They often say that the show must go on. Even more so for theatres, who have had to endure some of the worst restrictions, far worse than some of the entertainment sector. In fact, at the Hammond theatre in west London, audience numbers fell from over 12,000 in the year to 19th March 2020 to none in the following year. I sat down with Mr Matthew Thompson, technician at the theatre, to talk about the impact of the last 24 months.

 

What do you think has been the biggest challenge during Covid?

 

"The biggest challenge for us as a theatre has been adapting to the virtual environment. Obviously, moving our skills out of live [sic] to a virtual produced environment with multiple cameras and live mixing. When we started this it was like "let's see if this works" and after the first visitors' event we were having to adapt and find a more efficient way of doing it and streamlining the process. From there, more virtual events popped up - video recording, concerts - editing them to be sent out to parents at a later date. The biggest thing was changing our focus and skillsets. The Hammond's capacity actually increased in the Covid year compared to a non-Covid year - this was because we had to spend a lot more time setting up for a virtual event - for any event it was anywhere between 2 hours editing and 12 hours editing. For example, we did Brainstorm, and because that was just over an hour and we shot that over three cameras and had to do audio mixing etc, that took us about 30 hours editing."

 

Because what you've had to do during Covid was much different to before, were you able to adapt quickly?

 

"We've been able to adapt quite quickly, one of my colleagues, Mr Elliot, came from working in the BBC" - [Did he?] - "yes, he used to work for the BBC, so he has a wealth of knowledge in the world of production and also in theatre. I've come from what we would call live production, so live multi-camera shoots, anywhere from 2 to 8 cameras at once live to screens etc. All we really did was take a set of skills we already knew and find a way to suit what we were looking to produce."

 

Where do you see things going in the next 12 months?

 

"Obviously, it's always unpredictable with a virus like this, but we're at a point now where we know how to efficiently run a live event, and incorporate the virtual side of it - for example, the RSE talk that happened the other night for the parents, we were able to do that in person while live streaming it with two cameras. We've moved our setup across to having two static cameras on the circle front bar, and there's also a place where we can put our large camera - that allows us to still run a full capacity audience if need be, and be able to live stream it at the same time. So, we've kinda found the middle ground that will suit 90% of events. There might be the occasional event where we might need to put a camera down where the audience is sitting but at this point we've found a good balance."

 

If you could tell yourself something two years ago, just before the pandemic hit, what would you say?

 

Be prepared for the fact that most staff members and people that need to be live streamed have never worked to a camera before. So be patient, and be prepared to guide them a bit more.

 

Many thanks to Mr Thompson for spending time with me. The Hammond Theatre can be found at https://www.thehammondtheatre.co.uk/.