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Stuck at home like many, so I made my daughter the actor and my wife the grip and script supervisor What have you all been up to during these strange times?

There is a slow burning realisation and awakening in the UK and Europe (it will come to the US soon) that we have fucked up. Big time. In Japan and Taiwan, simple early hygiene measures avoided a lockdown or economic crash. Thousands of jobs saved, but more importantly thousands of lives saved from the outset. In January, the Japanese started to test in-depth for coronavirus and did case by case contact tracing and isolation. The public did their bit by wearing masks en-masse in public and using hand sanitiser. @BTM_Pix points out that most if not all shops had hand sanitiser on the entrance so people didn't unwittingly spread by handling goods. At the same time, here in the UK our government did nothing. Business as normal. In February our crackpot chief advisor started to float the theory of herd immunity, and amazingly the chief scientists and government itself went for this strategy straight off the bat, as the first cases reached the UK. When the scientists ran the numbers, it wasn't until over a month later... It would result in 2 million dead people, minimum. The chief advisor Dominic Cummings is rumoured to have been advocating for the death of 2 million people as late as February 28th. "At one private event at the end of February, Cummings outlined then government’s strategy at the time in a way that was summarised by some present as “herd immunity, protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad.” Meanwhile in Japan and Taiwan, the simple hygiene measures were leaving some of the most densely populated cities on Earth virtually untouched by the epidemic. But for Italy things were rapidly going downhill. Another government who sat on their hands in January and February. Italy's terrifying unfolding tragedy is a glimpse into the future for all of us... Just 2-4 weeks into the future. In Italy, 20-30% of intensive care patients are aged 20-40. People with underlying health or lung problems are at great risk even if they're young. Hospitals and health systems will collapse. The sudden lockdowns required, will crash the economy, creating joblessness, government debt and hardship on a scale never seen before in modern times. Meanwhile Japan remains open for business. Sure, with some major events cancelled and the Olympics in doubt... But over in China, they are already going back to work. Taiwan has some of the fewest cases and deaths per 100,000 people in the world, despite being on the doorstep of China. Hong Kong too. In the West this is the biggest government manslaughter unfolding, that has ever been seen in our lives. Italy, Spain, Germany, UK, US, we are all going to face utter darkness. Please takes step to protect yourselves from the government's handling of this in the critical early stages. It is going to get out of control.

I agree to an extent. I sincerely doubt that the culture in the USA will awaken to facts over myth. We have a system here built upon a foundation of nonsense, where what we want to hear is more important than reality. Europe has felt the sting of that attitude to an extent, we have not. This American culture has helped create a health-care system built for the affluent, not for everybody, and that's a system I fear will probably not withstand the crush of contagion. I pray that I'm wrong about that, but there's nothing I'm hearing from the current administration that allays my concern. The USA is going to be in the thick of COVID repercussions Mid-May and not back to anything resembling normal until mid summer. That's a long time to reflect --and 33% unemployment (that's a "new normal" that I'm not happy to face) will shake some marbles lose, so maybe attitudes will shift somehow...but... man, I just know people here. Many are family. I see how they think and behave. The attitude is a blessing and a curse. These people I live with are not outliers, they are average Americans.

Facts, man. They don't work here anymore; if they ever really did. We're a society of self-aggrandizement and myth. Don't believe randos like me on the internet about the virus? How about listening to Larry Brilliant, epidemiologist: "Is this the worst outbreak you’ve ever seen? It's the most dangerous pandemic in our lifetime. We are being asked to do things, certainly, that never happened in my lifetime—stay in the house, stay 6 feet away from other people, don’t go to group gatherings. Are we getting the right advice? Well, as you reach me, I'm pretending that I'm in a meditation retreat, but I'm actually being semi-quarantined in Marin County. Yes, this is very good advice. But did we get good advice from the president of the United States for the first 12 weeks? No. All we got were lies. Saying it’s fake, by saying this is a Democratic hoax. There are still people today who believe that, to their detriment. Speaking as a public health person, this is the most irresponsible act of an elected official that I've ever witnessed in my lifetime. But what you're hearing now [to self-isolate, close schools, cancel events] is right. Is it going to protect us completely? Is it going to make the world safe forever? No. It's a great thing because we want to spread out the disease over time. Flatten the curve. By slowing it down or flattening it, we're not going to decrease the total number of cases, we're going to postpone many cases, until we get a vaccine—which we will, because there's nothing in the virology that makes me frightened that we won’t get a vaccine in 12 to 18 months. Is there in any way a brighter side to this? Well, I'm a scientist, but I'm also a person of faith. And I can't ever look at something without asking the question of isn't there a higher power that in some way will help us to be the best version of ourselves that we could be? I thought we would see the equivalent of empty streets in the civic arena, but the amount of civic engagement is greater than I've ever seen. But I'm seeing young kids, millennials, who are volunteering to go take groceries to people who are homebound, elderly. I'm seeing an incredible influx of nurses, heroic nurses, who are coming and working many more hours than they worked before, doctors who fearlessly go into the hospital to work. I've never seen the kind of volunteerism I'm seeing." https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-interview-larry-brilliant-smallpox-epidemiologist/

