March 16, 2020
President Emmanuel Macron announces that France will enter a nationwide lockdown starting on the 17th, for an unknown amount of time.
I'm a former web developer starting as a freelance videographer, I have my first shoots planned later that week and a trip abroad coming at the end of March to see my wife who doesn't live in France. All of that gets cancelled, in one sentence. No income, no wife, nothing.
But the lockdown was an obvious choice for the greater good, and not one I contest at all. I've respected it all along, only leaving the apartment once every two weeks to bring groceries to my grandmother. My mother has been hosting me this whole time.
That gives me a lot of free time, in a confined space, with my mother, my camera and my laptop. And that's how my creative spree started.
France is slowly reopening this morning, May 11, after 55 days of strict lockdown. Some stores and shops are allowed to open with caution, and big gathering areas (bars, restaurants, parks, movie theaters, churches and such) will remain closed for a while. I thought it was a good time to look at some data, to try to put numbers on my lockdown productivity.
Let's take a look at my Youtube channel statistics on March 16, since its creation in 2013 (I actually started creating content sort of regularly at the end of 2019):
- Number of subscribers: 32
- Number of videos: 12
- Number of views: 1852
- Number of hours watched: 24.9
- Number of videos with more than 100 views: 3
- Number of comments: 7
- Number of likes: 86
And let's take a look at it now:
- Number of subscribers: 70 (+119%)
- Number of videos: 28 (+133%)
- Number of views: 4118 (+122%)
- Number of hours watched: 55,7 (+124%)
- Number of videos with more than 100 views: 11 (+267%)
- Number of comments: 20 (+186%)
- Number of likes: 297 (+245%)
The actual numbers are not impressive, but the increase percentages show some very real movement, and I've seen many artists get the same kind of creative energy and productivity boost during this period. All of my numbers more than doubled during the lockdown, meaning it took less than 55 days to reach numbers I got over 7 years!
And these statistics do not include all the videos I did voluntarily to help organisations around me during these 55 days.
I've been creating a lot of content, I've been trying a lot of different things, I've been learning a lot, I've improved as a script writer, director, camera operator and video editor. Most importantly, I've been busy and I've had fun. The world will take a while to recover, my wife and I don't know when we'll see each other again, but it's important to see the positive in situations like this, and to fight potential mental breakdowns. I've been trying to share some fun, love and smiles with the world through my videos, and I've gotten a lot of positive feedback for it, which helps a lot and makes me want to keep producing more and more content.
The global health crisis is far from over, so everyone should remain extremely cautious. I will stay locked down as much as possible. And I will keep making videos for me and for you.
Here is my Quarantine Life playlist, with the content I created while quarantined:
Thanks for reading, and don't hesitate to subscribe to my Youtube channel if you like my content to show some support, it's always very appreciated.
Stay safe everyone!
Until next time, stay creative! See you!
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Thumbnail credits: Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash
