COVID-19 - A Creativity Catalyst?
As the Digital Storyteller/Videographer for the City of Boston, COVID-19 posed a huge roadblock to what stories we could tell.
Or did it?
Three months into the pandemic, that narrative changed.
COVID-19 caused us to think harder, act smarter, and seek within our own creative minds and tools to tell the same story in a different way. It caused us to build the road upwards, or under or around the block, but it didn't define the stories we could tell. In many ways, it enhanced them.
This story, In Your Shoes: Paloma Valenzuela, is part of our In Your Shoes series, which gives Boston residents a platform to tell their own stories while indirectly promoting our city services and departments that have helped them.
I started this video project pre-pandemic with an interview with Paloma Valenzuela, a Dominican-American director, producer and writer who created her own web series called The Pineapple Diaries. Paloma created this series an authentic way to portray more realities for people of color that are not often represented on screen.
My video plan was to get the interview with Valenzuela, shoot some b-roll of her directing her series, and edit it together with a strong hook at the beginning and a takeaway lesson at the end.
Enter pandemic.
For a while, I said 'I'll finish this project once the pandemic passes.'
We all know how that went.
So in month 10, I decided to pick it back up. Without any b-roll (since it was too unsafe to be in close quarters to obtain it) I didn't know how to tell the story, and faced a creative block for a few weeks.
On the third week, I re-listened to the interview and realized the reason why Paloma is such a successful director is because she tells her stories organically and authentically. I realized it didn't matter that we didn't have sweeping visuals shot in 24 fps, or slow-motion action shots with just the right lighting. We had photos of her cast members laughing, vertical phone videos of her team dancing in the streets on a shoot and clips of her favorite episodes. We had visuals of people being themselves, doing something that mattered and loving it, and that was something everyone could relate to. And we could get more.
Our original goal was to promote the Boston Arts Department with Paloma's authentic and honest story. So, I quickly decided this was going to be a story told solely with instagram photos, bite-sized videos, stimulating sound effects, vibrant music and electric colors (which emulate her Dominican-influenced style), all edited together in a way that looks like a piece of moving art.
Hundreds of photos, a handful of short-videos and dozens of transitions and keyframes later, we had ourselves a piece that Paloma was proud of and excited to share. The City shared this piece across its platforms and garnered lots of positive engagement and healthy dialogues about the future of art and creating more programs like the Arts in Boston Opportunity Grant, which Paloma won. Above all, this piece reminded me that art can take all forms, that it can teach us things we often overlook in new ways, and that art (even the creation of a video) can remind you of the joy that it is to create in the first place.
