Video: Be an offline vigilante
If faced with such a situation, what choice would you make?
This will be the first of our ‘Speak up’ campaign collaterals, where we decided to employ a light-hearted take and positive framing to convey our message. The video is essentially a staged version of a scene that most Singaporeans are familiar with. The style mimics a social experiment, with the intent of showing the difference in time taken to stomp someone compared to telling the person to be gracious. In terms of setting, we staged the scene on an MRT train in the day, so we did not need to rely on artificial lighting. Our video aims to combat the pervasive ‘Stomp culture’, and therefore we didn’t intend to achieve a polished look to our video to maintain the rawness of a mobile phone video.
We used a series of close up and mid shots throughout the video, as the main drama was based on their expressions which we wanted to focus on. We started with a black background with white letters, coupled with a typewriter music effect to establish a somewhat serious tone, leaving the viewer in suspense. The entire video is filmed from the point of view of an onlooker, to make the viewer feel like there are at the scene of action. We chose a young person because we wanted to bust the stereotype that only the elderly/children/pregnant women should be offered the reserved seat, instead we wanted to encourage viewers to offer their seat to anyone in need. The pan down from the reserved seat sign to the inconsiderate character’s face greatly juxtaposes against each other, creating tension. To prolong the viewer’s interest, we used the continuity edit, where the sense of real time allows them to follow how the scene progresses. We deliberately chose not to include any dialogue so they can focus on the characters’ actions. Using the split screen effect, we provided the positive alternative to ‘stomping’, which is what some PSAs do not usually do, and is in line with our general positive framing approach.
