Teenage girls, video, privacy, outreach; a new direction

I think I shall treat this blog as though it were for my eyes only... because I feel compelled to write as a stream of consciousness...

I am compelled to change my thesis idea yet again... and I am circling back to an original idea I had.

perhaps my original ideas were closer to my heart?

I just met with Howard Cook, my mentor from the DAC (Digital Animation Center) where I was a student 2 years ago. He is very good at identifying ideas that work and don't work - and pushing me to question "why" - and helping me be the creative that I want to be (or already am).

The digital storyboard is not a new idea, and as he says, it may be an idea that is bigger than me. Bigger than I can tackle this semester. And perhaps not something that I am really fired up about.

I do want to do something more human. And I do want to incorporate video. I recognize that the thesis committee recommends that we do not start with our medium. And while one advisor has encouraged video, another has advised against it, and so the bottom line is that I decide for myself.

I believe video is a great vehicle for communication. And so I am circling back to an original idea I had of working with people - teenage girls - and using video as a resource for them to learn.

The conduit is cell phones - video on cell phones - which is a modern tool for intimate experience. We have private conversations, read articles, and watch movies, exclusively by ourselves on these devices.

Cell phones are a great tool for conveying sensitive ideas -- information that someone would seek or ingest personally, privately.

I didn't believe that my thesis project might be a platform to actually help people. I have felt like "changing the world" is a tall order. But maybe that's not true...

This fall, I had the opportunity to create a PSA for a national organization called Nurse Family Partnership. NFP provides personal nurses for low-income pregnant women (some as young as 13 years old), who educate and aid them through prenatal until the child's 2nd year. It was amazing to meet young women who benefited from this program, whose children get a positive start in life, and the women are able to learn healthy habits and make better lives for themselves as well.

I've always had a special interest in the struggles of girls as teenagers... it's a very difficult time in life, and hard to know how to be happy, or social, or confident.

I see an opportunity to use video on mobile devices as a positive outreach tool for a teenage girl audience.

I am especially interested in communicating ideas about sexuality, responsibility, personal freedom, peer pressure, and health.

This could be done via a YouTube channel or a section of another site (like NFP, or Planned Parenthood) dedicated to audience outreach.