I’m finally getting to show new work here on my website!
This semester at uni, we were originally supposed to create separate documentaries in a separated environment. Until the coronavirus hit and we had to go into lockdown, and all those projects were cancelled and we had to come up with new ideas for factual projects that would be achievable in these conditions.
This is what we came up with: a documentary webseries entitled From Home. Eight unique ten-minute episodes focusing on some aspect of life we found important to us. For the series, the students took a front-seat role in supervising the creation of these episodes and one team of people oversaw the creation of the episodes.
I’m proud to say I was involved in that team as a Supervising Director, which involved liaising with groups, talking about their scripts and their edits and making decisions about the creative direction of the series as a whole.
Check out the whole series on YouTube at this link.
My Episode
In addition to working on the series as a whole, I co-wrote and directed one of the episodes, Online Connections.
Online Connections speaks to the need we have as a society to do our best in the transition to communicating solely via the internet. I bring up a lot of personal experiences, including speaking to how making internet friends saved my life. This video is a plea for people to take those relationships seriously, try to address our communication shortcomings. You never know who it’ll help by reaching out.
This COVID quarantine period has been really tough on me. I lost my dad, and all the people who were helping me through it became much harder to reach.
I especially find it hard to reach out myself when I’m struggling. Being autistic interacts with my mental illness in the worst way – I can be feeling incredibly alone and socially distant but seriously struggle to say something to anyone. It’s not perfect, but communicating on the internet can be much easier for me to talk about things when in person my brain just won’t let me (this is literally true: I often choke up trying to speak about something uncomfortable out loud).
I have, and have shared, such a specific experience with loneliness, isolation and depression, but I hope there are people that can relate to it. I hope people might be able to watch this and renew their connections with the people around them online, if they can. I hope we can all move forward through quarantine and beyond with care for ourselves and love for our relationships.
From Home: Online Connections | Genre: Documentary | My Role: Director & Co-writer
A big thanks to all of the people involved in making this film and the series as a whole.
Please like and share the video or this post if you appreciated it.
Esther Vale 