After posting my question on social media and collating responses from various people regarding the COVID-19 situation, I decided to put together a mood board. I took these sentences/words from peoples direct responses to my question, real life dialogue/phone calls, WhatsApp chats, snapchat messages, and public sources/news on social media. I discovered that the strongest material came about when people weren’t aware of being recorded, or pressured to respond. I found this especially true through using Snapchat. This made sense, as I find people open up more on this platform, as it deletes messages/images after a time limit. I took screenshots of some group conversations I had with friends, as they were expressing their opinions so genuinely. It was from this method, that I collected much more powerful and natural responses. Of course, I asked for their permission to use the quotes after I recorded them. This process reminded me of photography. I always find my best photographs are the ones where I capture people in their natural environment, unaware of me, or the camera.

This mood board assisted me with my creative development, as I thought about many images and scenes related to the words. I began to visualise these scenes based on peoples individual thoughts and feelings. I thought about ways in which I could effectively visually represent these scenes, using this board as a set of prompts. Given the limitations now present with self-isolation and social distancing, I felt a bit stuck. To find some inspiration, I decided to look back at some old photos I took whilst I was travelling last year. I found many images which effectively conveyed this sense of isolation and disconnection that many of us are feeling during these times.  Most of these images were taken candidly, so it matches the tone of my mood board.  I put these images together to facilitate some creative momentum.

After these exercises, I have decided to make my screen project a collage of sorts, composed of still images, videos and excerpts of text. The final film will present as a series of vignettes/episodes in which reflect on the various situational and cultural effects of COVID-19, and more specifically, Isolation’s effects on humans and their relationships.