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Writer's pictureCade.M

Health and Safety: Working in a VFX environment

Updated: May 29, 2020

When working from home, outside by yourself or with your teammates, there will always be the presence of safety hazards. Health and Safety need to be put into place. I will imagine working from the perspective of a director for an upcoming movie. Working on the live-action adaptation for a Star Wars spinoff. My team has set up the cameras, audio, lighting for our green screening room in the studio and we're just about to record our a scene.

Here is a team of the camera crew, lighting crew, and stuntpeople. Now I need to see what could go wrong and what I can do to implement the health and safety measure being put into place.

Assembling the risk assessment:

First things first, we see our stunt person is set on a higher level surface compared to the crew and myself. Whilst it may not look high I'd say it's still enough that you could faceplant if you fall face flat or it could be the fact that you lose the momentum of action and you fall off. The ground is hard enough that it could give a fracture/break one or two bones of the body.

Risk level:

This would be considered a moderate risk So to put safety measures in place, we would need a thick soft gymnastics mat wide enough to cover the edge of where the stuntman is placed. The next thing is the wires as you can see studio green screening rooms can be quite messy. Despite this, plenty of equipment is needed to operate and create a professional business tier quality film. That being said, how would I go about wires on the floor?


Well, I would give a warning sign saying: "Warning! Wires are placed in (dark) areas take caution and be careful to avoid tripping." I would place about 3 warning signs scattered around.


Risk level:

This is a low risk but a common one. This type of procedure can be put into place easily. Now for the third problem, the lighting. Is it too bright for the stunt person's eye contact to blind them? Now the stunt person lacks glasses and requests: "It's too bright for me can lighting crew turn it down a notch but enough for the lighting to match the film?" "We can't tone down the lighting we need to match the VFX film shot," I said. Now, this comes off as a disagreement however if we were to spend the production budget I'd buy a couple of pairs of sports sunglasses to help the stunt person's vision and keeping the lighting at the same level we film at the same time.


Risk level:

This would be considered low risk. I'd put this in place right before we start filming.


For the fourth problem, are they are containers that have liquid. Any drinks lying around? I checked around the area and there were a few bottles and cans. Cans are more of a hazard compared to bottles because once opened, there can be potential spillage and damage to the equipment if the can isn't finished. With bottles if you seal the cap tight there won't be any spillage or damage to the equipment. Furthermore, this can also cause accidents of people slipping.

Risk level: This would be considered a medium risk.

Conclusion: So I found all the issues in the workspace and now I can write up a risk assessment. The next day the risk assessment got approved and health and safety measures will be put in place. My team is ready to go with all health and safety measures and we are all ready to film the Star Wars spin-off!

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