Pandemic Reunions

Travel restrictions at the start of the pandemic meantmany Canadians couldn’t be with special people in theirlives for months — and years. With so much doom andisolation, CBC’s nightly TV news program The Nationaland the digital video unit teamed up to tell lighterstories using a format that could work for broadcastand online. In this case, the online video format (‘bigmoment’ first, rather than a slow build up) was usedon TV. A call to our audience came up with 6 verydifferent stories of people who had to wait too longto be with the ones they care about. But how do youtell intimate and visually-rich stories when it’s not safeto gather? Our subjects were to document the hardmoments of separation and their reunions with their ownphones in a vlog-style point of view storytelling. Exceptfor the Zoom interviews, everything was filmed by them:a couple that met on TikTok and was separated by theborder, a man who finally got to fly back to grieve hisfather, a family stuck in Saudi Arabia unable to see theirgrandma …and others. The project shows how you canwork with your subjects to gather news stories whenyou can’t physically gather. And it documents a veryrelatable experience of the pandemic, no matter whereyou live. And finally… this project brought togethertwo producers who first began brainstorming about acommon production after attending INPUT 2019.