#SONGBIRD ON NETFLIX FULL#

“I didn’t want to put my family at risk, but because of all the precautions I felt far safer on set that I ever felt at the supermarket.” “It was incredible to experience,” says Mason.

And so, unlike the makers of The Batman, for instance, the makers of Songbird got through the shoot without any infections. Every prop was sterilised and vacuum-packed after use, and the next time it was needed, the appropriate actor would cut open the pack with their own scissors so as to be certain that no one else had touched it.

#SONGBIRD ON NETFLIX FULL#

The cast and crew were separated into different “zones” to limit their interaction, everyone wore full PPE, and the actors would not remove their N95 masks until they were ready for a take. Mason was tested for coronavirus three times a week. The result was a set of protocols that have now been adopted across the industry.ĭirector Adam Mason during the filming of Songbird. “There was a lot of communication between the unions, our production, the actors and the crew members about what would be deemed safe and sensible,” says Mason. Given the circumstances, though, it is surprising how often the actors are face to unmasked face. In the majority of scenes, the characters are in separate rooms. One character, played by Paul Walter Hauser, was conceived as a drone pilot because Mason thought he might have to shoot the film using drones. Naturally, the screenplay was written “with safety in mind”. And then there were helicopters going over my house announcing a curfew that night.” When we were writing it, we were debating whether we should put in a curfew, or whether that would be hard to believe. “It’s dystopian,” says Mason, “but ultimately I feel that the film is a lot sweeter than where we are now. Two of his clients (Moore and Whitford) sell counterfeit immunity bracelets on the black market, and Nico hopes to save up and buy one for his girlfriend (Sofia Carson). One such “munie” is Nico (KJ Apa), a hunky bicycle courier who shows off his washboard abs whenever he has a moment. There were no egos because everyone was thankful to be working … All the Hollywood bullshit went out of the window Adam Masonīut some people are immune to Covid-23, and have yellow ID bracelets to prove it. If you test positive, hazmat-suited goons from the sanitation department break down your door, throw you into a van, and drive you to be quarantined in a high-walled shanty town.

Every morning at 9am, you use a mobile phone app to scan yourself for the virus. The world has been ravaged by the latest and deadliest strain of coronavirus, Covid-23, and the government’s system to stop the spread is a lot simpler than anything involving tiers and scotch eggs. The story they ended up with is set in 2024. After we’d been stuck in our houses for three weeks, there was something appealing about imagining the worst-case scenario four years down the line.” “It seemed silly to invent a monster as a metaphor for what we were going through when there was a real monster that we couldn’t see outside our front doors. “But it felt like we were beating about the bush,” says Mason. They had envisaged 200ft-high monsters roaming Los Angeles, as glimpsed by characters who were stuck inside their apartments. Photograph: Courtesy of STXfilmsĪs speedily as Songbird was made, however, it progressed a long way from Mason and Boyes’s initial concept of a Cloverfield-style creature feature.

Songbird on netflix