Update (7/15) - ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish has emailed employees to inform them that staff probably won’t be able to return to their offices this year:
Even as cities begin to reopen, many employees are still wondering when they can return to their desks.
The voice cast of SpongeBob record new at-home special, The Stars of SpongeBob Fan Favorites Special
But for those working in Hollywood’s top offices, the question of the hour is somewhat different.
“For us it’s not so much when can we go back into the office,” a marketing executive at Disney told Anhar Karim, reporting for
Forbes. “It’s when can we go back to set.”
While restrictions due to COVID-19 (coronavirus) are steadily lifting, precautions and safety procedures continue to greatly limit major studios’ physical productions. This means highly anticipated live-action films and television shows are not getting the footage they need to be completed. New projects are still being pitched and purchased, but after that there’s just a lot of planning and waiting for things to get better.
But the situation is very different in the world of animation.
“For the most part, animation keeps on trucking,” said Mariah Wilson, a production assistant at Nickelodeon. While her peers in other departments and other studios are spending their time reading, writing, and just planning for the future, she and her co-workers are hard at work getting episodes delivered on schedule. From what she’s seeing, animation remains fine.
To be fair, even animation studios did have their share of issues with the transition to remote work.
“There was a mad dash scramble in the two weeks up to everyone working from home,” said Wilson. In those very hectic days employees ran about to make sure everyone had their emails set up, had access to all the links they’d need, and most of all that creators had the necessary software to keep on creating.
And even after all that prep, problems still arose.
Recently, Wilson was tasked with checking if some new designs were good to go.
“Usually this would be a quick conversation,” she explained. “Like, ‘Hey...do you have the design ready?’”
But in the new work from home setup, what would have normally taken a few minutes now took days as Wilson tried repeatedly to reach the designer, only to have her investigation end with learning that the designer hadn’t even set up his email. Wilson’s messages weren’t even getting read.
However, even with small hiccups like this, the pandemic has still not done much to hinder the animation production process. Across the major animation studios, most projects that were previously planned are still being written, animated, and produced at almost the same speed as expected.
“We’re not as reliant on people having to be together,” said Wilson. As long as everyone’s still communicating online and the artists have access to the assets and tools they need, there really is no impediment to getting the work done.
Given animation’s unexpected resilience in these odd times, it might be the exact thing Hollywood needs to turn to in order to stay afloat.
While demand for things such as restaurants or flights has dropped significantly due to the pandemic, the rise of popular streaming services means that audiences are burning through entertainment very quickly. So, there is a lot of demand, and it appears the most effective way to provide more content to meet that demand is to animate it.
For Wilson, this spells out an exciting future for the medium.
“It would be really cool to see animation take off for adults not only in the comedy space,” she said. While animation certainly isn’t just for children or comedy, much of it is produced only in those spaces. So, this new shift in what is possible for entertainment production could push studios to apply animation more broadly.
Sure enough, some have already decided to go for it. The popular live action drama
The Blacklist notably chose to finish off their season with animated segments when they could no longer capture new footage.
In addition to animating new content, streaming platforms are also delving into the archives for content, which has also been a hit with consumers. When Netflix added Nickelodeon's
Avatar: The Last Airbender to its library in May, the already 15-year-old series
instantly became the number-one property on the service.
Another way networks are providing
Wilson predicts that by this time next year, when so many live action projects will have been significantly delayed, what will be left for viewers to consume is plenty of new animated content. So, from there it’ll be up to audiences to decide whether to reward it with their time.
The coronavirus continues to challenge a lot of assumptions about how Hollywood produces its content, from removing theatrical guidelines to making socially distant shoots work. But despite it all, Wilson chooses to see the positivity in everyone trying their best to keep going.
“Everyone’s just trying to keep on,” she said. “There’s really nothing else we can do.”