well done anaconda. At the opposite end of the spectrum. May i present my shamefully exploited cat. Turns out he doesn't mind a bit of dop work 😉 Rather than edit the longer bits i learned how to speed things up in resolve. hope you get get a giggle out of it.

Even the freeplay Streetfighter SNES station outside this second hand game shop was sorted.

It's a very interesting question. There are 3 methods how to approach the task and those 3 methods are actually different ways to structure your color correcting/grading workflow in Resolve. Color matching two different cameras has 2 steps: 1. Correctly interpret colors in Resolve for each camera. 2. Color match them if there are differences. Hint. If the first step is done correctly you will have very little to no work on the second one. There are plenty of videos on youtube but all they go straight to the second one missing the crucial first step. One or more cameras most people don't know how to do correctly step one. That was my case until recently. Method 1: LUTs and more specifically Leeming LUTs PRO. If you shoot with each camera with the settings given by the author and then apply the corrective LUTs in Resolve for each camera you will get correct colors from both cameras. They should look the same. Panasonic GH5 and Sony A7 series are supported. Tried this on BMPCC 4K and Sony A7 III and it works reasonably well. But not always and setting the cameras each time correctly require some work and attention. https://www.leeminglutpro.com/ Few professional colorists publishing tutorials on youtube advise against LUTs for color correction. Method 2: ACES Used ACES method in the past to work with Sony S-Log 2 video and results were great. Method 3 - Color Space Transform effect in Resolve. This one was game changer for me and the method currently use as a first step for color grading/correction. Including when footage is from different cameras. My productivity in Resolve jumped at least two times and results are great. Wish I new this before ! The best video which explains the method and probably the most important part of color correction in Resolve is unfortunately in Russian. But you still will be able to pick up the principles and settings for both cameras. This guy is a ex professional colorist. Never seen anybody with tutorials on youtube explain the theory and practice so logically and simply. Apart of the color space transform values for input and output color space and gamma, you should also set Tone Mapping to Luminance Mapping. That's very important. Once the color space transform is done on one clip do a stills grab and then apply it on all clips from the camera with few clicks. Same process for the clips of the other camera(s) All 3 methods require to be well aware what picture profile you used during the shoot. For Sony Cameras this colorist advise to use HLG. If you don't have HLG then you should use color profiles or create your own color profiles having Color Mode setting = SGammut. Because it is not clear what color space are Sony PP with Color Mode = Cinema, Pro, Movie. Hope this helps.

Glad you could make it home, next time you're in Barcelona let me know and I'll try to get you to visit the most comprehensive cinema gear private collection (20.000 items), starting with Marie Antoinette private theatre and Louis Lumiere Cinematograph. Stay safe fellow readers.

It was shot in 2014, actually. XD And involved meticulous visual effects to clear out the streets, even though most of the shots were taken during lazy periods. BTS: https://vimeo.com/100021445 Nevertheless, it's a great video. One of the most cinematic skateboarding shorts I've ever seen - well thought out, subtle and very pleasing to look at.

Let's get this thing started then. Here's my entry. All hand held and in natural light (except for one shot, no points for guessing which one) Filmed in less than an hour, paid for by a beaming little face when the finished project was ready to watch.

