I Can't Just
Stay at Home

A campaign film made for Gyeongsangbuk-do Province when distancing rules were being raised during a resurgence. The moment a campaign turns into a lecture, nobody watches it to the end. So rather than delivering the stay-home message with a straight face, we moved the feeling of being stuck indoors into a laugh. The form is a short carried by narration, and only the mood is borrowed from a sitcom.

The statement of intent opened like this.

The film opens in a messy room, and a caption card rewinds four hours. Sera's plan for a rare night out is broken by a single line on a TV news ticker, and the group chat bubbles confirm the cancellation. There is one actor and one studio flat for a stage, so the narration and the on-screen graphics carry the story. They are what sets the pace, too.

Instead of giving up, Sera writes down the things she wanted to do outside. The film works through that list in the order it was written, one item at a time, inside the room. Each time an item is done, a social media post stamps it like a seal.

In the table below, the left column is what was written on paper, the middle is how it was done in the room, and the right is the proof.

As the day closes a six o'clock alarm goes off, and after a muttered what am I going to do tomorrow, the next answer lands as a caption card. The film ends like a broadcast trailing its next episode, and Sera tidies up the messy room from the opening.