 Between the fear and actual danger of COVID and what feels like never-ending lockdowns and economic restrictions, the last several months have been truly brutal for a lot of major industries. In previous episodes of this series, we've talked about the impact this is having on our economy as a whole, and about the specific problems Hollywood was dealing with even before they started grappling with a global pandemic. Take AB5, hyper-unionization, high minimum wages, expensive real estate and declining theater attendance, add in mandatory shutdowns and shelter-in-place orders, and what you get is a California film industry on the brink of disaster. We probably don't need to rehash why California's response to the virus and its pre-existing business climate were never going to be a winning combination for the movie business. That much should be pretty clear by now, but a waning entertainment industry is also bad news for consumers, stuck at home and starved for fresh content to take their minds off the current state of the world. It's been pretty bleak out there, but finally there's some good news on the horizon. Even though filming is slowly restarting in parts of the United States, the Czech Republic has quietly become one of the surprise heroes coming to the rescue of struggling production companies. Hit the subscribe button, ring that bell icon, and join me for the European vacation you wished you could take this year on this short edition of Out of Frame. Central Europe has always been a popular place to film certain kinds of movies, but the Czech Republic has been growing in popularity over the last few years. The combination of financial incentives, talented crews, and a diverse range of scenic locations attracts a significant number of international productions. In 2019 alone, the Czech Film Fund received 117 applications to shoot new feature films, an episodic TV, and streaming series, nearly 80 of which were completed that year. Amazon Studios' sprawling new fantasy series The Wheel of Time, as well as Carnival Row, Marvel's The Falcon and The Winter Soldier on Disney Plus, and at least some of season two of Netflix The Witcher are all being shot, at least partly, in the Czech Republic. But what's most interesting to me is how they've handled coronavirus. Like basically every other country in the world, the Czech Republic shut down filming in March. But unlike most other places, they were back open for filming new projects in May, just two months later. Los Angeles, Atlanta, Vancouver, and Toronto didn't allow filming to resume until July. New York Studios are still shut down. So how did the Czech Republic manage to allow films to proceed, while still taking proper precautions to keep actors and crew members safe? Immediately after production shut down in March, the Czech Film Commission began thinking about how they could reopen quickly and responsibly. They got together with the Audiovisual Producers Association and the European Institute for Health and Safety in Film Industry to come up with a reopening plan that worked pretty well for most everyone involved. The result was Europe's first self-regulatory guidelines for resuming filming. The government signed off on the plan and people in the Czech Republic have benefited from the speedy reawakening of a lucrative industry. And how these guidelines were developed is important. Instead of being paralyzed by fear or waiting to be told what to do, the Film Commission decided to take the initiative and not wait for some indefinite point in the future to let everyone get back to work. They talked to members of the film industry who would be affected by any plan they came up with and with experts on how to keep crews safe and healthy. In short, they involved the people with actual skin in the game. Crazy, right? Also, the guidelines state upfront that they are recommendations, not legally binding rules, so they can be tweaked to suit everyone's needs. That might scare some people, but the fact is no two filming projects are ever going to be exactly the same. No two crews have a perfectly identical set of precautionary needs or risk tolerances. The Czech Film Commission's built-in flexibility allows each shoot to be as accommodating and individualized as possible when it comes to COVID-19 precautions. Even better, the guidelines themselves explicitly encourage personal, individual responsibility, stating, The primary concern is always to accept one's own degree of responsibility and the fact that no one can predict the development of an epidemic with 100% certainty. Compared to the kinds of panicked hand-ringing and attempts to control other people's behavior we've all seen on the news and social media here in the US, there is a shocking amount of level-headed intellectual humility and trust in our fellow human beings packed into that one sentence. This is exactly why the Czech Republic's film industry has been able to bounce back so quickly and why it's been able to entice so many big-name productions to shoot there. The guidelines embrace the reality that not everything can be known or controlled for. They embrace the fact that every person on every shoot is an individual with different needs, wants, and tolerances, and they encourage each of those individuals to take responsibility for themselves and for their projects. This is the kind of attitude that's most needed right now in the US if we're going to manage any kind of bounce back from the havoc that the response to the coronavirus has wreaked on our economy and on our lives. A little bit of personal responsibility, intellectual humility, and the freedom to act in the face of known risks can and will go a long way toward recovery. Hey everybody, thanks so much for watching. The ability and freedom of individuals to make their own choices according to their own needs and values is incredibly important to me. The last six months have been really tough, especially for people who put a high value on individual liberty, so I'm thrilled to be able to share a bright spot with this video. If you have any other good news you'd like to share, I'd love to hear about that. What's the best thing going on in your life right now? Let me know in the comments. And please check out the new Out of Frame Behind the Scenes podcast. The audio is available wherever you get your podcasts, but if you prefer a video version, we've set up a special channel just for that. Find the link in the description below. It comes out every Friday, but supporters on Patreon get early access and special bonus content, so if that interests you, please consider becoming one of our patrons. And as always, be sure to like this video and subscribe to the channel, hit that bell icon, and look for our brand new Out of Frame accounts on Twitter and Instagram. See you next time.