How No Activity pivoted from live-action to animation Season 4 to deal with the COVID crisis

New York Post

Patrick Brammall, who created the Paramount+ cop comedy with Trent O'Donnell, says the idea of switching to animation "seemed like a crazy idea but was creatively interesting. We thought, ‘If that gets us a Season 4, it’s a plus.'" But going from live-action to animation posed some challenges. “We had to rewrite everything — we couldn’t just change the live-action stuff into animation,” Brammall said. “There are pauses between the actors that just don’t hold the same way (in animation). In this series, there is, quite literally, not a long going on. It was a completely different challenge.” The actors filmed their scenes via a special stand containing an iPad, lights, mic with an app that was used to capture and map their faces. The actors filmed their scenes virtually via FaceTime. “It wasn’t just ‘read your lines’; there were moments of people talking over each other, which is what we were trying to bring through, and I think we achieved that,” Brammall said. “The flip side was, because this season is built around a cult, hallucinogenics become a part of the plot, and we could do trippy stuff in animation that we couldn’t do in live-action.” ALSO: Actors were each sent "a suitcase full of tech with Ikea-level instruction" with colorful wires to attach everything together.