the great coronaviruspandemic investigation

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presents

Week 3 : Before The Pandemic

This will be one of our trickiest weeks to film. We want tointroduce the society before the pandemic took off. A shortselection of scenes and shots showing our normal way of life.Ideally, you will all play a whole host of different characters.

The challenge is to show life before lockdown - during lockdown.

TThe lines for our scientists, which we will divide up in class, are as follows:

-To consider the affect the virus had on society, it is important to look further back than the beginning.

-Before the term Coronavirus had even been heard by members of the public, society went about its business in its usual way.

--We can witness many individual moments of their lives that we through the archives shared by our institutions.

- These, perhaps give the most stirring account of the what the virus unexpectedly stole from people in those first few months.

Now on to the task ahead.

If we use our creativity and imaginations - we still have so many possibilities.

IIf I put on some sunglasses and a summer hat and sit back in a chair slowly as I play the sound effect of a plane taking off - then I am on a plane going on holiday. You can even send me clips and ask me to put sound effects on afterwards

Please make sure any interaction you record with other people is completely safe to do so. Any shaking of hands shots or hugging hello, only carry out with those you are living with (unless they are isolating). Hopefully all this goes without saying - but thought I should say anyway.

Here are some other ideas that would show the way we lived before the pandemic, and maybe things we have taken forggranted. We will share some of these between us, and you can come up with your own. Remember - use yourself and the things you have around you to create different characters.

Sitting in the cinema (Sit on the couch with someone, turn up the telly and turn the lights down. Get some popcorn. Maybe tell someone next to you we can’t see to “Shussh’ to help strengthen the scene.

HandshaHandshakes (maybe just the arms and hands o business men)

Hugs (can you look like grandma hugging the camera saying things that make it clear who you are?)

Sunbathing.

Packing for a holiday (a great opportunity tp play anyone fromanywhere).

WWatching a football match. Play some commentary over the top of you wearing a football shirt watching the game. They score!!!

Getting ready for school.

Let’s see what else we can come up with in class, and at home.

I’ll be waiting for your wetransferto adam@bodens.co.uk

Week 4 : The Plandemic - Conspiracy Theories

This week we are looking at ways to document the many, and sometimes ridiculous, conspiracy theories.

The challenge is to find creative ways to explain some of these theories. You could be a Chinese spy, a robot president, an alien from another planet. You could film yourself talking about aconspiconspiracy, being the conspiracy or caught creating a conspiracy.

The lines this week for our scientists, which we will divide up in class, are as follows:

- As the rate of infections and the death toll associated withCovid-19 continued to rise, conspiracy theories becameincreasingly common.

- When outbreaks occur, people often find scapegoats to blame.

- During the 1918 Spanish flu- During the 1918 Spanish flu, people feared it was beingdeliberately spread by Germans.

- The 2003 SARS outbreak was thought to have been made in a laboratory as a biological weapon.

- Conspiracy theories bloom in periods of uncertainty and threat, where we seek to make sense of a chaotic world.

- They often provide a simple answer to a complex problem.

-- The “official” answer is often provided by the government, a group that some people do not find trustworthy.

- People would prefer to focus on explanations provided by the underdog.

- The Coronavirus Pandemic was no different.

Now on to the task ahead.

Here are some examples of Conspiracy Theories and ideas about how you might share the information with our audience.

Conspiracy theorists are falsely claiming that the coronaviruspandemic is an elaborate hoax. Since March 28, conspiracytheorists — theorists — “coronavirus deniers” — have been using the hashtag #FilmYourHospital to encourage people to visit local hospitals to take pictures and videos to prove that the COVID-19 pandemic is an elaborate hoax. YOU COULD BE SOMEONE WHO HAS POSTED AN ONLINE VIDEO URGING PEOPLE TO HEAD TO THEIR HOSPITALS AND FILM.

Blaming 5G as the virus is being spread through telephonesignalssignals. YOU COULD BE SOMEONE ON A TV COMMERCIALSELLING 5G TELLING PEOPLE IT COMES WITH A LIFETIME SUPPLY OF COVID -19 AND FREE TEXT MESSAGES.

The virus escaped from a Chinese lab. YOU COULD BE AN EVIL CHINESE SUPERVILLAIN TELLING US OF YOUR PLAN.

COCOVID was created as a biological weapon. YOU COULD BE A CRAZY ARMY OFFICER TELLING YOUR MEN HOW YOU WILL WIN THE WAR AHEAD.

You can also create your own conspiracy theories.

HeHere’s one of mine. Aliens from another planet sent the virus so our population slowly dies before they move to earth because their planet is dying. FOR THIS I COULD PLAY AN ALIEN IN A SHIP ON MY WAY TO EARTH CLAIMING THAT BY THE TIME I GET THERE THE EARTH WILL BE MINE!!!!

