Coronavirus: How a lesson on social distancing became a viral sensation

DAYTON — It is a 30-second video. You see one ping pong ball dropping down upon rows and rows of mousetraps tightly together.

As it drops it causes a chain reaction, then we see another set of traps this time spaced out. A ball drops but misses the traps. That is how social distancing works

Real Art Director, Andy Nick directed the short but captivating video.

“I think there’s that ah-ha moment at the end, which is really what this is about. We were challenged to get this whole thing done in 4-days. So even in normal working situations, that’s super tight," he said.

>>WATCH: Household items teach social distancing lesson in Dayton-made video

Nick said his team originally wanted 3 thousand mousetraps and ping-pong balls. But getting those items was a challenge.

“Our producer Allison put her foot to the pavement and drove around the Greater Dayton area and bought every mouse trap from every dollar store that she could get her hands on,” Nick said.

500 ping pong balls and mousetraps later, Nick and his team got to work.

“So on day 1, we worked for 8 hours straight just to get one set-up complete and we really only got one shot that first day. Granted we had 4 cameras that were pointed on the mousetraps,” he said.

With time against them, they had one set up.

“We did have one meltdown. one chain reaction went off when we were setting up that scared me pretty bad,” he added.

Within 24 hours of the video’s release, more than 9 million people viewed it. Even catching the attention of Harry Potter author J.K Rowling.

“I could lie to you and say ‘oh yeah, we knew it would be a success’ but we had no idea,” he continued.

Nick said its hard to understand how social distancing is working but feels Ohioans have done a good job when looking at the numbers compared to other states.

“I think a lot of people are looking to Ohio and saying hey you guys are crushing it," he said

Nick also said that while creating the video they were practicing social distancing and only had about 3 people on set.

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