Annie Awards Producers Scramble to Put Together Virtual Ceremony After Pandemic Pivot

variety.com:

Terry Flores For the second year in a row, the 49th Annie Awards will be virtual after ASIFA-Hollywood, the organization behind the event, decided to pivot amid the omicron-driven surge in COVID-19 cases.The show was originally going to be an in-person affair Feb.

26 at Royce Hall on the campus of UCLA. Now it will be streamed on the Annie Awards website, on Saturday, March 12, beginning at 7 p.m.

PT.According to ASIFA-Hollywood executive director Frank Gladstone, the board made the decision to pivot in mid-January. Members considered three options. “One was to just stay the course and do the live show,” Gladstone says.

Option two was to go virtual. “And the third option was doing a live show but postponing it even further,” he says. “At the end of the day, going virtual was what the board decided to do.” The decision meant the team behind the show had to scramble to put something together in roughly six week as opposed to the several months they had to mount last year’s virtual show.“It hasn’t been easy,” Gladstone explains.The team learned last year that “with all the acceptance speeches, then the lower thirds and the graphics and the music and everything, there were well more than a thousand elements that went into doing that particular show.