The COVID Challenge: Keeping Morale
With the production of our film moving entirely online due to COVID-19, we’ve been faced with a handful of struggles. The biggest challenge has been trying to keep the crew motivated and keep them rolling with the punches. Staying at home and not being able to leave is difficult for everyone. Many people are struggling to find the motivation to do their work when their free time feels endless and sleep schedules becoming a mess. In general, it has been a struggle to keep the pre-Corona rhythm going.
If you’re feeling the weight of COVID bearing down on your motivation, one important thing to remember is you’re not alone. Stay at home orders are in place all over the world. It’s a new and scary situation that no one was prepared for. Therefore it’s only natural for people to feel off. If you’re lacking motivation, don’t beat yourself up over it, I can promise you that we all feel the same.
If you’re noticing that many of your students, employees or coworkers seem to have lost motivation and you’re struggling to keep their attention, it can be frustrating. But something to keep in mind is that they’re all human. It’s difficult to have your only interaction with others be over the phone or through Zoom calls. As a student filmmaker, I can say that one of my favorite parts about my classes/projects was the in-person interactions. We were able to take some time here and there to just let loose and have some fun with each other. I noticed that lately all of our Zoom calls just increased the pressure and all we ever talked about now was the changing deadlines and the situation with COVID. There seemed to be no fun left.
The best way to counteract these dreary zoom calls is to take a break together. If you can, cancel a meeting and replace it with something fun, whether it be a trivia night, a happy hour, or even a cooking competition. On April 23, our crew took a break and turned our zoom call into an easy-going burger cooking “competition”. We all set out laptops in our kitchen and joked around as we all made our own specialty burgers, or in one case, some chili. It was fun to exchange recipes and was surprised to see how many people in our crew were actually good chefs. It was especially fun to see Porter, from our camera department, pull out all the stops to make homemade burger buns.
Roman, one of our producers, even blessed us with his amazing blackberry jalapeno margarita recipes. Once we were done cooking we all sat together and just had an easy-going conversation that later turned into a trivia game. It was the first time in weeks that our crew seemed to relax and everyone seemed happy. It was great to have a chance to forget about our work for a while and to spend some actual time together having fun.