Today the BFI launches a public campaign, Britain on Lockdown, calling on the British public to recommend those online videos that best represent how Britain has experienced the impact of Coronavirus. From Joe Wicks to Boris Johnson, solidarity for NHS frontline workers and local communities coming together through to comedy parodies, public health videos about the importance of proper handwashing and charity campaign films, online video has played a key role in our collective experience of the lockdown in a way that has never been experienced before.
Heather Stewart, BFI Creative Director says, “Life under lockdown has been really difficult for so many but it has given us an incredible historical and social record of the experience through online video in a way we have never seen before. From professional vloggers and filmmakers to everyday folk creating content on their phones shared across multiple platforms, from YouTube to Facebook, Twitter to TikTok – and of course all those Zoom calls, this content has made us laugh, cry, rage and has spurred us into action. As the guardians of the national film and television collection we want to make sure this unique content is preserved in the BFI National Archive for generations to come. So we are calling on everybody to help us find more and build this extraordinary collection.”
Whether the videos have entertained, informed, inspired, challenged, moved, outraged or simply made us smile the BFI wants to hear about it from the public using a simple submissions form on bfi.org (https://www.bfi.org.uk/britainonlockdown) to share their suggestions. BFI wants the Britain on Lockdown project to create an online video archive that reflects the public mood as it ebbed and flowed during the crisis, representing the whole of the UK with a breadth of content and points of view long and short form, spanning all genres; from amateur videos and content created through social media platforms to professional videos, official responses from government, music videos, comedy skits, campaigning films and much, much more.
The impact of these digitally created videos - distributed across multiple platforms and in some cases shared with millions of viewers - has been phenomenal. Our curatorial experts at the BFI have chosen a selection of titles below to give a flavour of the breadth of films that have been produced:
· Joe Wicks’ PE Teacher to the Nation
Joe Wicks daily workouts have inspired (and broken) adult and children viewers alike, his first session has received over 6.5 million views on YouTube to date and in the process has raised over £91,000 for NHS charities.
· Boris Johnson “mild symptoms”
Just one of the many video tweets made by the Prime Minister during his self-isolation in Downing Street received worldwide coverage. The announcement of his Coronavirus symptoms has received a staggering 23.9 million views on Twitter to date.
· Dawn Bilbrough “Please Just Stop It”
Dawn Bilbrough, a critical care nurse who had just finished a 48-hour shift made this short, direct video, on her mobile phone and posted it to her Instagram and Facebook accounts. Within 48 Hours her heartfelt plea to stop people panic buying was on all the major news channels and across the front pages of the tabloids. Supermarkets quickly responded by changing their opening times to allow NHS staff a priority window and the video was directly referenced in government briefings.
· Derbyshire Police Force’s ‘This is Curbar Edge’
People paying scant regard to the instruction that we should all avoid unnecessary journeys are highlighted, courtesy of a drone camera in this surveillance title. Viewed over 2.3 million times to date on twitter, Derbyshire Police went to significant lengths to highlight this issue in the beautiful Peak District which had been overrun by walkers traveling to the area on non-essential journeys.
· Victoria Emes ‘I Will Survive’
Victoria Emes’s musical parody struck a chord with a nation living under lockdown juggling family life, home schooling, work and online yoga with a dash of humour and a slug of gin to help make it through the crisis, with over 339,000 views to date on YouTube.
· #RamadanAtHome
As the Islamic world prepared to start Ramadan, prominent British Muslims, front line workers and celebrities collaborated on a video to underline the importance of staying, praying and fasting at home while the Coronavirus lockdown is still in force.
· Pablo Hutchinson, Rowan Akin-Smith, Felix McKechnie ‘Corona Commute’
Filmed in 10 minutes as a funny video to submit as part of a virtual pub quiz, this creative and playful TikTok recreation of a morning commute complete with tube sounds and luggage in a crowded ‘carriage’ would make even the most hard-hearted commuter long for a central line rush hour. Tik-Tok alone has reported that its video collection of #coronavirus themed content represents 46.8 billion views worldwide.
· Psychs ‘Spreadin’ music video
Mainstream media picked up on Spreadin’, the coronavirus-themed drill tune by New Addington rapper Rashid Kutubu aka Psychs, which connected the crisis to a younger audience, receiving over 920,000 views on YouTube to date.
· Help Musicians ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone’
This campaign video produced by stage director and musician Tom Guthrie to help raise awareness for freelance musicians whose income has been severely restricted by the lockdown. Adapting Pete Seeger’s 1955 folk song Where Have All The Flowers Gone, what starts as digital dislocation gives way to the rousing possibilities of human collaboration. Testament to the potential of technology to keep us united in difficult times it confounds expectations of what is possible as a group working together apart.
The BFI National Archive holds one of the largest collections of film and television in the world, safeguarding moving image works created over the last 120 years. The Archive is a live collection, collecting contemporary material, all the way up to the present day and across subjects that are relevant and reflective of British society. Online video has uniquely captured this significant crisis, and the ability for people to make and share their own contributions gives us an unprecedented opportunity to explore the creative response that has emerged from within the UK’s own homes.
Britain on Lockdown demonstrates the BFI National Archive’s continued commitment to building a dynamic and representative contemporary collection. This type of digital video material is ephemeral, fleeting and vulnerable to loss, even in the short term. The BFI National Archive’s role is to ensure these videos are safe, stored properly and permanently in our state-of-the art digital preservation system, and that they can be made accessible, not just over the coming years, but for future generations.
Building this online video archive will allow BFI curators to represent the key narrative strands and emblematic stories that emerged as the crisis unfolded. Researchers and audiences of the future will have access to an incredibly rich and diverse social record of our recent times.
Will the coronavirus crisis change our future viewing habits? Will we continue to embrace the digital video format to interpret the world around us? How many of these current videos will get a second viewing in the future once the crisis has passed? These are questions for a post-Coronavirus future but for now and from the BFI National Archive’s perspective the race is on to identify and secure the survival of these videos beyond the platform they currently sit on to prevent them from being deleted as last week’s news. The Britain on Lockdown online video archive will add to our history of Britain on Film.
