Video Meaning (cyber bullying)

As technology is evolving and contaminating everybody's lives more and more, we have decided to look at some of the negatives that have come from this revolution.

CYBER-BULLYING is "when the Internet, cell phones or other devices are used to send or post text or images intended to hurt or embarrass another person".

With Facebook now infecting most young people's daily routine, and most teenagers and children owning a mobile phone, cyber bullying has rocketed. According to a government study, more than a third of 12 to 15-year-olds in the UK have faced some kind of cyber-bullying.

A survey prepared by i-Safe.org in 2004 on children in year 4-8 at school shows that 42% of kids have been bullied while online. One in four of these children have had it happen more than once. 35% of kids have been threatened online. Almost one in five of these children have had it happen to them more than once. A startling 58% of kids admit someone has said mean or hurtful things to them online. More than four out of ten say it has happened more than once.

And quite possibly the most disturbing statistic that was achieved from this survey is the fact that 58% of these children have not told their parents or an adult about something mean or hurtful that happened to them online.

We decided to brush upon this harrowing topic to show the exremities it can reach and hopefully get the message across to bullies just how much damage they are doing. If the tables were to turn and the bullies would find themselves becoming the victim then they could not take it, they use bullying as a form of defense for their own insecurities. If their victim takes in what the bully is telling them and begins to hate themself for it, then this can soon lead to self-loathing. Without the right help, the vulnerable victims can take matters into their own hands and the bullies have to live with their raging conscience for the rest of their lives.

A story that really affected us as a group, is one that we heard from our teacher as it had been in the news a few years ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Megan_Meier

Megan was three weeks away from her 14th birthday when she hung herself as a result of an ex-friend creating a phoney MySpace account of a 16 year old boy to lure her in and then send her harmful, abusive and terrible messages.

MySpace appeared to be an easy way for the ex-friend and her family to contact Megan under a false name, if chatrooms and social networks did not exist then circumstances like this would not be achievable. A lot of good has come from such websites, yet it is articles such as this that make the reader question the necessity of online networking.

Another, more recent article is very haunting also. This occurred a lot more recently to a girl of 7 years old called Kathleen Petrov.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1319276/Couple-taunt-Huntingtons-disease-sufferer-Kathleen-Edwards-7-Facebook.html

Both of these stories made both myself an my entire group feel physically ill whilst also getting emotional. The selfishness of the pathetic bullies trying to ruin an innocent child's life is disgusting. These people do not deserve equality with the victims, these people should know what is morally wrong and what is right.

Studying these two incidents in such depth has really opened mine, Jack's, Claire's and Alysha's eyes to just how much damage cyber-bullying can do. We definitely feel that the song choice would be very relevant to involve a cyber-bullying storyline and we also want to spread the message as much as possible to try and prevent this from ever happening again.

FILMING!

Over the past week, every spare bit of time we have found has been used to film. We have been using my house as it is fairly central between the other three in our group's homes. Also, my garden is very plain and looks free and not restricted so it is nice to film some of the scenes there.

Here are some photos of us from some of our days of filming:

My house in which a lot of our filming takes place inside.

Claire and Alysha mid-filming. Camera is rolling.

Claire being filmed.

Me (attempting to be) operating the camera.

Jack using the camera.

Applying dark lipstick to Claire to make her look as mysterious as possible.

Roles

All of us have our own individual roles within the creation of our video.

Jack- He plays the boy in the video. He is in the video quite frequently as it documents his rocky relationship resulting in absolute hatred for his girlfriend who is played by Claire. We decided to use Jack and Claire for the main characters as it was difficult enough for us to organise and find time to film for the video as everybody has clashing shifts at work and lack of transport, so adding other people into that would create an even lower amount of available time for filming as we would have to work around when they are free. Keeping it within the group was the best choice because both of the characters fit the roles very nicely and are reliable.

Claire- She plays the leading girl's role. She is in the video constantly as the story line of the video revolves around her. Her relationship with Jack's character is very futile as we show them violently fighting yet we have also filmed the happier times of their relationship.

Alysha&Charlotte- Both Alysha and myself are in charge of a lot of the filming. We work together to decide angles, shots, locations and lighting. We share this with Jack and Claire obviously, yet as we spend the entire time behind the camera, it is our sole responsibility to get the correct shots. We also have to direct both Claire and Jack with their movements and gestures towards one another.

Mise-en-scene

Props

In our video we use a red rose for quite a lot of scenes. This signifies her and his relationship and the beauty that they once shared. The rose also signifies her happiness within the relationship and in life in general.

(photo courtesy of Alysha)

We also needed a lot of tablets to film the scene in which she overdoses. We bought lots of paracetamol packets to try and overindulge the viewer in painkillers.

Outfits

Claire has two main outfits; a cream dress for the happier times and a black top and skirt for the miserable moments in the video. The cream dress is floaty and angelic whereas the black ensemble is tighter and more rebellious.

For Jack, the clothes are a lot less drastic. He remains the same throughout the video and so he needs to be wearing clothes that are as unattention-drawing as possible. He should look casual so we decided that a top and a pair of jeans would be best. She has to be eyecatching whereas he needs to not stand out.

Time Management!