Pandemic Profile: Jeff Fischer-key grip & owner of Midwest Mohos
/490 members are on the top shelf in the film industry in Minnesota. Not only do they perform their role well on set, many own additional businesses that serve our film community. In this series, we are highlighting our union members who are showing us how they are evolving their business in the midst of the Covid pandemic. First up, Key Grip, Electrician and owner of Midwest Mohos Jeff Fischer!
In his own words,
“My name is Jeff Fischer. I am a key grip and electrician in IATSE Local 490. I'm also the owner of Midwest Moho and Production Services LLC. I supply production support vehicles and gear for our film community. If you need a motor home on set, a production trailer? call me!
Jeff Fischer masked up with one of his drivers, Matthew Brandt.
Our livelihoods have been slowed down considerably in these days of Covid-19. I take the health and safety of ourselves and co-workers very seriously . That being said, I've invested upwards of $20,000 dollars towards sanitary equipment to help get our film community back to work sooner and safer . Some examples of this equipment are as follows:
An electrostatic disinfectant sprayer, an extreme “mist” disinfectant sprayer and many CDC approved food grade, virus killing chemicals. The electrostatic disinfectant sprayer gives an electrical charge to cleaning solutions, helping them to cover reactive surfaces with an potent and even coverage. Because it’s hand held its very easy to use on diverse and challenging film sets.
the electrostatic disinfectant sprayer
Many locations have made it it more restrictive for film crews to use their restrooms during Covid, especially when we shoot in a home location. Midwest Mohos now offers a two room restroom for crew and talent. This makes it so much easier on the locations and for the crew to have a dedicated place for us to wash hands, use the restroom and still be close to set. Our on site support drivers will be disinfecting this throughout the production day.
Midwest Mohos 2 room Restrroom aka a Honeywagon.
I also designed and built 2 mobile hand washing stations. We can place these stations closer to set than the restroom, so everyone is cleaner and safer.
1 of 2 portable handwashing stations
We have also added hand sanitizer towers, with antibacterial foaming soap dispensers. These work great to disinfectant quickly.
These are a few of the things Midwest Mohos are doing to keep it rolling as they say.
As a grip and electrician, most of our changes have to do with wearing masks, shields, gloves and maintaining social distancing. If there is any grip or electrical gear that is close to talent and needs to be cleaned on set, its great to have the extra cleaning supplies Midwest Mohos provides on set, we can rent all that to you for your production as a package or ala carte.
I'm very proud of the way our film community has come together as one unit, to make our work places safer and healthier. I think a lot of these practices are great for during the pandemic and should continue long after Covid is gone.”
Jeff masked and shielded on set.