COVIDeo: How Quarantine Created a Community
Digital Media has allowed for connections to form in a time of social isolation, and given rise to a movie night like no other
2020 has been an interesting year, to say the least.
The world has changed more this year than in the entire preceding decade, and as the COVID pandemic continues to rage across the planet, it seems inevitable that this rapid change will continue. Without a doubt, COVID has brought a great deal of pain and hardship upon the world, from loss of loved ones to financial insecurity, but particularly in the form of social isolation. For at the beginning of this year, in an effort to stave off the pandemic from overwhelming hospital beds and resources, Canada (like many other countries) went into a full lockdown. This forced all citizens to quarantine themselves inside their homes as a way of socially isolating, only leaving for essential trips such as groceries or for physical exercise. Universally, people longed for the days when they could get together with friends or see family for a meal. It’s curious, then, that in the midst of this pandemic — or perhaps because of it — a community began to form over a shared love of movies and a desire for human connection.
But what is COVIDeo?
This probably seems somewhat vague and mysterious, and you might be asking yourself what on earth this article is about. So I’ll jump ahead a bit —
Since the lockdown first began, a small group of us have watched a movie every night at 10pm, randomly selected from an ever-changing pool of nominations.
It’s been a journey, and so far, we’ve seen some of the best, and a lot of the worst that cinema has had to offer over the past half-century. So how did we get here? Well, as I said above, it all began with ‘quarantine’, and a communal sense of longing for simpler days when people could gather in groups larger than 6. Beyond that, however, it has taken the commitment, ingenuity, passion and creativity of a small group of like-minded individuals to come together & form a connection during a time when everyone else felt alone.
It all began as “bad movie night”.
During the early days of quarantine, as everyone was becoming increasingly bored, someone made the suggestion that a few of us get together to ‘watch’ a movie together, using Discord’s screen-sharing feature. In this way, one person could download or stream a movie, and by allowing others to see their screen remotely, several of us could all watch ‘together’, virtually yet simultaneously. From there, things began to pick up rather quickly.
The very first movie we watched as a group was Foodfight!, a poorly-animated film considered by many to be one of the worst films of all time. This led to the idea of watching more ‘bad movies’, as nearly everyone had a suggestion for the next worst thing we could watch. From there, we decided that everyone who participated would be allowed one ‘nomination’ for the growing pool of movies; when someone’s nomination was selected, they could add a new movie to the pool the following night.
At this point, things began to pick up steam.
As more and more people grew interested in joining us for our nightly adventures into the history of terrible cinema, we realized we’d need a name for the recurring gathering. After some suggestions, it seemed that it needed to pay homage to both what we were doing and why, and thus, COVIDeo was deemed the natural choice. By this point, things had begun to take shape — but over the next several months, COVIDeo would continue to grow and evolve in ways that none of us could have initially predicted.
To understand what I mean, it’s important to point out that in it’s current form, COVIDeo is much more than a simple ‘movie night’. For example, one need only look to the movie selection process we’ve employed to understand just how much things have changed since the beginning. When things first started out, we immediately recognized that we’d need a fair system to randomly select each movie. As a result, for the first several weeks, after each night’s movie finished, we would input the remaining list of nominations into a simple Random Number Generator, and allow that to ‘randomly’ select the following night’s movie.
Over time though, this began to feel too simplistic, and as the list of participants grew, there was a clear need for something more visually exciting. To address this, the selection process evolved, and our next method of randomly selecting a movie was “The Big Wheel”. In this way, the selection process remained random, but added a great deal of visual interest and excitement to the end of each night.
However, eventually this, too, grew tired, leading to our current method of random selection, known affectionately as “Marbeez” — a simulated marble race, where each marble is assigned a nomination. As each ‘run’ is randomly generated, this allows us to watch our nominations race to the finish, cheering on those we wish to see and cursing those we don’t. In such a way, it is clear that COVIDeo is more than a simple recurring gathering; it’s a community that can and will rapidly change, mirroring the current state of the world we live in.
From there, things continued to shift and evolve.
The next way in which COVIDeo began to truly break out of the label of ‘movie night’ was during our earliest ‘milestone’ movies. When things first began, no-one expected COVIDeo to last as long as it has, and so when we first started to hit some significant numbers in our ‘movies watched’ (50, 100, 123, etc.) it was decided to add an interactive aspect to those nights, to make them extra special. With that in mind, a bingo card was created from participant suggestions, the spaces relating to recurring tropes or themes that we had begun to notice throughout the films we’d seen. This is when things really started to get out of hand.
One member started to create COVIDeo merchandise; Another created a website to host the merch and bingo cards. Theme nights started, and eventually morphed into theme weeks. Constantly updated COVIDeo bumpers, reels and intros were added before each night’s movie, making reference to notable scenes or lines from earlier films. Most of all, though, COVIDeo started to shift from simply being an activity, to a true community, with its own culture; jokes, memes and references became commonplace, and now almost every movie is preceded by at least 15 minutes of “pre-show”, typically odd-ball content that is tangentially related to that night’s movie, if at all. One member has even begun to work on a short film, chronicling the history of COVIDeo through interviews with some of it’s most active participants.
So What? Who Cares — Why does any of this matter?
As I wrap up this explanation, you may be asking one of these questions. Why does COVIDeo have any significance, and why am I writing about it? The truth is that at first, I wasn’t even sure of the answer to that. But as I enter the world of Digital Media Marketing, it’s become increasingly apparent to me that COVIDeo is significant, in ways surpassing simple entertainment. As the world continues to change more rapidly than anyone could have predicted, it’s clear that COVIDeo is something that is not just facilitated, but bolstered by the digital medium on which it exists. Imagine the headache of trying to get a group of people together physically every night, or of growing from a group of about a dozen to one where the most popular nights have twice that number watching together. In this regard, COVIDeo is something that can only truly work online — and by extension, it highlights the adaptability of Digital Media to form and maintain an active community.
The reality is that our society is becoming increasingly reliant on digital platforms as a way to connect people who cannot physically be together. The COVID pandemic, and the resulting explosive popularity of video-conferencing apps like Zoom or Discord has proven this. As such, COVIDeo stands out in my own experience as a forward-thinking method of forming a community in a way that was previously impossible.
There’s also another reason I’ve introduced COVIDeo as a concept.
As I begin to post reviews for different content and media to my new blog, Media Map, it would be natural for readers to wonder why they should listen to what I think. Through COVIDeo, I’ve been able to experience some truly great films, such as Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite, but also some that have been utterly awful. That list is far longer. Films like Gaspar Noé’s Enter The Void, Steven Seagal’s Sniper: Special Ops, and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain take up some of the top spots, with many close contenders behind. In short, COVIDeo has given me an incredible degree of insight into the history and context that has influenced a wide variety of cinema. As such, I can deliver expert film reviews and suggestions, backed by a familiarity with cinema’s best and worst.
