Case Study - Covid-19 Testing for Film/TV Production
The entertainment industry has faced many challenges due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In this case study we look at how SMS Client Reminders was used by a film production company to facilitate Covid testing.
The Client
Dan Auclair is a highly experienced Canadian film industry production manager. He has worked on many notable films and TV series since the early 1990s and found himself facing some new challenges during 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, while preparing to work on filming the new science fiction film Moonfall, written and directed by Roland Emmerich and starring Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson and John Bradley.
The Problem
Covid-19 has caused huge disruption for all organizations across the world, most of which have had to ensure they are operating safely at all times to protect staff and customers.
We were approached during October 2020 by Dan as he urgently needed an SMS reminder system for the upcoming production of Moonfall that he was working on. He needed to find a way to quickly and easily send a text reminder to every member of the team for their regular Covid tests that were required during the course of the production, which required thousands of reminders being sent each month.
Dan had some very specific requirements in the way he wanted to import reminders and client data from a CSV file into our system. After spending some time considering the options it was clear that this required some modifications to be made to the system in order to meet these requirements. We agreed to undertake the enhancements as we could also see great potential in working with Dan and that these new features could be useful to other customers in future.
The Solution
The new process we developed has ensured that Dan can upload all of his client and appointment data quickly and easily into our system from his own CSV spreadsheet file. SMS Client Reminders then automatically schedules and sends out text reminders to each member of staff at the pre-defined time before their next Covid test appointment, saving a huge amount of time and effort for Dan and his production team.
Dan has used the system very successfully throughout the Moonfall production and was so pleased that he has personally recommended SMS Client Reminders to his film industry associates as an ideal solution for sending automated Covid test reminders. The system has subsequently been used on numerous other productions including Single All The Way, Disappointment Boulevard and the Amazon production of Three Pines.
Dan says this about SMS Client Reminders: "The system allowed us to effortlessly send reminders to our entire crew and as a result greatly reduce missed appointments. Our Covid-19 testing team was able to operate smoothly and efficiently. The support staff is just awesome and were able to tweak the system to our needs and turn it all around extremely fast."
"Film Production students in Dramatic Lighting for HD class at VFS" by vancouverfilmschool is licensed with CC BY 2.0. "Covid Testing Dodger Stadium" by Chris Yarzab is licensed with CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/