Last month I made a trip to Barcelona to film the Formula One circus in town for the pre-season test. This, it turned out would be the last time the 2020 F1 cars would run. When a McLaren team member tested positive for the virus at the first race in Australia, the race was called off. In a twist of fate I met McLaren CEO and team boss Zak Brown in track grandstand and watched the new car in action before crisis hit - now we might never know how fast the car was versus the likes of dominant Mercedes and Ferrari. Read the full article

Happy new year all! I’ve finally (finally!) made my first short narrative film. I’ve been a full time videographer for 8 years now, writing on and off in my spare time, but never actually got out and turned my writing into a film. So I decided enough was enough and asked my brother if he was up for the challenge of making something in our home village over Christmas. 8 hours writing and pre-production, a single 8 hour day of filming, and 8 hours of editing. Loved the process. Lots of lessons learned. Here’s the result, and would love your feedback. Cheers, James

And the resolve to do what's just for the greater good. It's a level of integrity that's in short supply when you build a society that often seems to shun it. This is not going to be easy. https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

Yes, I understand. I have the same problem with many other outlets, and I can't stand politics. The truth may be exposed when we figure out why this CureVac CEO is on "medical leave" all of a sudden. CureVac swapped their new CEO with their old one not long before this controversy happened. Stay tuned!

Hey, once again I agree with the situation in UK, the non-response from BoJo is insane... All I'm saying is that these days, everyone is an expert on the matter... but when you read real experts opinion they are very very careful in their statements. The truth is that no one really know why Japan hasn't been more impacted and I wouldn't bet my money that the situation won't get worse over there. I just don't know and the experts don't really know neither (however they point out the lack of testing). Pandemics have complex dynamic, this is only the beginning and you may actually have to update your post in a few weeks with "ALL governments are criminally negligent over Coronavirus". As for preparedness, the health minister in France that acted in 2009 against the "harmless" H1N1 flu was dragged to court and ridiculed at the time for her actions. I can only imagine the opposite scenario if Europe locked down late January, shut down the economy and cancel all the trade shows for nothing. We would have rage articles all over the place, people bitching about another EU failure etc.. This forum would be full of posts from people complaining about lost job opportunity and lack of common sense from the governments... It's very easy and comfortable to criticize afterward. You' ll always find someone who said it was inevitable (sometime with very good reasons btw).

I can only comment from when I was there but from the moment we stepped off the plane on the way in to the moment we got on the plane home ten days later, every single worker in every single establishment from the airport to restaurants to shops to the railways was wearing a mask. As per the picture I took above, hand santiser was at the entrance/exit to almost every establishment we went to. All events that we were set to go to in Tokyo (the primary one being the CP+ photo show) were cancelled from gigs to sporting events as well as exhibitions/museums and pretty much any place with large enclosed gatherings such as the Skytree etc were closed. When we checked into the hotel, we had our temperature taken, the place was plastered with information in numerous languages and there were unlimited facemasks handed out at reception free of charge as well as the sanitiser outside and inside every elevator. I'd estimate that easily 85-90% of the local population were wearing masks and this rose to more or less 100% on the subway. When we initially arrived, I'd say that probably 75% of western visitors were wearing masks as well but about three days after we arrived this dropped very dramatically over a two day period and was more like 20% or even less by the time we left. I don't think this was through 'concern fatigue' or whatever you want to classify it but was more linked to reports I'd seen in the western media including from the UK government pretty much saying that masks were useless which presumably were then made into concise little info pictures and circulated on social media. It was like every single one of these people had seen this pop up on their social media on the same evening and abandoned their masks immediately. To say I was annoyed about it would be an understatement not least because even in the spirit of unity and support with the local people you'd think people would carry on wearing them but alas not. So in terms of the sort of lockdowns we have in the west now, there was nothing like that at all but what there was in abundance was the government taking decisive action to limit communal gathering opportunities (and closing schools) and the whole population supporting the effort to maintain distance where possible without totally stopping day to day life and all taking responsibility to take the prescribed precautions to avoid contaminating themselves and others. Companies also introduced home working but also slightly staggered shifts to ease the numbers travelling at peak periods. The staggering thing is the low infection rate in Tokyo considering how this virus is spreading everywhere else. Just the 8.5 million subway rides alone that are taken every day in Tokyo would lead you to predict a significantly higher number of cases than the 136 that they have, particularly considering how much longer they have been exposed to the virus there. For context, a single church in a small town in the UK appears to have emerged as a hotspot with around 15% of the same number as the whole of Tokyo has. By the way, the contrast when we arrived back at Madrid airport was stark and very, very frightening where absolutely NO ONE in the airport either official or member of the public was wearing a mask apart from us or employing any kind of distancing. In point of fact up until the point we got locked down here in Spain over a week ago, the only people we saw wearing a mask was each other. As odd as it may seem, that kind of gives me some hope in a way because it can explain the runaway nature of it here versus Japan and how it was contained there as either Japan is lying about its figures or that bouquet of measures and a public that bought into it from day one has proven to be a very effective balance between containment and total reactive lockdown. OK, it would mean that we have missed the boat in terms of doing it by consent if you like but it does offer hope that it can be contained. Because if the reason it has been arrested in Japan isn't due to the actions they took then it throws up something that I don't want to even consider which is that the virus has mutated somehow when it has reached Europe and we are facing something different and, looking at the figures, far worse.

