> It admittedly feels crass to speak about the impact of the COVID-19
> pandemic purely from the perspective of
> entertainment, given the economic and social upheaval it wrought as well
> as the immense loss of life across the globe. Still, lockdowns created a
> paradox: a lot of people were sitting at home with little to do, but early
> pandemic restrictions prevented production on films, shows, and games.
> There was a glut of content to support the initial months, which helped
> Netflix’s Extraction and Tiger King and ESPN’s The Last
> Dance became hits. But as the pandemic wore on it became clear that
> this would not be a short-term thing, and studios were either going to
> have to release their blockbusters on VOD / streaming (like Tenet
> and Black Widow) or keep delaying their releases until theatrical
> distribution was a more viable option (like No Time To Die and
> Top Gun: Maverick).

The last thing I did outside of my home before Los Angeles went on lockdown was attend a playback session at Remote Control in Hans' room for Hillbilly Elegy, so I can relate to this installment more than most. Yeah I remember getting a phone call from Dave Fleming the Friday the orders went into effect, telling me everyone was packing up their rigs out of Remote Control to go work from home the best they could, it was like an evacuation order, and our playback meeting for Monday had been cancelled. Man, weird weird little moment in time.... from then on we did everything via Evercast (like a fancy Zoom call) including the final dub in May, which worked well for me because my son was born in the middle of it, so I was able to be home for that and not in New York City, where the actual dub stage itself was located. The composers, myself, Ron, everyone watched and listened on identical headphone over Zoom and 'Streambox'.... and I became a father. And never left my home for months. I have a screen shot of Evercast from that dub with everyone including myself each in our little panels....

Thanks for the weird little trip down memory lane I think lots of people who worked on the film scores you so lovingly recount in this series would feel nostalgic like I have reading your installments.

N8