Washington: Executive producers of the upcoming 72nd Emmy Awards has revealed their plans on how to make the prestigious award ceremony as live and as safe as possible amid COVID-19. Reginald Hudlin and Ian Stewart, during an interaction with Variety, revealed for the first time how this year's glamorous ceremony will look. Jimmy Kimmel, who will be anchoring the virtual show, will host Emmys from a stage in the Staples Center, but there will be no audience and no red carpet.
Unlike previous years, where the event normally takes place across the street at the Microsoft Theatre, 2020 Emmys have been planned to do at Staples, because of the facility's tremendous size. "One is that it's so large that the crew can work safely under COVID-safe protocols and be at the appropriate distance from each other. Because obviously the most important thing is safety first," Variety quoted Hudlin as saying.
Hudlin added: "The second part is, this show will need an unbelievable number of wiring connections in and out, because the nominees are not going to be there. So we're going to take cameras to where they are. And the number of feeds that requires is so massive that we need a facility like the Staples Center, which is used to having that much signal from reporters covering sports to handle the kind of in and outputs that it requires."
The producers require that capacity as they are planning to have professional camera operators stationed where every nominee is located. That's as many as 140 live feeds coming into the control room at Staples.
While Stewart said: "This will all depend on the comfort level of the people at the other end, but we've got to go and find them. They might be at home, they might be in the garden, might be in a hotel, they might be standing on the side of the street. It doesn't really matter, wherever they feel comfortable. But we want to bring every nominee that we can logistically, live into the show." This time, the producers are planning to ask all nominees to send over a pre-taped acceptance speech, but only the winner's thanks will be aired.
However, they are still "figuring" on other challenges such as whether winners will get a chance to hold an Emmy while giving their live acceptance speech. Stewart said this year's ceremony would focus on the fact that television has been a bit of a lifeline and diversion for people stuck at home during these quarantine times, cited Variety.
The decision to cancel the red carpet, and the traditional arrivals pre-show, came after they nixed bringing nominees to the Staples Center. As per the publication, the producers have already sent one letter to nominees hinting at how the Emmys might go live from their house, and Hudlin said much more detailed information would be sent out shortly. The 72nd Emmy Awards will be held in September.
