I finally went ahead with my last video shoot on Friday 13th (don’t start me) and did a brief audio session a couple of days later.

Since then, everything has shut down and I have haven’t been out the house.

I'm currently self-isolating with mild COVID-19 symptoms so looking for things to do I dropped in here for the first time in months. I'm glad to see many familiar names still around. It's 5 years since I last shot a wedding but I still maintain an interest.

Ironically enough my partner & I were due to get married on 10th April (her birthday so hopefully easier for me to remember the double anniversary in years to come - or big trouble if I ever forgot:-). It was only to be a small family wedding with siblings, children & her parents & no video or professional photography. Initially the restrictions would have prevented her elderly parents attending. Then it could take place just with the pair of us, the celebrant plus two witnesses. Finally it cannot take place at all. We were relieved to be honest as it would have been annoying to have the expense of the venue without the fun of all the family attending. They wanted us to rebook but as it's uncertain when restrictions will be lifted we could be in the same situation again with another cancelled wedding date in 3 months or 6 months. We finally had a brilliant idea & when the world has returned more or less back to normal we will fly down to Gibraltar & get married there like John & Yoko then hold a family party when we get home. It will be fun, romantic & cheaper than paying for a wedding venue & registrar.

Good luck to everybody & keep safe. This is going to be a year that everybody remembers for the rest of their lives. It’s probably the nearest thing to being at war that most of us will ever know.

Our last wedding was three weeks ago and all weddings through to August have been cancelled or postponed except one on May 30th. Apparently the venue is not closing and are hoping the pandemic will be over by then. The couple want to postpone, but have been told by the venue that they will lose their pre payment through breach of contract.

We now have no work income although I get the minimum state pension which is not enough to cover both of us and our monthly outgoings. Hopefully we can hold off payments for long enough until the government support comes through in June.

Roger

I think a lot of people will be struggling by June. But it must be a big operation to organise all those payouts. The banks should be involved in (very) low-interest loans to keep the loan sharks at bay.

I'm in the same position as the other posters business wise including a wedding that was due for tomorrow - 30th March. The couple tried to bring it forward to 23rd March and the venue agreed but the registrars could not do so. Then shortly after the whole thing was killed off by the Govt. Some have rebooked to July and August and others to next summer. One groom was fired already because of his employers situation.
Its been not unpleasant so far for me in a nice house in a nice countryside area, what with decorating and gardening beckoning me, the weather fine, and the local shops mostly plentiful but the obvious nagging worries will build.
I suspect that quite soon there will be a big popular reaction by the public to what many consider to be a gross over-reaction. There is virtually no balanced discussion on SKY or the BBC and the other media are constantly out-bidding each other with horror stories. But some alternative views have popped up e,g,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/03/26/lockdown-wests-berlin-wall-moment-elite-managerialism-collapses/#comments

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8163587/PETER-HITCHENS-Great-Panic-foolish-freedom-broken-economy-crippled.html

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/neil-ferguson-scientist-convinced-boris-johnson-uk-coronavirus-lockdown-criticised/

And the UK Police have not helped themselves by targeting by drone dog walkers in remote areas etc.

This is not intended to be a political post (I am in age and health higher risk categories BTW), rather a suggestion that we may get back to work a lot sooner than might appear at the moment all be it with serious health consequences for a lot of us. If you are ex-military you no doubt accept degrees of risk and balance between risk/reward anyway.

Meanwhile I am updating software techniques and studying up on lots of hardware I've either forgotten about or never got around to e.g. I have a slider and I have a gimbal but I'd never tried out putting the gimbal on the slider. Wow.

I'm in the same position as the other posters business wise including a wedding that was due for tomorrow - 30th March. The couple tried to bring it forward to 23rd March and the venue agreed but the registrars could not do so. Then shortly after the whole thing was killed off by the Govt. Some have rebooked to July and August and others to next summer. One groom was fired already because of his employers situation.
Its been not unpleasant so far for me in a nice house in a nice countryside area, what with decorating and gardening beckoning me, the weather fine, and the local shops mostly plentiful but the obvious nagging worries will build.
I suspect that quite soon there will be a big popular reaction by the public to what many consider to be a gross over-reaction. There is virtually no balanced discussion on SKY or the BBC and the other media are constantly out-bidding each other with horror stories. But some alternative views have popped up e,g,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/03/26/lockdown-wests-berlin-wall-moment-elite-managerialism-collapses/#comments

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8163587/PETER-HITCHENS-Great-Panic-foolish-freedom-broken-economy-crippled.html

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/neil-ferguson-scientist-convinced-boris-johnson-uk-coronavirus-lockdown-criticised/

And the UK Police have not helped themselves by targeting by drone dog walkers in remote areas etc.

This is not intended to be a political post (I am in age and health higher risk categories BTW), rather a suggestion that we may get back to work a lot sooner than might appear at the moment all be it with serious health consequences for a lot of us. If you are ex-military you no doubt accept degrees of risk and balance between risk/reward anyway.

