Party's over for behind-the-scenes workers in Hollywood awards season
A year ago, photographer Alberto Rodriguez would have been jostling for position on a glory scarlet carpet during Hollywood's hectic awards flavour.
Today, with award shows going virtual, you're more likely to find the 20-yr veteran delivering food for Uber.
"My last full-blown premiere was Mulan, I think it was March 9 or tenth of last year," said Rodriguez. "The next photo consignment I was able to become was in October."
The coronavirus pandemic didn't just shutter picture show theatres, music venues and halt production on scores of films and television shows.
It also threw out of work the security guards, florists, caterers, waiters, limousine drivers and photographers who make a living from the parties, movie premieres and lunches that accept place around the Golden Globes, Grammys, Oscars and multiple other prove business organisation events between January and March.
A 2022 report by the Los Angeles Economic Evolution Council said that Oscar season injects some US$130 1000000 into the city's economy every year.
But with awards this year relegated to mostly online events, without live audiences, red carpets, parties and screaming fans, those behind the scenes are struggling to brand ends meet.
Rodriguez says he has lost more than half his income, despite picking upward some work delivering food and going on unemployment.
"In the terminal year, photography-wise I've had five or 6 days of shoots and that'south over a period where you tin can piece of work up to 200, 240 days on a regular year," he said.
Ane Events, a Los Angeles staffing agency that provides waiters for Academy Award and Grammy events, has seen its sales slump 70 per cent in the by year.
"We have actually struggled as a visitor and as an manufacture, and we've seen some of our friends get under who weren't able to ride information technology out," said One Events owner Nickolas Potocic.
His 85 or so trained events staff are by and large made up of actors, musicians and models seeking flexible piece of work between auditions.
"They are getting the brunt of this," he said. When small events started to open up a petty last summer, "there were a lot of people that said they had moved back in with their parents, or to another land. Others just got out of the industry altogether."
I Events has turned to delivering boxed dinners and lunches for clients holding virtual gatherings, and to COVID-19 mobile testing for emerging small-scale-scale events.
In a normal awards season, Toni Kilicoglu's Ruby-red Rug Systems was supplying carpets to 25 to 50 events a week, including parties thrown past Vanity Fair magazine, Elton John and music executive Clive Davis.
"The record is 15 parties in one day," said Kilicoglu.
"During awards season, I don't slumber much. Information technology'due south just nonstop," he said of his pre-pandemic life.
This season, Kilicoglu estimates he'due south lost about lxxx per cent of his events business. He has pivoted to making plexiglass dividers for essential businesses and big backdrops for people to use in video calls.
"It's deplorable, it's depressing, only there'due south nix we can do. We just have to wait and exist patient," he said.
Meanwhile, photographer Rodriguez is facing upwards to the prospect of a very different Oscar ceremony on April 25.
"Information technology's an awkward feeling not being part of the awards flavour, for the Gold Globes or the Oscars, after twenty years of doing it," he said, continuing exterior the deserted Dolby Theatre, dwelling of the Academy Awards anniversary.
"You got to wear a tux, and you got to exist uncomfortable all day, but it'due south really like the pinnacle of the entertainment industry, so I miss it."
(Source: Reuters)
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Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/entertainment/party-over-for-behind-the-scenes-workers-hollywood-awards-season-179636
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