These are good points but it doesn't change the fact that governments are behaving in a criminally negligent way towards their public and health workers.

You may have missed this, but not so long ago I suggested that we do something creative with the time on our hands and come up with this: It's not that far off from your video, actually. Great minds think alike! *This yellow rabbit will haunt me to the end of my days and it's your fault @noone. 😂 * Awww, fog / haze is one of the next tools I'd like to get acquainted with, it adds a lot of depth to the shot. How did you fog it? With some atmosphere in a can or a rather professional fog machine?

I don't need a background in epidemiology to understand what is happening. You just need eyes and to be able to logically deduce more than 1 step ahead (which rules out at least 50% of the British public) I'll explain why it's government manslaughter and negligence, very clearly. Science community has been warning about the threat of a pandemic for decades. SARS hit Asia and governments there did the responsible thing to wake the fuck up...Whilst ours pondered and basically sat on their hands with other issues taking priority... like who appeals to the public the most in our daily gameshow political shitshow. They were thinking it can't happen here... The scientific data was telling them otherwise. Bill Gates told them otherwise, very clearly. Logic tells them otherwise. The millions of flights and international travel increase the spread of a virus so that it's a pandemic. Are you saying I need to have a background in virology to understand this? Even school kids know this. The UK government has been proved by the events of this month to have had zero preparedness for a pandemic. - A lack of political recognition of the seriousness of what was unfolding in January - Insufficient testing capacity - Insufficient protection of front-line health workers, doctors and staff - Insufficient supplies of hand sanitiser and masks... Basic, cheap stuff. - A lack of political urgency to put any preparedness plans into action in January (oh and they didn't have any plan anyway) - Poor case isolation and low testing numbers especially early on at critical stage of the spread - Underfunded health system and not supporting the staff - Negligently informing the public I'll give you two examples of that last point which is key. On his Japan trip, @BTM_Pix noticed the Brit tourists suddenly abandon their masks after Boris said they were ineffectual. Nothing sums this crisis up better. People cannot take seriously what they don't understand or are poorly advised about. People don't understand the role of the masks to stop the spread of the virus. They are not there to protect you from infection. They exist to stop YOU passing the virus onto somebody else, if you cough, sneeze, it catches burst of aerosols, and it stops your hands from coming into contact with your mouth, nose or catching the cough. In the UK we catch our coughs and sneezes with our bare hands and then put our hands on shopping and goods in the supermarket. It stays there for up to 72 hours before somebody else picks up the same item and then touches their own mouths at some point, then the trouble happens especially if they are elderly or have underlying health conditions. It is the government's responsibility to make us understand this but in actual fact their "scientific" advise is still to catch your coughs and sneezes with your bare hands. Great way to spread it onto surfaces in public, like in a packed metro carriage and spread it to a 100 others. That's what the Japanese and Taiwanese understand in their densely populated cities. The British don't. We do not have a culture of understanding anything much as a collective. We don't have a culture of wearing masks when we have a cold, let alone during a pandemic. This has to change ASAP... Like tomorrow... It may already be too late, and certainly for the economy and for people who have died so far it's too late. Everyone has to wear one in public to stop the spread. It's simply no good just 20% of the public wearing them, or scarfs or buckets or whatever in a misguided belief they are a barrier to the virus entering your body. Army should be on the streets handing them out. Basic stuff like soap is equally important and disinfecting common public spaces. In Asia they have been disinfecting public transport on daily basis, cleaning businesses and offices like the plague. We are not doing that here. We are just not used to it. We don't have a warm climate in England with a lot of bacteria. The virus is not the same as bacteria but is removed by similar deep cleans, so why aren't we doing them? So yes, the government had all this info, like the lay man did, like the bloke who runs EOSHD did, it's not even hard to understand... And yes, they failed to act or be prepared which makes them criminally negligent and responsible for the manslaughter of potentially 2 million people in the UK alone.

