Media Priority: A change of direction - September 2010

After a dissapointing showing for our previous idea, we felt the need to do something more creative!

For the Media priority we had an idea we wanted to run past the advisory group. It had been some time since we’d made some progress with this prioriy so we felt some creativity was called for!

After finding it difficult to think of a way to approach the national news, a chance meeting with an advertising agency through My Money gave us an idea. How about making a viral video to be released online which raises awareness of the negative perception of young people in the media?

It seemed like a really good opportunity and something we can focus on for the priority. So we put it to the Advisory Group and they were all keen to come up with ideas for a video we could put together, so we decide to write down all the negative stereotyping of young people we could think of, and the positive things that never get mentioned. All of these were written on what would become our wall of inspiration, the results are below: WALL OF INSPIRATION: Positive and negative stereotypes of young people

Negative Stereotypes

• Hoodies
• Being stupid (easy GCSE’s)
• Yob/chav/emos/Goths
• Violent
• Disrespectful
• Loud
• ASBO’s
• Gangs
• Knife crime
• Suicide
• Bullying
• Bus fights
• Stealing
• Big groups=evil
• Pregnancy
• Young terrorists
• Raves
• Binge drinking
• Happy slapping
• Social networking trouble makers (party’s/ bullying)
• Loitering
• Vandalism Positive activities that don’t get mentioned
• Youth Parliament
• Young NCB
• School involvement clubs
• Don’t’ get enough credit for our hard work at school
• Sporting achievements
• Volunteering
• Musical achievements
• Positive contribution to community
• Young Carers 
• General extracurricular activity
• Normal/average marks, what’s wrong with being normal???

We now wanted to find out what were the ingredients to a good viral video (a viral video is a video you see online, which you enjoy and want to pass onto your friends). We watched a number of good and bad viral videos and drew up our list of what ingredients make a good Viral Video

Good Ingredients for a viral Video

• It’s good to tap into something that everyone knows about (in this case harry potter)
• Comedy is good, it keeps your attention
• The message should be clear and it should be informative
• Use characters we know or can identify with
• Make your audience think
• Involve your audience in the video if you can, engage them!
• Come up with a fresh idea
• Perhaps have a hidden message
• Make it enjoyable
• Make people want to watch it over and over again

Now we had our inspiration and our ingredients we split into groups of three and set about storyboarding our ideas. Once we’d finished we presented our ideas to the rest of the group, and here they are:

Group 1

Linda, Aneela, Shivani

Idea 1:

The film is in black and white and the scene is in kitchen with people dancing and laughing (silent). Then the title “What’s wrong with this picture?” The next scene is in colour with hip-hop in the background in what looks like a different room, bottles of beer lying around. The next title is “What’s wrong with this picture?” the final text reads “Nothing it’s the same party - It’s easy to be negative about young people” What we learn: the point is of the film is to show how differently you can represent young people in positive and negative ways using the same situation

Idea 2:

An adult talking about how different and innocent it was in their time to their grandson, compared to the things young people do today. The video then shows a young person getting up to normal stuff and doing all the things that the adult said young people shouldn’t do. It then becomes obvious that the young person is actually the granddad many years ago. What we learn: It’s easy to forget what it’s like to be a child.

Group 2

Aisha, Naomi, Acelya

It opens on a shot of the Earth and then suddenly zooms into a car park. There are two people in the car park with hoodies passing something to each other (it looks dodgy! The audience thinks it might be drugs). A mother and child walk past and look scared. The people take their hoodies of to reveal well dressed adults. The final shot says “This is what it’s like to be stereotyped by adults, would you like to be stereotyped by teens? What we learn: That stereotyping is easy and lazy and gives a false impression.

Group 3

Heather, Visnu, Leon

There are a gang of boys beside a building site and a single person is walking up to them, he passes them looking very nervous. The gang start shouting at him ‘Oi mate’, the man keeps walking faster, then you hear a ‘Watch out’ from the gang, something falls from the building and lands on the man. The title then reads “87 % of young people feel safer when with a group of friends”

What we learn: That perhaps young people don’t hang around in groups just to intimidate, but they like to feel safe as well, and the vast majority of young people in gangs are not out to cause trouble.

Group 4

Finn, Ortega, Emma

Idea 1

There is a line of terraced houses. In the next shot a group of young people wearing hoodies are whispering ‘hurry up’ to each other and are trying to get into the house (no lights are on), are they breaking in? They finally get into the house and start to move through the rooms. There is a shot looking outside of the lounge window and an old woman walks past, the keys rattle in the door and it opens (you can see the silhouette of an old woman in the open doorway). Suddenly the lights go on and you here ‘surprise!!!!!’ and you can now see that the young boys were just planning a surprise party for the old woman. What we learn: Don’t prejudge what young people are up to, in the vast majority off cases it is positive things!

Idea 2

Close up on a boy with a hoodie, the camera zooms back and there are a group of them there looking shifty. There’s a shot of someone handling a gun, and suddenly ‘BANG!” The boys start running to the camera, the camera swings around and you see that they actually running a race. The final shot is of young people on a podium collecting their medals. What we learn: Don’t prejudge a situation, just look at all the positive things that young people do.

What next?

By the end of October we will look into presenting the work to the Children’s Commissioner to see if we can produce them in collaboration with their current media perception campaign, or whether it would be best to produce and release it ourselves.