Stay Alert: Documenting a Pandemic is a diary-like documentary and fragmented glimpse into life under lockdown in Cornwall. Spanning more than 50 days and 7 weeks, the piece compresses time into a 5-minute sequence, blurred, non-linear, and disoriented to mirror the stillness, repetition, and quiet confusion of life under stagnant and confusing restrictions. The PM told the country "We must stay alert", and so I wanted to express a sense of quiet anxiety, waiting, confusion and the act of noticing things we would typically pass by, unnoticed.
Sound design weaves in unease, echoing the anxiety-laced rhythm of media coverage and public messaging. This piece captures just one experience among millions. During the Covid-19 pandemic, time felt both slow and suspended, as routines dissolved and we retreated into personal bubbles, unsure of what might come next
Development
Stay Alert, Documenting a Pandemic, was produced by filming moments, everyday during the first Spring of the Covid 19 lockdown. I focused on portraying the physical and emotional effect the pandemic had, in a rural, quiet part of the South West of England, my hometown. Some of these being the uncertainty of time, the uncertainty of the future, and the dragging effect of a somewhat lenient lockdown, in comparison to neighbouring countries. I experimented with sound via Adobe Audition, and Adobe Premiere Pro, as well as creating a 5 minute documentary using an old Canon 5d Mark II camera, 50 mm Lens, sound recording on an iPhone and Adobe Creative Suite.