A Cross-Border Drama Filming Across Caves and Coastlines

An internationally renowned German drama series filming across New Zealand, captured scenes in some of the country’s most demanding locations, including windswept coastal cliffs and underground cave networks to active farmland with live animals and ATV sequences.

Safety Challenges

The production team faced four key challenges:

1. Multiple high-risk shoot environments, each requiring tailored safety protocols and real-time adaptability.
   
2. Split crews operating across geographies and time zones, creating communication complexity between the German production team, local crews, and location partners.
   
3. Safety and compliance in unpredictable terrain, with heightened risk around vehicles, animals, and confined spaces.
   
4. Consistent oversight without slowing down the pace of production, especially across remote units.

How SetConnect Helped

Keeping crews safe in complex locations:

• Geo-fencing defined digital safety zones at each location, critical for areas with livestock, limited visibility, or ATV use.
• QR sign-ins ensured accurate crew tracking and hazard acknowledgement in real time.

Enabling coordination across countries and crews:

• Daily check-ins via the mobile app supported wellbeing monitoring and remote crew visibility.
• Centralized dashboards gave production leads access to a shared source of truth, no matter their time zone or location.

Managing safety in real time:

• Instant messaging and push alerts allowed supervisors to communicate changes, respond to incidents, and issue safety reminders on the fly.
• Mobile access to safety docs kept every crew member informed with the latest protocols, i.e. no printing or chasing paper trails.

Maintaining oversight without Slowing Down

• All key documentation from site plans to risk assessments were stored in a secure, cloud-based platform accessible via mobile and desktop.
• Audit-ready records helped ensure compliance across both New Zealand and international safety standards.

The Result

SetConnect helped the production maintain high safety standards across complex, fast-moving environments without compromising on pace, clarity, or compliance.

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