In recent months, it’s felt like ‘Across the Pond’ might more aptly be titled ‘From the Precipice’, as things have been poised on a rather thin edge for a while, certainly on these shores.

Normally, a January dispatch would carry word of award shows. Who emerged victorious from the ASC’s annual gathering? Who was honored? Which fruitful collaborations with DPs were mentioned at the Art Directors’ Guild? Or at the VES Awards? And what does the handicapping look like heading into IndieSpirit/Oscar weekend, which would normally be the stuff of February writing.

But not, of course, this year.

There may yet be an Oscar ceremony – of some kind – in April. April, Come She Will, as Simon and Garfunkel promised. But come she will, bringing what? This winter, of both discontent and streaming content, already brings an attempted far-right insurrection in this nation’s capital, and the tentative start to a new Federal administration with a rather Herculean task in front of it, as far as reigning in the pandemic – at least to a degree where folks can gather on sets again (as far as the usual purposes of this column) and start to line up shots in their ALEXA viewfinders. Or, perhaps, VENICE viewfinders, as you read on.

Folks gathering in seats again, though, to watch some of the things shot with those ALEXAs, REDs, Canons, et al – seats outside the confines of their homes – will be even further down the road, even if, as we tap our keys here in California, the Golden State appears to be allowing a tentative return to some outdoor dining, barbering, etc.

A lot of our coverage in this brave new year, then, will be to track the progress of things like vaccination schedules and safety protocols, while awards, it seems, will have to wait.

And as we wait, many theatrical features will continue to show up on our home screens, such as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar. The caper-y comedy, written by and starring Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumulo, following up on similar dual-threat success with Bridesmaids, was shot by Toby Oliver ACS.

We last chatted with him in what must now be regarded as more innocent – jejune? – times, when he was shooting Blumhouse fare like Happy Death Day and the break-out Get Out.

Barb and Star was originally intended as a summer comedy, presumably to follow up on what was assumed to have been Wiig’s increased visibility co-starring in Wonder Woman 1984, the prior holiday season. Instead, the film instead joins WW as a direct-to-streaming release, in this case starting on VOD platforms in February.

Shot primarily in Cancun, doubling for the Florida resort town of the title, the comedy – featuring the pair taking on a local “super villain” – wrapped in the fall of 2019, with post being accelerated to get it ready for its original release date.

But even if post was rushed, Oliver had a great time during production, calling it “such a fun movie to be part of. Odd and kooky in a really good way – a very sweet story,” wherein “the best of friends find themselves over their heads.”

The sweet kookiness was captured primarily with a Sony VENICE sporting Cooke Anamorphic lenses, the “first time,” he reports, “I’d used a VENICE on a big actual movie production.”

Actually, two of them, since another VENICE was on the land-and-soundstage part of the shoot, but not just Sonys, as it turns out: During a Jet Ski sequence “we used the small Blackmagic 4K cameras mounted to the Jet Skis for that super POV stuff,” adding, with a wry knack for understatement, “whenever you go and shoot off dry land, suddenly everything becomes more difficult. You’re out there in the open ocean, with the swell – it’s almost impossible to change a mini-card on the camera.”

And director Josh Greenbaum appeared to show a landlubber’s preference for keeping those cards in – perhaps because he liked to see a lot of improv with his comically adept cast. “Like a lot of directors, he’s very much ‘keep rolling, keep rolling,’ – he doesn’t want to have to stop.”