Contextual: Ramblings On Humans And Wildlife Under Lockdown

Ramblings On Humans And Wildlife Under Lockdown was my first attempt at a video essay. Here, I explore how the coronavirus pandemic affected our relationships with the natural world.

For this video, I asked the people on the wonderful Warnham Reedbed Online Facebook group what their views on the temporary changes to the reserve were. I also asked Michael Blencowe of the Sussex Wildlife Trust and Tamara Jewell from the Gatwick Wildlife Trust about some of the digital media they created during the pandemic.

The highlight of this video for me was the letter I received from Sir David Attenborough. It is currently framed.

Attenborough's handwriting is messier than mine! If I was to remake this video, I would put more emphasis on writing to and getting a reply from Attenborough. I don't think it is clear that the words written are by him specifically for this video.

The bench for this video was filmed at Warnham LNR.

I wrote the background music specifically for this video. You can find the tracks here.

Embarrassingly, I have to point out a few of the mistakes I made:

.The map shows the Orcas in the Hudson Bay, and not Vancouver Bay as they were in real life

.Llandudno is mispronounced

.3 Million people tried gardening, not 13 or 30 million

.Michael Blencowe's Name is spelt wrong twice, its ae and not ea

I'm going to make the excuse that this was my first attempt at the video essay format. That's why there are so many mistakes in this video

Finally, when researching for this, I came across an interesting article by National Geographic about fake pandemic animal stories on social media. If you have five minutes spare, go have a read.

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