A Lockdown Lullaby

During the COVID-19 lockdown in early May 2020, San Francisco-based filmmaker Adam Warmington avoided the narrative of empty streets or advertising solidarity and turned his camera to his family. A Lockdown Lullaby, a homemade father-and-son collaboration, offers an intimate glimpse into pandemic life through the unfiltered perspective of Dylan, a 6-year-old child navigating the surreal stasis of lockdown. Shot in an unconventional style of Ultra Panavision 70 (2.76:1), the film engages its viewer with a 4-minute meditative and soothing journey filled with honest emotions. 

Stylistically, it is a vérité film (a documentary technique in which the camera remains unobtrusive, and the filmmaker sometimes creates a spontaneous exchange with the subject, for it performs the act of filming real objects, people, and events in a confrontational, truthful, and unscripted way). The shaky camerawork, intimate close-ups, and direct dialogues embody a homemade DIY aesthetic, which adds to the film’s thematic rawness. 

There is not much polish here, only the uneven texture of a 6-year-old boy’s lived experience. In one scene, Dylan is sitting in a cluttered living room, playing video games and mumbling “everyday feels the same” (00:45–00:47). The film emphasizes confinement through such cyclical vignettes, but also highlights the magic and surprise in these repetitive settings: “I am really good at fishing now” (01:21), Dylan proudly proclaims during a family outing to the nearby lake. The film portrays domestic happenings as both monotony and excitement simultaneously. To Dylan, lockdown is also paradoxical: “things are pretty weird right now, but also kind of awesome” (02:57–03:03). It reveals how children process crisis through boredom and adventure, loss and discovery. Warmington’s lens captures this lockdown duality, allowing Dylan’s voice to reframe isolation. Rather than dramatizing the pandemic, A Lockdown Lullaby quietly observes the everyday. It portrays the domestic sphere—where most people were confined during lockdown—as both a site of limitation and unexpected joy.