Thu, Oct 3, 2024 | Updated 3:59PM IST

Momentum India makes sure safety comes first

Times of Bennett | Updated: Feb 22, 2024 16:10
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By Sanya Bhattacharjee

“The first things we checked once we got into this room were, the placement of the fire extinguisher and the main exit,” said the two representatives of Momentum India, Jeremiah Hamid and Richard Fernandez when they came for a Health and Safety Workshop at Bennett University.

On the 20th and 21st of February, the students of The Times School of Media had the ideal opportunity to indulge in a two-day Workshop/Masterclass by Momentum India, a consulting and services firm on how to maintain Safety and Security at Film sets/ shoots. Momentum India is an industry leader in occupational health, safety, security, and sustainability planning, operations, and consulting.

Day 1 began with Prof. Gauri Chakraborty introducing the students to the two representatives of Momentum, Richard and Jeremiah who have had experience in the industry for more than twenty years.

The workshop aimed at making aspiring film producers, directors, and actors aware of how the importance of safety, security, and health should be prioritized at the very beginning stage of the creation of a film.

To make the topic even more interesting and easy to grasp, they asked the students to create groups of 8 people where the students will be asked to come up with mitigations in a few ‘What Would You Do’ situations/ For Eg: what would you do if there’s a smoke in the cinema hall, if a person gets fits or seizures, if a crew member gets bitten by a snake, how to use a fire extinguisher’, etc.

These group activities made the students indulge in intense brainstorming, and group consensus as well as getting to learn a new aspect as each person contributed to the discussion.

The presentations were followed by some basic theoretical knowledge provided by the facilitators and covered the following facets: What is the difference between a hazard and a risk, What is Location Recce and when is it supposed to be carried out, Risk Assessment, Root Cause Analysis of any incident that has happened to avoid any future haphazard, Legal aspects of Film Production.

The first day ended with Richard and Jeremiah sharing some on-set incidents and haphazard that took place and how they handled them. These were case studies that they made the students study to give them a more practical way of exactly understanding how things should be tackled when they go wrong.

Day 2 started with an energetic hands-on exercise where the students were given a script of the Oscar-winning Hollywood film, ‘12 Years a Slave’ where they were asked to come up with all the problems or restrictions the makers or the crew might face while the scenes are being shot, be it the location, the weather, the terrain, etc. The risks associated with various departments, stunt safety, and understanding the probable stunts or action sequences from the script were the topics that they indulged in depth. The brainstorming session was carried out in the same manner as the previous day, where there was a case study taken under consideration and the location was the famous place in Delhi, Jama Masjid. An entire discussion was carried out to make sure we got the concepts right. There were graded assignments throughout the workshop and it ended with a short online multiple-choice question quiz and a group presentation.“As a film student, other than location, lighting, art direction, and props being under consideration, we often forget to take health and safety into consideration.Through this workshop, we understood the importance of health and safety measures on a film set which are necessary, and how easy and Non-negotiable they are," says a second-year BAFTW student, Shivi Ghakher.“The only thing we hoped to accomplish after this workshop was to bring a sense of responsibility in you all and to spread the message that safety, security, and health are not rocket science, it’s just being alert about your surroundings.” Richard and Jeremiah ended their workshop by revealing that they had worked with multiple high-profile companies and firms like Netflix and Amazon Prime while working on high-grossing movies and OTT shows.