WINDSOR, ONT. -- One year ago, Todd Shearon went out on a whim and collected footage of Windsor’s eerily empty streetscape and landmarks a few weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic.

The video was viewed so many times, the videographer decided to do a follow-up short-film, one year later.

“We thought it would be a normal, ‘back to everything we’re used to’ kind of situation and that’s not the case. That’s not the case at all,” says Shearon.

He set out Wednesday to visit all the familiar landmarks featured in his initial short film, gathering all of his footage and editing the short in a single day. He’s aptly named it “One Year Later.”

“I wanted to go back out and recreate every shot and see what the difference was,” says Shearon. “There were some glimpses of back to normal, but in realty we’re just in another phase.”

Shearon used a combination of black and white and colour exposure to show how the city is slowly coming out of the pandemic.

He also added upbeat, aggressive music to show the mood of society and played some of his visuals in rewind to represent how far we haven’t come over the past year.

“We’re made some advances, but we’ve rewound and gone back to basically where we were, one year ago in a lockdown, which also has its differences.”

But the biggest difference, he says, is the number of people in his footage. In some cases, Shearon says he saw basketball games with 30-40 people on an outdoor court.

“Last year we were scared, we were listening more we were unsure,” Shearon remembers. “This year, we’re just over it.”

Shearon ends the video with symbols of peace and love, a subtle reminder to use positive attitudes toward each other: that love can spread faster than the deadly virus.

“I couldn’t orchestrate what’s going on in the world,” he says.

“I just show up and turn my camera on.”

Shearon’s videos can be found on YouTube or on Facebook and Instagram under his handle, @IamtheToddFather.