Remember to play characters and have fun!!!

Week 5 : Lockdown Unfolding

In the very first week of our creation, we looked at ‘How Things Unfolded’. We were so early in the project that we faced two problem straight away :

1.) We hadn’t even created our scientists.2.) We were all in a bit of a mess.

WWe already have some wonderful ideas and videos from the weeks leading in to lockdown, but now we are further in, this week’s task is to revisit - Week 1 : How Things Unfolded

WWe were choosing moments as the lockdown unfolded. We still need you to play public officials, people from around the world, schoolteachers delivering the news, and anything else you can think of that happened between the moments we heard about the virus, and the moment we entered lockdown.

Here are the scientists lines for this week

- From January 2020, countries across the world started to hearrumours orumours of a new virus.

- While some reacted quickly, others were slow to take advantage of the warnings

- Whatever precautions countries took, and whatever expecta-tions they had, no one could have seen what was about to come

- And over the coming months, country after country was forced to put their population in to lockdown.

- We look back into the archives for evidenceof how the lockdown unfolded.

Week 6 : Life in Lockdown

We’ve looked at the days when lockdown began, and what caused it - now it’s time to focus on Lockdown itself.

This should be the easiest part to film, because it’s where we are right now. We want to include as many different and creative ideas about how people are spending lockdown.

HeHere are some things to think about.

Home schooling, meeting online, quizzes and board games, cooking, arts and crafts, new skills, old skills, social media, strange sports, gardening, exercise, social distancing, time with the family, dog walking, netflix, hibernating, PS4.

Hopefully you can come up with some much stranger things,perhaps looking perhaps looking at different countries from around the world and hwat theya re getting up to? Make sure you don’t repeat anything from our Lockdown Unfolding episode - this should all be from the latter weeks of lockdown life.

Here are the scientist lines for this week.

- Initially, in most countries the lockdown was set to last three weeks.

- But as the days turned in to wee- But as the days turned in to weeks, and the weeks in to months, lockdown continued.

- Even as small measures were made to return countries to nor-mality, for the majority, lockdown became the new way of life for longer than expected.

-We returned our attention to the archives toestablish how people used their time in captivity.

Week 7 : Back To The Future

This week I wanted to start to look at what happened after the pandemic. The first idea will help us to act out any of the major events of the Pandemic, but in a way that lets us approachanything without offending anyone.

TThe lines this week for our scientists, which we will divide up in class, should explain everything:

- As the months passed and the world started to return to some degree of normality, companies looked at ways to recuperate some of their lost earnings.

- Leading production companies, such as Netflix, Warner Brothers, Disney, Fox and Paramount were among the first to make a profit.

- - Film after film was released throughout the following decade, each looking back at the Pandemic.

- Some achieved Golden Globe and Oscar success, while others headed straight to a distribution platform known as blu ray.

- We look back at some of the most famous moments from those box office hits and misses.

So get making those magical movie moments. Police aksingsunbsunbathers to move on (as though they were Negotiating withterorists in a burning building)

A slow and dramatic death with cliche last words.

A scientist running to stop a bat flying towards a member of the public.

Make a scene, a trailer, a review, an anything.

Week 8 : Public Opinion

This week we are looking at Public Opinion.

This is everything anyone is saying about anything and anybody in relation to Coronavirus. Apart from staying away form Conspiracy Theories, everything else is fair game.

TThe lines this week for our scientists, which we will divide up in class, are as follows:

- Throughout the pandemic, changes to people’s lives wereregular and unexpected. While some agreed with theirgovernments policies and behaviours, others did not.

- While some shops closed, others refused to. Some people stayed at home, while others went out.

- It ap- It apears that the only thing the public did agree on, was that everybody had a difference of opinion.

- To get a fair and balanced account of public opinion, we turned to archive footage from all over the world.

Now on to the task ahead.

We want interviews form all over the world from differentmembers of the public.

YYou could be a Homeless American talking about Donald Trump drinking disinfectant. You could be the owner of Barnard Castle talking about Mr Cummings visit. You could be Boris Johnson’s hairstylist unable to do your job. Someone who thinks it’s unfair they can’t go on holiday. Strong, funny, important opinions from all over the world. Who can you be?

Week 9 : Look To The Future

This week we are looking at the hopes and dreams. After lock-down, as everything returns to normal, not everyone wants everything to go back to the same way. This week we examine the hopes and dreams of the nation (actually yours)

I want you to write a list of all the things that you hope change about the world after lockdown. About school, politics, hygiene, films, parks, home, theatre, sport, masks (and all the other things you can possibly think of).

TThis week, our scientists have used a special machine from the future to access the imaginations of the public in June 2020, and the information they have stored demonstrates exactly what the public were imagining about the future - we will put a nice cloudy effect over the footage so it looks like it’s straight from the Imagi-nation Station 3.8.

