‘Graphic, effective and gripping’

By Bob Stuart

Published: May 13, 2008

Watch the award-winning video.

STAUNTON — The video starts with a young man on a playground who quickly disappears.
The video, entitled “Abduction,” then rewinds to the teen talking online. He says kidnapping can be prevented by saying ‘no’ to people met online.
The 30-second television advertisement produced by two R.E. Lee High students and one from Shelburne Middle School won first place Tuesday in a statewide Youth Internet Safety Contest sponsored by Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell.
McDonnell told Lee High students Kyle Head and Jonathan Fisher and Shelburne student Jeremiah Eckard during a call Tuesday morning that their video captured 60 percent of the 3,044 votes in an online poll. McDonnell described the video as “graphic, effective and gripping.”
“It was a very well done piece,’’ said McDonnell from Richmond. “It went to the core message.”
The video will appear this summer across Virginia on cable television channels to discourage young people from meeting in person those with whom they have only communicated online.
“You really don’t know who is on the other end of the Internet,’’ McDonnell said.
More than 200 Virginia schools participated in the contest which is part of McDonnell’s “Project SafetyNet Va” public awareness campaign about Internet safety. The project arose from a Youth Internet Safety Task Force commissioned by McDonnell. The panel made its report to the attorney general in December 2006.
A Youth Internet Safety Advisory Committee continues to meet regularly to find ways to implement education.
The student videos are part of the effort. “Who better to inform students about safety than students,’’ McDonnell spokesman David Clementson said.
Head said he and the other two students spent a couple of hours filming the video last semester at Staunton’s Montgomery Hall Park.
Head, an aspiring filmmaker, used a storyboard to condense the video script to 30 seconds. “I wanted to show the really bad things on the Internet, that you can be abducted,’’ Head said.
Fisher said it is important to get the video on television. “Kids can influence other kids more than parents,’’ he said.
On hand at Lee High for Tuesday’s announcement was Gene Fishel, a Virginia assistant attorney general and chief of the computer crime section.
Fishel said the Internet has become a haven for crimes of fraud, child exploitation, child pornography and computer hacking. The latter can result in identity theft.
Fishel said prevention of crime like that advocated in the ad produced by the Staunton students is a key.
“Our reach is only so far,’’ he said. “Many of these crimes are international.”
The students received Microsoft X-Box 360s, bags of Fox DVDs and can invite 72 of their friends this summer to a private screening of a Fox movie at the Staunton Mall.