WTH of reel, man, I'm impressed with your work! : ) The more I know it, the more I am sold : -)

Yup, Emanuel had posted about it before:

This is a good idea for a reel, actually. Dig the lighting in the opening scene - as simple as that, but makes the globe and your daughter really pop out. Solidarity and empathy - that's what we need.

Dang, nice library of international images. I don't have near as much impressive travel stuff in the footage I shot from past years (most of my travel was over a decade ago), but this is a great idea and I have been wanting to consolidate/organize my footage that I do have. Right now it's just laying about on random hard drives. And HDV tapes, ugh. Your work makes me think that if I went through it all I might be able to pull something similar together. Not as good what you did here, but at least it's a project that would have a bigger purpose than just tidying up my media.

Thanks Rinad I appreciate it!

Death rate is just a ratio and it seems that Germany conducted a lot of testing early on which might explain the issue (same thing in Korea). Also, it is still very early to tell at this point. https://www.ft.com/content/c0755b30-69bb-11ea-800d-da70cff6e4d3

Exactly. According to https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/median-age/, Germany has even higher median age than Italy, so I guess their low mortality must come from the way they handle patients.

The one anomaly in the World figures that stand out for me are Germany: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ Third Reich 'Master Race' jokes aside, their death rate is incredibly low for some reason...and there has to be a reason. Lower age, better health, better healthcare, different handling...? Their number of cases is high but when you look at the mortality rate compared with say France, Spain, the UK or US, makes you want to apply for a German passport.

Many years ago when I used to have to go over to do jobs in LA quite regularly, I always used to stay the Roosevelt. Ironically, the last time I went there I did actually spend the better part of a week in self isolation lockdown in one of their rooms and practically became a one man creator of a toilet roll shortage. And thats why we never go to faux British pubs to eat Fish and Chips anymore

It actually has the potential to be a good multi message public information film. Stay off the streets during a lockdown because a dickhead might run you over, check your blindspot before opening your door in case there is a dickhead approaching and you madam put that cigarette out in case the dickhead lands next to you and cries all over social media about you being a health hazard.

The weird thing is that in the UK at least there seems no way of convincing people to stop the phenomenon. Like a lot of stuff over the past few years, its like everyone has read some sort of viral Facebook post about it that had a grain of truth (diarrhoea is a symptom though a much less common one) which was then honed in on and now there is no talking them down from their position. Its now of course become a self-fulfilling prophecy as it has fed panic buying from people who know full well that it is senseless but are now caught up in it themselves because of the shortage. The two other countries that I have been in/am during this have not had the same behaviour so I can only presume if its happening in the US as well that the Facebook post must have been in English We got mercilessly mocked by numerous members of our family (and the plumber who instated it!) for getting one of these a couple of years ago but as Guy Martin says here our trumping gear has never been cleaner.

Same here and I’m in a rural area. Why? I don’t get it. People are really concerned about keeping their ass clean as the world ends.

I'm happy to do this as i've been emailing for quite a while now but also once we have them collated then we should reach out on twitter as well? I will probably get a chance tomorrow to do all the tests. Too busy fixing up bikes for a quick escape to the countryside for some fresh air! Out of curiosity for those doing very low light 10 bit tests are you very bottom shadow stops quite green? I want to know if this is universal or whether it's just me. It's only 10 bit this happens to. cheers Paul