From
CNBC:
How remote work risks a new digital jobs divide for minorities
Key Points:
- Black and Hispanic students entering the workforce feel significantly less comfortable with remote jobs than White students, according to a recent survey.
- Lack of space and limited access to technology are among the career challenges underrepresented minorities face.
- Young workers of color may permanently be left behind if digital inequality in the labor market is not addressed by employers.
The mass migration to remote work helped companies solve a major coronavirus challenge, but the recent civil unrest has exposed diversity and opportunity gaps across the U.S., which telecommuting is beginning to exacerbate. Low-income students and students of color entering the workforce are struggling to overcome a telecommuting digital divide.
The data is starting to back up the personal experience. A WayUp survey in April 2020 highlighted that Black and Hispanic college students and recent grads are much less comfortable with virtual work than their White peers.
“Now that I’m back home in Illinois living with my mom, I’m in a very tiny apartment where there is no separation between eat, work and sleep. ... If I want privacy, it doesn’t exist,” said Ibrahim Mokhtar, a Black student at the University of Southern California who is spending his summer interning remotely with the nonprofit organization GiveDuet.
Remote work capability as top concern
The WayUp survey indicated that among all students, how capable they are of working remotely is a top concern, but Black and Hispanic students were 145% more likely than White peers to express this issue. Among respondents who indicated that they were most concerned about being able to perform a remote internship, over half were Black or Hispanic.
Respondents also identified a lack of physical space to work as a key issue. Census data shows that Black households have 20% more people and Hispanic households have 80% more people compared to White households, which can result in concerns about background noise, distractions, as well as the basic concern about lack of space.
Zamir Ramirez, who is Mexican American and navigating his first year working full-time at Nickelodeon Animation from home, said space is vital for his working environment but hard to find. “For low-income families like my own, finding a room to work in is difficult. It can be cramped, it’s usually a room that’s used as storage, and there’s no real sense of privacy. That already does a lot in terms of the psyche,” Ramirez said.
“We have a big family of kids, so anywhere I go, I’m pretty much around loud kids going buck wild,” said Destiney Johnson, a junior at Grambling State University who identifies as Black. She relocated to a relative’s house to do her immersive research internship program with Florida International University this summer. “I realized I could get in a better situation living elsewhere,” Johnson said.
Technology barriers
Access to technology has made remote work particularly difficult for members of low-income families. The 82% of White adults in the U.S. who report owning a desktop or laptop computer compares to 58% of Blacks and 57% of Hispanics who indicated the same in a 2019 Pew Research Center survey. Black (66%) and Hispanic (61%) respondents in the Pew survey reported having broadband internet, versus 79% of White adults.
“Financially, having good internet where you can keep your camera and audio on for Zoom and other things is difficult, especially when everyone is on their devices at the same time.” Mokhtar said.
The financial stress caused by the pandemic has made these work-related expenditures an ever greater challenge.
“The hidden costs that people never talk about, like internet or even a desk, are huge,” he said.
To compensate for the financial burden of setting up a work-from-home space, Mokhtar was able to receive a CARES Act emergency grant through USC. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act’s Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund was distributed to universities across the U.S. for students facing hardships as a result of the pandemic. USC students who have filed or can file for Federal Student Aid also qualify for this grant and are eligible to receive up to $3,000 each in aid.
“Thankfully, I had savings from my past internships and on-campus jobs, but getting funding from the school was a very big help,” Mokhtar said.
Career development and ‘code-switching’
For Ramirez, one of the biggest hurdles of being a new full-time employee remotely is having opportunities to connect with co-workers and managers. “Young professionals need to network and develop relationships with their bosses — that’s what the first year is used for,” he said. “At home that disconnected is felt. It’s much more difficult to reach out to people without feeling like I’m encroaching on their time.”
As there is more talk of “living at work” overwhelming a more balanced “work from home” environment, there are specific difficulties that young workers from underrepresented minorities face when their worlds of work and home are the same.
