A Diary of Windows Video Deadline

Concept

The idea began from a conversation with Steve about doing something digital and collaborative during the lockdown that is open to the entire squad. I then began to think about how we, as a group of writers dispersed across the planet, could make a collective creative response to our very different, yet very similar situations. This led me to an idea for a video diary piece that uses a format inspired by Christian Marclay’s 24-hour artwork “The Clock”. For those of you who don’t know it – it is a montage of film and television clips that have clocks in them that is ordered chronologically over a day. Then, at the squad’s first Distance Social meeting last week, we discussed how the small things we observe around us might be more interesting as a subject for our writing than the virus. At the same zoom meeting Louise Essex also commented that “We all have windows.” The concept for A Diary of Windows and Small Things is based on a combination of these three ideas.

Contribution Guidelines

I am inviting each of you to create a short piece of observational writing (in any form that you choose). This writing should then be recorded as a voice over in a one minute video of the view from your window. Each piece will be made a particular time of day that is assigned at random and should be accompanied by a 5 second video clip of a clock that shows your assigned time of day. I will combine the contributions into a single film that will be published online through the Squad’s existing (and planned) digital channels.

If you’d like to take part, then please email me at stevie@stevieronnie.com by Tuesday 7^th April. I will then allocate everyone with a specific time of day at random.

You will then have until Friday the 17^th of April to send me the following two videos (via wetransfer, dropbox or similar):

(1) A 5 second clip of a clock showing your allocated time of day and;

(2) A 1-minute shot of the view from your window which includes audio of you reading your short piece of observational writing.

The videos should be shot using a mobile phone in landscape format at the specific time of day that you have been allocated. I will be at hand to assist with any technical queries throughout.

Stevie Ronnie
Squad Core Team