PS. As video shows method 3 is usable only if you shoot with Log profile or RAW. Only is this case Davinci Resolve will know how to interpret correctly the colors. For Panasonic cameras those would be V-Log and HLG and for Sony S-Log2, S-Log3(to avoid) and HLG (best). If your Sony camera doesn't support HLG, then only option would be standard S-Log2/S.Gammut Picture Profile. Or some kind of hybrid profile where Color Mode is S.Gammut and gamma is Cine2 or Cine4. But you'll have to experiment. Have no idea how footage will look and in Resolve there is no value that corresponds to Cine2 or Cine4 gamma. You'll have to try several options for input Gamma. Not sure how this will work. For Panasonic Color Space transform for GH5 with HLG will look like these in Resolve Input Color Space: Rec2020 Input Gamma: Rec.2100 HLG Output Color Space: REC709 Output Gamma: REC709 Tone Mapping : Luminance Mapping For Sony S-Log2 picture profile it would be: Input Color Space: Sony S.Gammut Input Gamma: Sony S-Log2 Output Color Space: REC709 Output Gamma: REC709 Tone Mapping : Luminance Mapping Sometimes I play with output gamma. Can use Gamma 2.2 or Gamma 2.0 instead of REC709. Default for Resolve is Gamma 2.4 If you can use X-Rite Color Chart during the shoots you will be golden. Color matching footage from the 2 cameras will be really easy.

Still funny though

You’re right(vodaphone) corrected

To be fair, that picture is from a shop in Greece.

Skateboarding the empty streets sure is tempting right now and can even be considered relatively safe if you skate less frequented places (no viruses on sufraces). However, even when practicing even the most basic tricks, there is a small possibility that a rolled ankle will get you a hospital visit and we all know how great that would be right now. That is why I am sticking to hiking less popular trails and nearby woods for the time being. This week my wife and I were able to visit an incredibly popular hiking vantage point and have it to ourselves with incredible weather.

I'll start by saying that that is a great film. But is there anything more 2020 than trying to capitalise on a global crisis that is literally killing people by click baiting a six year old video? This video is also doing the rounds after being re-purposed by a lot of people who are desperate for clicks on social media pretending it was taken during whatever passed for a lockdown in London when it was actually just pre-virus dickheadery. Fair play though, the woman's reaction at the end is gold.

Things were going better here in Australia than most places and they seemed to be getting to be able to flatten the curve.....then a couple of days ago they let FOUR cruise ship loads of people out into the wild in Sydney with several on EACH SHIP having the virus...Even if they CAN track down all those people, by now, it is far to late and so in a coupe of weeks it will be bedlam. Today the government put out a decent sized emergency package that has some on the left up in arms and some on the right as well so looks to me to be pretty right (a bit too generous maybe but better that than the other way). Not in lockdown YET (that will change any day now) but even so it can be pretty still out. This is a main street in Wagga Wagga a small city in regional NSW (and the centre of the Universe).

In the UK we have an inexperienced ex-hedge-fund manager chancellor in control of economy, so that is about to go tits up. He has promised unlimited bailouts, dedicated $330 billion to prop up the economy (20% of GDP!), but done it in a the most backward dumb way imaginable, where most of the money will be pocketed by shareholders, bosses and big companies, leaving the staff and small businesses who really need it scrambling for what's left. It's a bit like how they shut down theatres and cinemas here last week in an 'advisory' way. Oops. Meant none of them could claim on insurance for any closure and losses. The chancellor and prime minster have sacked most of their advisors and there is a rift with the civil service. Both of them are wreckers, gamblers, risk takers. Until today bars and restaurants were still open, in midst of a pandemic. Virus is spreading very fast in London but it was almost like business as normal till now, with very little social distancing going on. People are waking up now, but government is still way behind the ball. Doctors and nurses having to share masks, not even able to get tested for coronavirus. When they get it, they spread it. Likewise, most of the population, because none of us get tested either, none of us have any masks, won't wear them anyway, and are getting on packed trains to go to packed offices and bars like the problem doesn't exist. The situation in the UK in 2 weeks might make Italy and Barcelona seem positively calm. In Spain and Italy at least they are taking the lockdown seriously and stuff is closed. Also people have just genuinely gone mad. The panic buying, empty shelves, country gone to shit. I might have to move. Where to? Mars?