Meanwhile I am updating software techniques and studying up on lots of hardware I've either forgotten about or never got around to e.g. I have a slider and I have a gimbal but I'd never tried out putting the gimbal on the slider. Wow.
The major issue is not necessarily the disease itself although 1% of 65 million ie 650K is a lot of people dying but to put it in perspective there are 600K deaths in the UK every year. About 80-85% of people who get infected will have mild, moderate or no symptoms. Maybe 15-20% of those infected will require hospital admission & of those 1 in 5 will require ventilation on ICU. Half of those admitted to ICU will not survive. At the start of this crisis the UK had 4K ICU beds. They are talking about scaling this up to 30K which incidentally is the number that the State of New York says they require for a population under one third that of the UK.

The issue is that all these thousands & thousands of very sick people will overwhelm the NHS & there will be no capacity to treat any other patients. People will still have heart attacks, broken hips, asthmatic attacks, diabetic coma etc etc Cancers will go untreated & uncured because the hospitals are overflowing with people very sick with COVID-19.

It's a new disease & there is no immunity. Until there is a vaccine all we can do is slow down the rate of spread so the number of sick people arriving at hospital each day is manageable.

I don't think its an overreaction, but I do think there's a 2+ week lag in cases vs effects. So the massive shutdowns, in the US at least, will begin to show signs of a decrease or plateau hopefully starting next week. I've had almost no interaction with people (telecommuting from office job which I never did before) except for the supermarket food shopping.



All that aside tho, for me, it might be time to exit out of weddings. I'd been awaiting the Sony A7siii for about 2 years, and was hoping this spring was it. It won't be. Seems fall at the earliest, and more likely imho early next year. I use a Sony X70 & very old at this point VG900 but with good glass. I dunno, I just feel I should been rockin & rolling with the a7s3 for 2 years now, and maybe 2 more final years before calling it a day. I did have one 2 Saturdays ago, and it was kinda gross for me. The state ordered a shutdown the following Monday, people were dancing & sweating, and I was there till 11pm. I felt bad for the servers, DJ, & photog, as we just breathed that air in for hours. Lookiing back now, I bet it spread to some of us. I was very nervous the following week. The groom, seemed a bit of a denier, in a 'Nothings gonna stop my wedding' kinda way. Even (seemingly) purposefully shook my hand when I arrived. I was kinda thinking "Uhmm, no" and washed them at first chance.

Anyway, I might just go for the A73 or A74, not the S version, as its cheaper and more multipurpose (photography) and take a little while off from weddings. We'll see. Definitely won't look for any next winter.

The A7iii was my dream camera too until I discovered it had terrible banding issues filming a wedding reception with led lighting. I’ve read the A9 doesn’t have theses issues but it’s a lot more expensive. But now isn’t the time for purchasing expensive gear.

Triple whammy for me with this Virus. Like others, most of my work till July have been postponed or cancelled. A few have held on, but I'm not optimistic. Whether I can salvage this year from August or if that suffers too, I am waiting to see.

I am also in the middle of moving, to live permantly with my Fiancée, and this is proving more difficult due to restrictions. I have my own place till 23rd April, so fingers cross I can move everything out by then, especially as it's quite expensive to live there.

Finally, I was due to get married myself in May. So I am in the position to not only having Weddings postponed I was due to film, but my own as well. This year marks 10 years since I started my Wedding Video Business and getting married now would have been a nice way to celebrate. How annoying that after a decade filming Weddings, I choose this year of all years to get married.

On the plus side, I have some savings and my fiancée still has her job, though working from home. Once I am moved in, I should be able to tick along till the Government grant and then hope things improve in the latter part of the year.

I've got no plans to upgrade my gear, and once I've got the move over and done with, I shall focus on editing some personal videos I have, updating my software and websites, and doing some maintenance on my Business, marketing and social media. So I should be able to keep busy in May and maybe June. Troubling times, and I wonder what the future holds. Hopefully 2021 will be a better year and make up for a dismal one this year.

updating my software and websites, and doing some maintenance on my Business, marketing and social media. So I should be able to keep busy in May and maybe June. Troubling times, and I wonder what the future holds. Hopefully 2021 will be a better year and make up for a dismal one this year.

That's actually a smart idea, improving the business side of things.

Pete, thats a bit disappointing about the A7iii, but I suppose sometimes our gear can have its faults. and from what I read its a good hybrid camera, for both video & photo so I suppose it has its limitations. I love the run & gun abilities of video cameras, but I can admit the X70 struggles during dance floor time, which is when I switch to the VG900. I'd like to make the switch to more DSLR shooting, but maybe I'll just do things the way I do them.

One of my video friends heard that the Government were underwriting interest free business loans for small businesses having cash flow issues. He applied to one of our big banks. They asked for a BUSINESS PLAN!! He said, I don't have any business that's why I need the loan. They asked his anticipated income over the next three months, He said zero. They turned him down!

You wedding guys are not alone. All of my corporate work is gone too....everything I had on the books. Interviews, CME, promos, conventions....everything.

Some of my work has always been filming corporate conventions. That work is not only gone but it will not rebound quickly. It takes time to plan and execute big meetings with hundreds of employees. And once the world is safe to do that again corporations are not going to rush back into filling up airplanes and resorts. My friends that are employed by AV companies are all out of work indefinitely.

