A Penticton Secondary School filmmaker won an award for a public service announcement that was part of a nationwide campaign to fight racism.
Grade 11 student Jordan Findlay‘s effort, titled What Defines You?, is a 45-second video entry for About the Racism. Stop It! National Video Competition, run through Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
Findlay‘s video was chosen among the top 10 from hundreds of entries across Canada. His video also won the Public Choice Award on YouTube.
The video begins with a student sitting against a school locker. When his mouth opens, the letters f-a-g-g-o-t spill into the air and waft into the hallway. The word is joined by a cluster of racist and derogatory words that swirl into a cluster and form a pair of feet that make their way onto the street. The video concludes with the words being arranged into the shape of a person‘s face, with text reminding viewers, “It‘s not what people say that determines who you are.”
Findlay said he batted around a few ideas for the competition. He started at the beginning of the school year, working on it between other projects.
“With PSAs, the thing is you don‘t have any story to develop,” he said, noting he just tried out a few different effects to see what thoughts would meld.
He used the word “faggot” because it‘s an often-used term, particularly among the younger generation, he said. Many of the other words that appear in the video are not racial per se, but they are degrading and offensive phrases that people should refrain from using.
He chose to shoot in black and white to symbolize the polarizing nature of racism.
“From a technical point, (using black and white) the words seem to pop out better,” he added.
The video took about 50 hours of his time, but Findlay said it was easier than some of the other projects he‘s worked on as a student in Pen-Hi teacher Russ Stasiuk‘s film and TV class.
Findlay was part of a group of students who have captured awards at the Zoom 48-hour student film festival the past two years, and he was in a PSA contest sponsored through BC Hydro when he was in Grade 9.
