Production company Fried Okra Entertainment, with offices in New York and Florida, has created a series of social media videos aimed at the college spring break crowd — specifically, at the guys in the mix.
“The campaign is targeted at guys,” says director Ernie Mosteller, “but it’s a real discussion coming from real college women.”
The production company interviewed a cross-section of college-aged women to get their perspectives on guys’ attitudes, speech, actions, and the general subject of consent, especially in the context of campus-life parties and Spring Break. They then cast three of those women to appear in the videos, along with their unscripted off-camera interviews as voice over.
“Spring Break is supposed to be a time when kids party,” says Mosteller. “I did, you did, we all did. Unfortunately, it’s also a perfect setting to make some really bad decisions. We hope these pieces make guys stop and think before they do something stupid and regrettable. If we can make one guy think, and not take that one step too far, we’ve done what we set out to do.”
Recent Stetson University grad Monika Lamud, who’s featured in two of the videos, said of the effort, “I liked this project a lot, right from the start — because it’s not anti-male, or anti-sex, and neither are any of the women I know. I think the whole idea of consent is pretty simple — it just boils down to, simply: Treat women with respect, and don’t be a jerk.”
Fried Okra is distributing the campaign gratis to fraternities and student organizations on campuses around the country.
Nicholas Ritornado, President of the Florida State University chapter of Delta Chi Fraternity, says of the effort, “This is a really important subject, not just for spring break, but on campus, in general. The brothers of Delta Chi all agreed that we should lead the way in getting the message out.”
“We’ve approached a number of fraternities, and the response has been quite positive,” says Mosteller. “Alpha Phi Omega, Phi Delta Theta, a number of chapters of Delta Chi — really, most everyone we’ve offered them to has seen the importance of this campaign.”
Mosteller told SHOOT the campaign is available to any organization who wants to run them on their social platforms. Versions are tailored for different online environments. There are executions in 16:9, 1:1, and 9:16 vertical. Key executions can be seen on the Fried Okra site and Facebook page, Vimeo, Fried Okra’s YouTube channel, and elsewhere around the web. Organizations wishing to distribute the campaign with their ID, for free, can contact Fried Okra Entertainment.