Steve

LED lights are a problem for lots of digital sensors. Some are more prone to issues than others. I absolutely love my A7III. I bought it primarily to have a good still camera even though stills are rarely part of my work. I never imagined how much I would end up using it as a B camera along with my Sony FS5. I have not used it around a lot of LEDs so I cant say if it is more problematic then other cams or not.

LED tip: Several years ago I was shooting a band performing in a large club with HD cameras that hated the pure blue LEDs and would destroy the video with the "blue smear" look. I knew the lighting director and let him know every time the lights cycled blue I lost my shots. To my surprise he said "I can fix that". He mixed 15 to 20% green in with everything that had been blue only. Twenty percent green will still let them look blue but it worked! It was enough to get me out of the blue death zone. I have tried it twice since then with good results once and so so results the third time. YMMV. It might be worth asking a DJ to try it if you need to.

I know that the blue monster look is not the banding Pete is referring to. LED lights are evil for us video shooters. Once upon a time it was all things bright red. But most of you wont remember that ;-)

Steve

I've noticed a lot of blue lights (at corporate events) or things lit by blue end up purple on cam, even when everything else looks right. Weird.

Sony and to a degree Panasonic just cannot do the magentas - everything comes out plus/minus magenta - so you see live a bluer purple colour, but the cameras don't. It happens on one of my Pentax DSLRs too. The older one produces very much what it looks like to the eye. The newer one has the same problems as many video cameras - the mix of red and blue LEDs just equals a magenta colour and there's no variation. Solid blue is fine, but as soon as the red LEDs creep in it becomes magenta, where it stays until the blue is almost totally absent then goes red quite quickly. Strange!

I guess thats what I meant. blue becomes purple or vice versa...I dont shoot these often enough to remember which direction it goes. Makes me wonder why the lighting person would choose that color knowing that there would be cameras at the show. Especially as they often project the camera’s feed to imag.

Because to the audience it looks stunning. I do exactly this. For every music event we do I ask the client who is the primary audience? The 1400 who paid to see the show, or the video crew - who invariably for my sort of events arrive late in the day AFTER the lighting is plotted and programmed. If the client says the audience, then the video people take what their poorly designed equipment captures. If the client says the video is important then I provide the lighting guy a monitor and ask the video people for a feed WHEN HE IS PROGRAMMING - it's too late to change colours 30 mins before showtime.

Sometimes we will do lights, sound and video and we plan the audio feeds, make sure colours are Sony friendly and the right contrast and the cameras are in the best places. When they want somebody else to do video it's fine with us. We make sure it's in the advance docs we send that we NEED the video people on site from say 2pm. We then work with them. Most make excuses, then complain it's too blue.

The truth is that LED is not new, and the saturated mono-frequency colour spikes look wonderful, but the camera manafacturers have done little to make cameras work with them. They're not going away. LED gives the lighting designer a palette full of saturated colours - like the deep blue. With tungsten lamps, Congo blue has less than 5% of every 1000W coming out of the other side of the gel - so bright blue stages were impossible without MegaWatts of lighting. With 16 million colours (OK that's not 16 million you could see with the naked eye) the lighting people can do amazing things. It's scandalous the manufacturers of VERY expensive cameras cannot make them able to resolve them properly after all these years. I've stuck with JVC for video because the colour rendition closely matches my eyes.

I send what they give me to projectors or LED screens. I take an SDI and plug it in. Not my department if they haven't bothered to be on the team. We have video monitors in our lighting control position. Very often when video come in demanding the audio feeds they also forgot, I hand them a cable and ask them to squirt some video down it for the lighting op. Often then look at it and ask why does he want that? Can't he see? Then during the show somebody comes and asks for the blue to be turned down, or the red made more pink. We smile ........ and say we'll try, which usually doesn't happen because changing colours mid show just isn't going to happen.

Paul I don't think anyone is blaming you. Just more events are going to led and the color ones are very popular. Often we are called in to film an event and we don't know there's a problem until the event starts. Even if we knew ahead of time it's often not feasible to change the light setup. Most events are not the made for tv type and it makes sense the audience should come first. But it still doesn't make our lives any easier.

Why has covid suddenly become a chat about LED lights? Did something get merged?

It all started when someone mentioned a camera they wanted but were waiting to buy now 'cause of the cancellations, and how someone's older camera struggled with certain lighting conditions.

The irony here is that certain lighting conditions can be used to induce a corona effect, thus bringing it (forgive the pun) full circle. :-)

Andrew

Would it be even more ironic if this thread went viral?

(Dodges tomatoes)

Well - the latest Covid-19 victim is my poor old mum. 88 years old and she'd been diabetic for over 60 years, she'd had 2 heart attacks, kidney failure and breast cancer - then Covid-19 comes along and wiped her out this morning. Up until this morning, the numbers of people who have died due to the virus were just numbers - it's got personal now!

Sorry to hear the bad news Paul, you and your family are in my thoughts and in my prayers.