April 2020

Life and Birth began on BBC1 at 8.30pm on Tuesday, April 21, 2020 and you can read Birmingham Mail’s extensive preview feature here

In the pandemic age of a global lockdown, it’s as moving as it is life affirming.

And proof that no matter what has come before – bubonic plague, world wars, recessions, depressions, atomic bombs, Crossroads and missed penalty shootouts – life will always go on with a renewed sense of optimism. For the mothers to be, the scenes in Life and Birth offer a rollercoaster of emotions throughout the build up to the big day and beyond… because some ladies can end up way overdue when they least expect it. The series confirms that the only certainty about giving birth is its sheer unpredictably, with every journey in a maternity suite creating a new road map.

Locations

Life and Birth was shot in three city hospitals and the narrator – former Coronation Street star Suranne Jones – says there are typically 351 births every week for staff to navigate.

Birmingham Women’s Hospital

Situated next to the giant QE, The Women’s is the UK’s busiest single-site maternity unit. Staff their deliver more than 8,200 babies per year.

One of only two dedicated women’s hospitals in the UK, The Women’s offers gynaecological, maternity and neonatal care as well as a fertility centre. The fetal medicine centre receives regional and national referrals and is also home to the West Midlands Regional Genetics Laboratory – the largest of its type in Europe. The hospital has more than 20 telephone numbers for all of its different departments and is linked to the Birmingham Children’s Hospital through NHS Foundation Trust status.

Where is it? Birmingham Women’s Hospital is in Mindelsohn Way, Birmingham B15 2TG. Tel 0121 472 1377.

Good Hope Hospital, Sutton Coldfield

This hospital is part of University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) and has a catchment population of some 450,000 people. Its maternity unit typically sees the delivery of 3,000 babies per year.

Where is it? Good Hope Hospital, Rectory Road, Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham
B75 7RR. For all general enquiries, please call 0121 424 2000.

Heartlands Hospital

Like Good Hope, this is part of University Hospitals Birmingham. Its Princess of Wales Women’s Unit usually sees more than 6,000 women per year giving birth.

UHB care ranges from ‘low tech’ support and encouragement of normal birth to high quality provision with a dedicated Obstetric High Dependency Unit for complex cases. There is also a midwife-led unit at Solihull Hospital and the UHB community midwifery service also facilitates home birth.

Every year, Birmingham and Solihull welcomes more than 18,500 babies, and the prediction is that the numbers of babies born is likely to increase over the next few years.

Where is it? Heartlands Hospital is at Bordesley Green East, Birmingham B9 5SS. For all general enquiries, please call 0121 424 2000.

Source: www.birminghammail.co.uk

Last year, TV Producer, Writer and Show Runner Mal Young shared his experience and knowledge of working both in Britain and the US, as well as giving insights into what makes a successful television drama.

To listen to Mal in conversation with RTS Midlands, Vice Chair, Dorothy Hobson, click here.

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It’s been about a month since production work all but ground to a halt. No one knows when they’re going back — but those who work on the sets have some clear ideas of what they’d want from their post-coronavirus work environments. In the absence of a vaccine, or targeted antiviral drugs, the hope is for rapid virus and antibody testing for everyone on set, perhaps even on a daily basis.

To better understand the specific challenges that stem from working on set, IndieWire spoke to more than a half-dozen people in jobs that include production designers, dental prosthetics, and prop masters as well as directors and producers. The issues are far ranging, but it’s clear that they all want enhanced and far-reaching safety tactics to become second nature for everyone.

“I think everybody has been on a show when half the crew gets sick at some point,” said art director and production designer Michael Levinson, whose credits include “Dead To Me.” “[That’s] one thing when it’s a cold or even the flu, but it’s a whole other thing when the mortality rate is much more significant. We certainly know about personal protection equipment throughout the industry, but I don’t think that’s all foolproof. Until there’s a reliable treatment and a way to know for myself if I’m going to come home and get my family sick, that’s a different thing.”

While contagion could be a concern for any worker, production faces a particular challenge that’s built into the job itself. Whether it’s a film, TV show, or commercial, it’s a complex assembly that requires dozens, if not hundreds, of people working together in a relatively confined space over a long period of time. Working in any kind of isolation is impossible.

“Even if you find the right 45 to 100 people [who are healthy or immune] to make your movie, you’re not all clear,” said veteran cinematographer Benjamin Kasulke, who recently made his directorial debut on “Banana Split.” “There’s still too many points of ingress — who’s making the food, who rented the grip gear that everybody needs to touch in the same five places, because that’s how grip gear works.”

The challenges are present even for people working in jobs that use infection control in normal circumstances, like Gary Archer, who designed dental prosthetics for Adam Sandler in “Uncut Gems” and Mike Myers in “Austin Powers.” As a rule, he’s obsessed with disinfectionat his dental lab that also makes dentures and other devices However, working in such intimate proximity to others’ mouths, and the breath that may contain virus-infected droplets, means he views containment through medical intervention as the only solution.

“This is the first time I can honestly say, in 30-plus years, that I’ve been at home for two weeks straight — with one exception when I had surgery in 2001,” he said.

When production does resume, people widely expect behavior to change. “I think everyone will return to work with a heightened attention to cleanliness,” said Hanelle Culpepper, who directed three episodes of the recent “Star Trek: Picard,” via email. “I would continue the standards we put in place in response to COVID-19 before the shutdown — elbow bumps instead of hugs (which is very hard for me because I’m a hugger); wrapping food individually at craft services; providing hand sanitizer stations throughout the set, and emphasizing that anyone who feels sick should stay home without any negative repercussions.”

Art director and prop master David Bridson, whose credits include 2017’s “Kings,” said one solution could be drastically reducing the number of people on set to the key people from each department, leading even big shows to go “documentary style.”

“When we rent furniture from different prop houses to bring on the set, is everything going to have to go through some sort of cleaning or sterilizing?” he said. “Creating a safe workplace when you’re bringing so many things from the outside — people, materials, grip equipment, lighting equipment — all of that is going to have to go through some kind of checkpoint.”

DeMane Davis, co-helmer of Netflix’s “Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker,” points out that the impact of and our knowledge about the novel coronavirus changes on a daily basis, making it hard to say exactly what studios could do to make crews feel safe to return to work.

“We don’t know as much as we’re going to learn about COVID-19 itself and how it operates in order to contain it to a level where, ‘OK, I feel safe,’” she said. “I could feel really differently in a week or a month or two because this whole situation is evolving.”

Special effects coordinator Jeremy Hayes, whose work includes the flamethrower scene in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” suggested productions should designate points of contact to manage the new working environment — similar to a sustainability supervisor — who can deal with hygiene issues. He also suggested that studios set up anonymous hotlines for those who fear that they appear overly cautious.

“Whatever eventually happens, I have faith that we will come up with something,” he said. “It’s an industry made up of problem solvers.”

Source: www.indiewire.com

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