How Covid-19 turned Hollywood customers into “masked crusaders”

Like many of his colleagues in Hollywood, client Nickolaus Brown felt helpless when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.

He had worked on Netflix’s big budget action movie Red Notice to make sure Gal Gadots’ dress was fitting on the Atlanta set before the shoot ended.

Brown, president of Local 705 of the film Costumes, hit the crisis. His sister, a nurse from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, had sent him a photo of his son bidding farewell to his father through a window, physical separation necessary because husband radiologist was exposed to COVID-19 at work . Healthcare providers, she said, face a severe shortage of masks and other protective equipment.

Brown was determined to do something. So he went to Facebook and launched an appeal to arms, bringing together 250 designers, sewers and cutters to make masks for healthcare providers and others.

It breaks my heart, “said Brown, his voice breaking during a telephone interview from his Los Angeles home. So I have a personal reason to do that too.

The film industry was decimated by the coronavirus crisis, which halted film and television productions around the world. More than 100,000 actors and teams have lost their jobs and are turning to rescue plans put in place by unions, the independent efforts of Go Fund Me and various Hollywood foundations.

Endless in view of the crisis, clients whose work consists in creating and adapting costumes for actors on sets set to use their sewing and design skills to help respond to the very real shortages of masks and other clothing of protection among medical workers.

No one is currently working, so everyone needs a goal; everyone needs something positive to focus on, said Brown. We have the skills and talents to make it happen.

Brown’s Local and other union members of the International Alliance of Theater Stage Employees mobilized an army of costume and wardrobe workers to make masks from fabric and other materials . Los Angeles-based customers have already produced between 3,500 and 4,000 cloth masks for healthcare providers, the union said.

And they worked with UCLA to create a better quality medical prototype that their sewers can make quickly and in large numbers.

IATSE functioned as a true partner of UCLA Health during our crisis response efforts, Becky Mancuso-Winding, Executive Director of Strategic Community and Business Relations at UCLA Health, said in a statement.

Brown was not alone in his desire to help. After 15 years as a costume designer, Lauren Oppelt was about to try her hand at making her first short film during the pandemic.

With time on her hands, she noticed in the different sewing groups to which she belonged that some people had already started to make masks.

I have nothing else to do, thought the designer based in Los Feliz. So she made a mask and posted a photo of it on Instagram. Requests for additional masks have flocked.

One was from a childhood friend, a San Francisco emergency doctor, who told him of the urgent need for masks and other personal protective equipment.

She launched a group called Crusader mask, which today has a hundred members. The group includes sewers, runners who collect fabrics, and volunteers who collect donations of money and materials. She then teamed up with the Costume Designers Guild (Local 892) to help deliver the masks.

We have no shortage of places to send them, said Oppelt. I didn’t know what an N95 was two weeks ago.

Oppelt says she receives requests from across the country asking for masks and only sends them to hospitals. So far, masks and sewing supplies have been delivered to hospitals in several states, including California, Louisiana, Rhode Island, Florida, Kentucky and Georgia.

Working from home, huddled above the sewing machines, Oppelt and his colleagues adapted various models found on the Internet and searched different scientific studies to find the best materials to limit the transmission of the virus.

The makeshift masks produced by Oppelt and others are designed to wear over regulatory N95 respirators used by healthcare providers, as an additional layer of protection. A filter can also be attached to donated masks, which have an efficiency rate of around 70% for blocking small particles, said Oppelt, who wrote a Medium post about his mask making.

Most of the masks were made from poly-cotton jersey fabric, but there are better materials, such as polypropylene, that customers try to get their hands on.

We are working to develop things with higher efficiency rates, said Oppelt. We are trying to get polypropylene, and using filters from air conditioners, we are innovating as much as possible, but we are also inundated. By the end of next week, we will have sent 10,000 masks.

Another key member of the team is costume designer Marilyn Madsen, who was about to start working on a secret Marvel project before the outbreak. She has been confined to her home in Altadena since returning from a Scandinavian cruise last month, just before the U.S. banned travel to much of Europe.

Madsen tested different materials and models to develop more effective mask prototypes.

It’s like the way we do with Marvel, said Madsen. We made eight pairs of pants for Thor before they were Thors pants.

Although most hospitals do not accept or distribute hand-made masks to their staff, doctors have ordered masks from clients for relief, or simply to cover their N95 masks, which they might need to reuse.

I’m as exposed as possible, said Sacramento-based emergency doctor Nicolas Sawyer to the Los Angeles Times. His job is to supervise the intubation of patients who may be infected with COVID-19. During this high-risk procedure, hospital staff wear battery powered ventilators called PAPRs, and he stated that there was no expectation of a shortage of this equipment.

But the rest of his day, he relies on traditional surgical masks and, in case they run out, he recently requested 100 masks from costume designers.

Although the health system it works for does its best to protect staff, the problem is on the supply side. Sawyer makes an insert for the mask from filters in the home air conditioner.

We are allowed to wear them at our discretion, said Sawyer. I wear a surgical mask at work because I touch my face; its part of being human. It is useful and avoidable not to touch my face. If we are lacking surgical masks, I will say I have these masks, said Sawyer, who acknowledged that they offered limited protection against the virus. But they will keep me from touching my face.

As doctors widely use client masks, the reader gives these plaster-free sewers and designers to meet a goal.

Many members, like everyone else in the country, are very concerned about their financial well-being, said Brown. People are afraid of making mortgage payments, paying rent and having basic necessities. Having this project gives them something to block the reality of what’s going on.