I’m a documentary filmmaker. That’s a relatively new thing. 2 years ago around this time all the freelance production work in Johannesburg dried up and I spent 3 months trying to figure out “where to next?” With an abundance of time on my hands, I decided to just do the thing I’d wanted to for a very long time - make documentaries. Instagram’s main feed dictated the duration of 60 seconds and my husband came up with a name for my project: Documinute.
In the first 18 months, we (my husband and I) interviewed some amazing people around Johannesburg, Cape Town and even London. I was featured on Humans of New York with a surprise shout out to Documinute, so our numbers on social media rocketed up overnight from a cumulative 3000 followers to over 50 000. Overwhelming doesn’t even begin to describe it. Since then we have been commissioned to create documentary-style branded content and we were hired to make a feature-length documentary that will be coming out later this year. I was invited to talk at events, on radio and podcasts. I have been interviewed for quite a few projects and been in magazines. Our 1-minute passion project doesn’t earn directly, but it definitely did big things for us and it felt like the upward trajectory would just keep on heading upward.
And then, like most people around the world, Coronavirus took the wind out of our sails and stopped us right where we were…at home.
For a week or 2, dread, grief, panic, and unease set in that not even a smile could mask. How does a passion project survive something like this? How do we continue to earn to keep this passion project alive?
After brainstorming and sleeping on it and brainstorming some more, I decided the only way for our passion project to continue was to just continue. I put out a call to our audience and invited them to share and show us what their lives during Covid-19 look like. It was a slow trickle at first but we have had a stream of people wanting to contribute their part of this shared experience. We started filming interviews from our dining room table and very soon we started releasing these new Documinutes as a limited series called ‘Documinute From A Distance’.
Today, while editing the 11th Documinute filmed in our home, I realised that I have learned more through speaking with these people from all over the world and letting them film parts of their own story than I probably have in the whole time that the Documinute project has existed:
1. It doesn’t matter where the interviewee is in the world, our experience is largely ‘same-same but different’
2. The emotions we are experiencing during this time are all on the same sliding scale
3. Setting up interviews with people located on all continents (bar Antarctica) is a bit like playing Tetris - we will get wrong A LOT…because time zones
4. It doesn’t matter how fast the internet speed is, the interview will never be perfect - there are lags, there are moments lost to a myriad of digital glitch noises...and I will have to 'fix it in post' (not always possible, just breath)
5. Moooooost people are about 5 minutes behind schedule, including myself some days - even though I only need to move to the other room
6. Eventually, I did stop washing my hair and putting on makeup for the interviews...I gave in: it is what it is, and what a relief
7. Our dogs will wake up the moment we start recording and want to play...8 of 10 times
8. 6 out of 10 people will always film portrait instead of landscape because social media has trained us to
9. I have had to let go a bit and let it be, something that doesn't come naturally to me
10. We will always talk over each other at some point
11. The beginning Hellos are always a bit awkward, sometimes the Goodbyes are too
12. It will always feel weird because I normally go to other people’s homes and now they are coming into mine
13. I'm never ready for the post-interview heaviness that comes with the topic, even though I know it is coming
14. I don't have the words to articulate the heaviness in my chest
15. I have to hide tears when filming
16. I have to hope no one sees them if they do escape
17. More than all the heaviness, these interviews also make my heart happy
18. I've realised how much I didn’t process this life-altering event
19. All of these strangers are helping me do that
20. I find myself sharing as much as I am asking
When I started this series I thought that this would be a way to remain ‘relevant’, to keep creating, to make sure people didn’t forget us. Now I get a lot of messages of thanks, of encouragement to keep going, of confirmation that they feel those feelings too, or have experienced the same as all the people in these Documinute. They always ask me to keep going.
And I will, because, actually, the biggest thing I’ve learnt, number 21, is that I make these documentaries not just to share with the world but, rather, to share the world with me. The pay isn’t great, the hours are weird, my ‘colleagues’ don’t always speak the same language and the pay is terrible (read non-existent); but is there anything else I’d rather be doing?
Not a single thing.
More info: documinute.co.za