Kids Stress Too

While watching our trash tv (America's Next Top Model) we saw this ad for the first time. The little blonde girl at the end brought tears to my eyes. Everything is bringing tears to my eyes. I need some freakin' sleep before I cry myself dry. (this is where you say, Karlynn, STOP BLOGGING and go to BED!) and I shall.



An exerpt from the Youtube explanation:

As one of their major assignments, each of three groups of students selected a target age group and a relevant health topic for that group. The students then translated the latest research on that health topic into an appropriate visual medium for their audience.One group selected children and stress. They realized that they needed to target parents and decided that a public service television announcement would be the best medium for disseminating information about stress among kids. Working with KidshaveStressToo.org, a program of the Psychology Foundation of Canada, a local filmmaker and child actors, the group produced a 30 second public service announcement that is currently airing on City TV Edmonton and Calgary."There are so many pressures on kids that we thought it would be good just to raise awareness of it," said Emily Handford who, along with Karen Ross and StephanieYan, produced the dramatic commercial that puts children in adult situations, to communicate the fact that children suffer from stress as much as adults do. "It already had a well-developed website around it so we decided to make a commercial around it, to hopefully send people to the website and raise awareness about it."With a budget of $500 and the help of local filmmakers Tyler MacIntyre and Ian Ketehu, the threesome went about begging and borrowing their way to a television commercial."Karen had the idea of having kids dressed up in actual office attire," said Handford, whose team borrowed kids from their own families and a local theatre group. "The idea was these are some things that cause stress in adults, and although that doesn't cause stress in kids it kind of grabs people's attention." The group consulted with U of A sociology professor Lisa Strohschein, who conducts research into the effects of divorce and different stressors on children, to help develop the commercial's theme, and then put it into script form on the advice of Silvana Babchishin, a television commercial writing instructor. From there it was a day of lights, camera, action.

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