Christine Cruzvergara, vice president at jobs platform Handshake — which connects students and university career offices to employers, a “LinkedIn for college” — said every student deals with uncertainty when starting a new job, but additional barriers for students of color in a virtual workplace will need to be addressed.
Corporate culture can be harder to learn remotely, she said, giving as an example the concept of code-switching — changing languages or language styles in different settings — can be particularly prevalent for students of diverse backgrounds, who feel the need to switch from their own vernacular to a workplace standard.
“Some might have to code-switch in the workplace and determine how to do that when they’re mostly on email and phone calls with limited body language to read,” Cruzvergara said. “They’re going to have to find other cues to give them a sense of what the culture is like and how to navigate it in terms of their conversations and their relationships.”
For Jephtha Prempeh, a Black student from USC who recently started a remote internship with Bloomberg Associates, the government-focused consulting arm of Michael Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies, being home with family and working from a bedroom makes code-switching even more complicated. “I do feel self-conscious about if I sound intelligent, but speaking differently and approaching things differently does change my home space, and I can’t shake it off when the day is done. I don’t have that fresh space to come back and be myself,” Prempeh said.
"Students are often afraid to ask and jeopardize their internship. Help your employer understand your situation. Don’t try to cover it up." Everette Fortner, ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA’S CAREER CENTER
Despite socioeconomic gaps making remote work challenging, many students feel supported in their roles, both with material resources and emotional support. “I would be absolutely unable to take care of myself mentally and get the work done if it wasn’t for the fact that I have a very understanding and reasonable boss and team,” Mokhtar said. “I’m able to communicate with everyone on the team pretty easily, so they know what I’m dealing with.”
Everette Fortner, associate vice president at the University of Virginia’s career center encourages students to speak up to their managers about their concerns with remote work. “Students are often afraid to ask and jeopardize their internship. Help your employer understand your situation. Don’t try to cover it up. ... It’s a matter of continually communicating with your manager about how to best get your work done in the living situation you’re in,” Fortner said.
Johnson said her program spoke to each intern prior to their start date to ensure they had all of the resources they needed for work, and were even provided a stipend to cover for any additional supplies. “I was worried if I was going to be prepared and have everything I needed to do a good job, so I’m really happy they took that into consideration,” she said.
The diversity and inclusion push in the workplace needs to start from the hiring process taking into account the digital divide. “If you want to recruit and manage a diverse group of people, you need to ensure you’re not only sourcing those candidates, but that you’re also interviewing them in a way that removes as much bias as possible,” said Liz Wessel, co-founder and CEO of WayUp. She said the remote environment can be used to help diversity efforts, as hiring managers can use technology to access a wider range of diverse candidates without the physical and financial barriers of travel.
While companies figure out the best way to accommodate these transitions, Johnson advised her student peers to use university resources and social networks to find opportunities and get connected with employers. “Check in with school advisors and counselors; they have more resources and are ready to help,” she said.
University career services connect students directly with employers, and can also provide additional funding to support students in unpaid internships. UVA is among the numerous universities which, in addition to providing federal emergency relief funding, offer parent-sponsored and provost-sponsored grants and scholarships of up to $5,000 based on the needs of the student and the industry they are working in.
“Our absolute priority is making sure students, particularly first-generation and low-income students, can financially afford to get the same experiences as everyone else, especially during these times,” said UVA’s Fortner. The school’s career center had an extended grant application deadline this year to accommodate the number of students whose internship plans had changed or became unpaid. “We strongly encourage students to sit with a career counselor and turn over every stone we have for financing their internship,” he said.
With many large employers laying the foundation for a permanent shift to a remote working environment, diversity and inclusion planning needs to be a component of the shift.
For Johnson and other students who had initial concerns about working remotely, communicating with hiring managers and tapping into university resources has allowed them to overcome initial challenges and excel in their endeavors. “Everyone has been so helpful and motivating, always encouraging us that we could do it despite what’s going on around us,” she said.