The lines this week for our scientists, which we will divide up in class, are as follows:

- As lockdown started to lift in June 2020, the public had mixed feelings about the future.

- While some were desperate to return to their normal lives, others had learnt a lot about themselves and were hopeful that this new period in their lives would bring about change.

- - Recently, with funding from the government, our team of scien-tists created the Imagination Station 3.8. An incredible piece of scientific equipment.

- Using the Imagination Station 3.8, archive footage and social media records, this enabled our team of investigators to look back into the past, and into the minds of the general public.

-We have unseen footage straight from the imagination of those people, giving us unparalleled insight into their hopes for the future at this point in the pandemic.

So, start filming - we will write our lists in class this week, and then, as always, it will be over to you to send in some amazing footage of exactly what you hope will change over the coming months.

WWe will discuss some interesting and creative ways to show these ideas, and then I think we will have created one of our most im-portant episodes to date.

Week 10 : Case Studies 2020

It would be crazy to go through this entire process withoutcapturing any information about the most important people - you.

TThis week our scientists have delved back into history to carry out a case study on young people living at the time of the pandemic. They focus their attention on England and share some of the case study recordings as part of their investigation.

Here are the scientist’s lines.

- As part of our investigation, much of our attention was focused on the young people living at the time of the Great Pandemic.

-- We carried out Case Studies on thousands of young people across the world to find out who they were and what they were doing throughout the outbreak.

- Not only was the activity of these young people in 2020 recorded, investigating their lives two decades in the future would allow us to establish any effect of the pandemic on their future lives.

-- We turn our attention to the English Archives of mid 2020 to take a look at these lives before moving forward to 2040.

In class we will discuss ways to share information (safely) about who you are. This is the week where we forget the scientists and politicians, celebrities and news and focus on you. It doesn’t even have to have anything to do with the pandemic, just you!

NNext week we will fast forward into the future, creating versions of you in twenty year’s time - but let us worry about that then!

Week 11 : Case Studies 2040

This week our scientists have delved back into history to continue their case studies ,but this time they look at the same candidates, twenty years further on, in 2040.

There are no scientist’s lines this week as this section was already introduced at the beginning of case studies.

So wheSo where will you be in twenty years times?

Are you a star model, looking back on the way wearing a mask displayed your beautiful eyes more and because of this you were snapped up Clinique?

Are you a Mum, slightly overprotective of your kids as far as germs go?

AAre you an adventurer, scaling Everest and tackling everything head on as the pandemic made you realise that anything can happen, so go for it?

Perhaps you are working in a terrible job and you blame the pandemic for interrupting your education.

Decide whDecide what you are - it could be your real hopes and dreams, or purely fictional. Has the future you been affected by the 2020 pandemic, or did you not let it interfere with your future.

Give us a glimpse into your life, in 2040.

Week 12 : Everything Changes

Now thNow that the world is starting to return to normal, it is beginning to appear like some things might never be the same. You can be sure we’ll still be washing our hands, and sanitiser is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Will everyone head straight back to work? Will the nation keep running and exercising at home? Will we ever shake hands again?

Here are our scientists lines.

- In- In July 2020,the world began to return to some degree ofnormality.

- Shops and schools began to fill again.

- Cinemas and pubs began to open their doors.

- And with families allowed to enter one anothers houses, the pandemic seemed to be heading towards an ending.

- But almost six months o- But almost six months of incredible change across the globe was sure to leave its mark.

- As we explore the archives one final time, we look at thechanges that the pandemic left behind.

In class we will explore the things that have changed for all of us, and the things we think will still be with us in the months andpossibly years ahead.

How can we cHow can we create an amazing cinematic account of these changes as we head towards the end of this process?

Week 13 : Ending The Investigation

And so, we reach the end of our Investigation. here are thescientists’ lines.

- After extensive Investigation into the Great CoronavirusPandemic of 2020, mistakes have been acknowledged andlessons have been learned.

-- While lives could have been saved by a greater collaboration between countries, the experience has created action plans for the future.

- We hope that never again will the world be so shrouded inuncertainty in the early stages of a potential epidemic.

- The response will be educated and immediate and help to save thousands of lives.

-- And at the heart of any such repsonse, in addition to economics and politics, what must be considered most is humanity.

- Because even at the lowest of times, and there were glitches along the way, the humanity shone through.

- The people of 2020 can be proud of the way they cametogether. While the minority flouted the rules, the majority did their very best to play their part in getting past the pandemic.

-- And as the future looks back on the history of Covid-19, what will always be included in those dialogues, is community.

- Of course, the human race will face challenges ahead. Butwhatever those challenges are, while we are still around...

- We will investigate it.