LA SCREENINGS 2021: HOW ARE LATIN COMPANIES COPING WITH THE PANDEMIC?

During another day of the LA Virtual Screenings 2021, Patricia Jasin, VP of Azteca Estudios; Catalina Porto, Executive Manager of Production at Caracol Televisión; and Fernando Gastón, VP of Content at ViacomCBS International, gathered in a panel entitled “The Studio business: beyond Latin America” and shared their vision on how companies are coping with the pandemic in Latin America.

Patricia Jasin was the first to speak and described how her company managed to overcome the difficult situation caused by the Covid-19. “We are seeing now that everybody wants to keep moving and start producing again. I believe that we were experiencing changes even before the pandemic, but the health crisis accelerated the situation. I guess that some of these protocols are going to stay forever,”  she analyzed.

Catalina Porto indicated that, beyond the initial confusion, from Caracol Televisión they looked for the best way to take advantage of the situation, in addition to paying special attention to health care. “We took protocols and measures not just because it was an obligation, but we really wanted to keep people safe and send a message to the international market, demonstrating we are really professional in what we do,”  she remarked.

“During the last months something that really crossed us was the feeling of a new normal. That is a process of learning for all the players of our industry, to find a way to continue. It has been a tough year, but we are working together to doing that possible,”  added ViacomCBS International’s Fernando Gastón.

Then, Gastón talked about societies between Latin American players. In his words, when two Latin production companies start working together, they become friends for a lot of years. “That is very natural for us,”  he assured. In line with him, Jasin emphasized in the fact that “Latin America is the only region in the world where so many countries share languages”.

Furthermore, Jasin noted that Latin America is so used to crisis that it is a region that really knows how to reinvent itself. “What traditionally does not happen in other parts of the world, like economics or political situations, are bad news for us, but at the same time we are more open to be more creative when something happens. What I saw with the pandemic is that some territories that are used to never change, because they do not need to change, were frozen during the crisis. In Latin America, after the first impact, we quickly work to find a way to move forward,”  she commented.