The Long Winter
By Britney Phan
A short film about the daily lives of high school students following the Omicron outbreak.
Process
When I first started working on my short documentary, I began by collecting photos and footage of what I saw around me. It was easy to take a picture of an empty classroom, because empty rooms became an increasingly familiar sight as cases started rising and the outbreak worsened. By the end of the week, I had so many photos that they were taking up too much storage, so I began exporting them as clips for what would be the first of many versions of my documentary. My idea was simple: I’d try my best to accurately portray my experience going to school during the Omicron outbreak, which came about as a result of a pair session with my mentor, Lindsay, as our discussions of the pandemic turned from hopeful to scared to worried again. I was interested in capturing that moment and framing it in time, because even now, a few months later, I find myself thinking about it once more, just as COVID cases rise again.
Britney Phan
Britney Phan is a high school junior in Brooklyn, NY. Other than writing, her main hobbies include drawing and listening to music. This year, along with her mentor, Lindsay, she read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez and was so taken by the fantastical landscapes which she was swept into that she decided to write a piece that was inspired by them.