How Hallmark and Lifetime Made Christmas Movies Amid

So how did the cable channels handle to ensure their Christmas slates wouldn’t shrink in a yr stricken by the pandemic?

At Lifetime, the technique was to shift focus to the vacations as shortly as doable, which allowed them to make each one of many deliberate 2020 films, with an opportunity “one or two more” could be shot as properly.

“When the pandemic really shut everything down, we had a handful of our other original movies that we had anticipated that we were going to move into production prior to starting the Christmas films,” Amy Winter, head of programming at Lifetime, advised TheWrap. “And as we looked at it, we realized, maybe nobody knows that those movies are coming, but everybody knows we’re supposed to have a Christmas season, so let’s move all of our focus into trying to make sure we can get these Christmas films done. So as soon as things started to open up safely, we pivoted all of our productions to delivering on these 30 premieres that we’ve got coming.”

Then it got here all the way down to the logistics — reminiscent of, how do you get your characters to cozy up when they’re performed by actors who don’t need to catch COVID?

“Everybody was incredibly concerned about, as we were figuring it out, making sure that we were following the best possible guidelines to keep people safe,” Winter stated. “We all sat down, even before we got started, saying, how is anybody even going to kiss in these movies, given the circumstances? And the greatest, oddest solution I’ve seen so far is people kissing through plexiglass that can be removed in post, which is absolutely phenomenal.”

Winter stated having married actors Blake Lee and Ben Lewis as the celebs of “The Christmas Setup,” Lifetime’s first-ever vacation film centered on a homosexual love story, eradicated the kissing drawback for not less than that undertaking.

“The other thing was, we had scripts in place, but we went through them with a little bit more detail and an eye toward, obviously, you can’t have a ballroom filled with a gazillion extras. It would not be safe,” Winter stated. “So a few scenes had to be adjusted accordingly, to make sure that we were protecting everybody, which might be a fun game for people to play this year: Spot the differences.”

For Hallmark, the pandemic shutdown on productions had not less than one profit: the time to step again and suppose issues via earlier than anybody stepped foot on a set once more.

“We learned about the production shutdowns at the same time as the rest of the industry,” Hallmark programming chief Michelle Vicary advised TheWrap. “And in some ways, having to take that pause was an advantage. It forced us to take a breath, assess the projects we had in development, really hone the stories, and game out every single detail of every single production. I’m very pleased to say that we did not have to sacrifice a single project. We produced every movie we had originally planned.”

But in a typical yr, Hallmark would have appeared to prime itself in amount — together with high quality — one thing that simply wasn’t a risk with COVID-19.

“Over the past several years, we have increased the number of original holiday movies each year,” Vicary stated. “As you’ll be able to think about, the onset of the pandemic created vital challenges for each community and manufacturing firm. We wished to hit the bottom operating as quickly as manufacturing was again up, so we took that downtime to coach ourselves on trade tips and precautionary measures that ensured most security on our units. It was time properly spent as a result of we have been in a position to actually dive in as quickly as we may begin taking pictures once more. I’m extremely happy with the truth that we have been in a position to full as many films as we have been and with out compromising…