German TV show shoots Covid-19 report in Brazil

A Story Productions crew shot a report into the impact of the P1 coronavirus variant in Brazil for German lifestyle show Taff

Brazil has been at the centre of many of the international TV headlines during the pandemic. This has kept Story Productions busy, from hosting news crews for the likes of ITV’s News at Ten to filming remotely directed documentaries that follow Covid-19 storylines for international TV networks. Last month, our challenge was to shoot a coronavirus report for Taff - a magazine-style programme on German channel ProSieben, which delves into interesting and topical stories from all around the world.

Mexican production company Romero&Braas, who we’ve filmed for before, got in touch about filming a report into the spread of the P1 Covid-19 variant in Brazil. They wanted to showcase the challenge faced by front-line workers in fighting the spread of the more easily transmissible coronavirus variant.

Filming in São Paulo

We organised a two-day shoot, one in São Paulo during its most restrictive phase, and another in Manaus in the Amazon, the epicentre of the P1 variant. The São Paulo shoot started with B-roll on the city’s main commercial avenue, Avenida Paulista, capturing footage of people with and without masks, the shops all shut, and traffic jams building up as residents went about their business.

Our Brazilian film crew then went to the north of the city to the suburb of Brasilândia, in the low-income periphery, to capture an alternative reality, that of people for whom social distancing and staying at home is virtually impossible. We filmed vox pops on the street with five locals, talking about how the pandemic has affected them.

It’s not just economic hardships that have made social distancing difficult in São Paulo, but also a disregard for the rules, as footage from illegal parties packed with hundreds of youngsters has shown. Story Productions interviewed a police officer who is part of a task force set up to enforce restrictive measures and shut down clandestine parties. Our crew accompanied the police at night on an operation to shut down one such gathering in the outskirts of the city.