It's an interview with Frank M. Snowden, professor emeritus of history and the history of medicine at Yale. So let's hear him out. "One way of approaching this is to examine how I got interested in the topic, which was a realization—I think a double one. Epidemics are a category of disease that seem to hold up the mirror to human beings as to who we really are. That is to say, they obviously have everything to do with our relationship to our mortality, to death, to our lives.... "They show the moral relationships that we have toward each other as people, and we’re seeing that today. "The main part of preparedness to face these events is that we need as human beings to realize that we’re all in this together, that what affects one person anywhere affects everyone everywhere" "and we need to think in that way rather than about divisions of race and ethnicity, economic status, and all the rest of it." "I had done some preliminary reading and thought this was an issue that raises really deep philosophical, religious, and moral issues. And I think epidemics have shaped history in part because they’ve led human beings inevitably to think about those big questions." "The outbreak of the plague, for example, raised the whole question of man’s relationship to God. How could it be that an event of this kind could occur with a wise, all-knowing and omniscient divinity? Who would allow children to be tortured, in anguish, in vast numbers?" "It had an enormous effect on the economy. Bubonic plague killed half the population of full continents and, therefore, had a tremendous effect on the coming of the industrial revolution, on slavery and serfdom. Epidemics also, as we’re seeing now, have tremendous effects on social and political stability. They’ve determined the outcomes of wars, and they also are likely to be part of the start of wars sometimes. So, I think we can say that there’s not a major area of human life that epidemic diseases haven’t touched profoundly." *** Well I saw it myself in Barcelona. The different approaches from different people. I'll give you some characters I met, and their response. Had I stayed longer, I would have filmed them and made a documentary. When I travel I prefer backpackers hostels (at least good ones) to hotels as you save money and get to meet interesting people. The facilities are hotel standard anyway and some of them are like fancy apartments. A great way to travel. In one I met the French hostel owner, whose first priority was safety of his staff... he sent them all home, but kept a few guests on who had no flight and nowhere else to go. A good man, he didn't panic... didn't put himself first...he risked his own wellbeing to help me. Barcelona Garden Hostel in city centre, if you're curious. I will be going back once this is over and saying thanks. And my response to the crisis there told me something about me. I wanted to stay, I took unnecessary risks, didn't book a flight home even though I knew trouble was coming. I think in hindsight it was foolish. I booked 3 hostels at once when things were really locking down, so if one closed, I'd have somewhere else to stay. Contingency plan! I wasn't going to leave it up to God to decide whether I would be homeless, using GFX 100 as a hammer to crack open coconuts for dinner. Another character were staff in a different hostel, who tried to charge me double for a room if I wanted to stay there as a backup plan... any excuse basically to make a profit from a pandemic and public health crisis. Other people I met, were panic stricken. One girl in tears, afraid of losing her job. Some hostels and hotels were rejecting new customers... didn't give a crap. Some just sacked their staff on the spot, sent home with nothing. Britannia hotel chain in the UK today did not just sack a ton of people, they flung them out of their accommodation too. Tells us a lot about some businesses and why they should be allowed to go broke in a crisis... No bailout from taxpayer for them, give it to the staff they treat as disposable, instead. There were people joking about the pandemic. I didn't mind it. But sometimes seems insensitive. In a supermarket, shelves empty, elderly old wise cracking Spanish man came up to me with the wheezing laugh like in the meme, something I didn't understand but definitely about toilet paper. Very amusing. Other times, some American tourists, acting like they were immune and to hell with everyone else, being jokey and insensitive around so many people worried for their jobs and health, just made me sick to the stomach to be honest. So yes, the Yale guy is right. It is going to tell us some deep truths about our character, our values, our societies by the time this is all over.

Pastel land. Reminds me of the default camera on the new iPhones.

He has been there long enough now that he will either need more underpants or more lenses. I'm betting he'd choose the latter.

Andrew, I am both a long time reader and a Barcelona resident. Do no hesitate to contact me if you need anything.

Hey Cats, Shane Hurlbut, the DOP and lecturer, is giving away a free 8 hour lighting course. Source, the beautiful German site slashcam.de, friends of Andrew and Eoshd. https://www.hurlbutacademy.com/illumination-experience-workshop/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/how-many-will-die-of-coronavirus-in-the-uk-a-closer-look-at-the-numbers

Take a look on these numbers: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ As proud former German resident, it's really impressive... : ) 10% of total deaths and in serious/critical condition compared with France, for example, for same range of infected people as of today. That should put authorities AND native people to wonder why ; -)