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From
Kidscreen:
Is the future of WFH a hybrid model?
As employees shift to remote work, studios like Atomic Cartoons and Jam Filled see offices as a "home base" in the future—a place for key meetings and celebrations.
Thousands of animation employees started working from home in March when physical distancing measures went into effect around the world. Thanks to huge leaps in technology, animating an entire show away from a studio is more than doable. In lockdown, many studios have finished productions, met deadlines and even started new development projects from the comfort of their homes.
However, while this remote work has been lauded, many are asking how much longer can it last? Some believe questions about the effectiveness of WFH have been laid to rest forever—we’ve done it, we can keep doing it, what’s the problem? Others see the issues that have cropped up in the transition as proof that the model can’t work long term. And many of us land somewhere in the middle.
Kidscreen concludes its WFH series, digging into why that middle ground may the key to the future of offices.
The last several months have shown that a drastic change is possible in the animation industry. While return to office life in some form may be inevitable, animation studio heads can’t ignore the benefits of at least some at-home flexibility.
Office avoidance
Despite having 14 shows in development, Atomic Cartoons isn’t in a rush to get back to the office. And its employees agree: In a survey of 700 staffers, teams in LA, Ottawa and Vancouver weren’t ready to return to the office, says CEO Jennifer McCarron.
Planning a return today has become a balancing act of helping employees feel safe, while solving the problems a lack of face-to-face interaction creates. To address the issue as Atomic ramps up some new shows, the studio is taking advantage of the warmer weather and organizing socially distanced meet-ups at parks.
“Even if we’re all standing in a park in hula hoops, I just don’t see any other way around it,” McCarron says. “If you have to work with a team for six months to a year, [while also working] independently, you’ve got to develop a rhythm and a shorthand [with colleagues].”
But these short-term solutions may offer long-term learnings, because even if there’s a point when the virus is all but eliminated, McCarron doesn’t see things returning to the way things were before when it comes to office usage.
The permanent solution for Atomic, according to McCarron, will be one where employees come in for important creative meetings and kick-offs (albeit likely no longer in a park), but complete the majority of work at home. That being said, the company has no plans to give up its office space.
Of its three offices, Vancouver is the furthest along in its re-opening plan. Some employees are able to come in on a voluntary basis, though less than 5% of the team is opting to return at this time.
“We’re really going to try and cater to the needs of our employees with this new flexibility,” says McCarron. “If we can create a better work-life balance for people without two hours of commuting, why not? Other people are struggling because they miss the community of being in an office. We’ll be listening to the needs of our employees and seeing it as a way we can offer something different for everyone.”
Stagnant footprints
Pre-pandemic, Boat Rocker subsidiary Jam Filled was on the hunt for additional office space in Ottawa. The animation studio behind shows like Nickelodeon’s Loud House, The Casagrandes and Pinky Malinky was looking for more room for its 500-plus employee base, but when COVID-19 started to spread, studio president Kyle MacDougall put the process on hold indefinitely.
That being said, with nine shows in production, Jam Filled has had to onboard 80 new team members since March, stretching the limits of its existing footprint. And with plans to increase its workforce to close to 600 in the fall, the teams won’t be able to return to a physical location even when things are safe.
The earliest Jam Filled will bring people back into the office in any significant way will be in September at a 30% capacity.
MacDougall sees employees returning for a maximum of three days a week, at least for the foreseeable future, and the focus will be on bringing back team members who are struggling in their home offices. While it’s not shopping for new real estate any time soon, MacDougall says Jam Filled plans on keeping its current footprint.
“I think having that home base is still really important for everybody,” he says. “Especially when you want to pull people together, when you’re doing events, or you’re trying to celebrate things that you’ve accomplished.”
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More Nick: Nickelodeon Upfront 2020 Roundup!
Originally published: Monday, June 08, 2020.
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