Kids appearing in your films
Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2021 11:21 am
Filming children! For goodness sake. I always revelled in the 'silent permission' granted me at weddings to film the children. It is images of them, and the old and frail, that will make my films so watchable, so valuable, so historical. But that's an aside.
In the end, and one by one, all the schools I used to film Nativity plays at, dropped off my radar.
The last school to stop asking me to film had a policy: If for any reason whatsoever you don't want your child to be filmed or photographed, just say. Your child will not then be eligible for a part in the upcoming school play.
This worked for about 3 years (and I'm pretty sure many unhappy kids were teased or bullied about not being allowed/good enough to act). However, and this is the point, the day arrived where the excluded became the majority, and to have any school production at all meant not having it filmed.
Such a shame. All that hard work by the head of drama being allowed to evaporate into the ether. All those kids who will end up acting in EastEnders losing their first on-stage performance. The next Sir Laurence Olivier being ignored, and so on.
Do you know, this summer Celia took photos of me on a little stone bridge over a babbling brook. We both looked at them, smiled and moved on. We were surprised to be accosted by 4, maybe 5, pubescent teen girls, who stood in our path 5 minutes later .
They accused Celia of taking pictures of them down by the water, using me as 'cover'. We were impressed by the leader's bravery in doing this (peer pressure?) and Celia happily showed them the series of pictures she'd taken. Of handsome me. I was at pains to point out, gently, that we were perfectly within our rights and that I was a photographer and knew the law.
But the girls were adamant. They saw the pictures on Celia's phone and could zoom right in and yes, there they were, so please delete them. This Celia did. The girls were satisfied, and moved on.
We discussed this situation. How radicalised these kids must be to believe and think that anyone taking pictures is breaking the law / is a paedophilic child-abuser. We thought it sad that kids are frightened (in school? By parents/ influencers?) in this way.
Of course they had no right to demand this deletion, and we reinstated the images from the phone's recycle bin, but we both agreed that it's a sad and bad state of affairs to get into. Especially for this new, upcoming generation.
My view is that if you're out and about in public then brace yourselves, because you're going to be filmed left right and centre all day long, on CCTV, on phones and yes, on hidden cameras.
In the end, and one by one, all the schools I used to film Nativity plays at, dropped off my radar.
The last school to stop asking me to film had a policy: If for any reason whatsoever you don't want your child to be filmed or photographed, just say. Your child will not then be eligible for a part in the upcoming school play.
This worked for about 3 years (and I'm pretty sure many unhappy kids were teased or bullied about not being allowed/good enough to act). However, and this is the point, the day arrived where the excluded became the majority, and to have any school production at all meant not having it filmed.
Such a shame. All that hard work by the head of drama being allowed to evaporate into the ether. All those kids who will end up acting in EastEnders losing their first on-stage performance. The next Sir Laurence Olivier being ignored, and so on.
Do you know, this summer Celia took photos of me on a little stone bridge over a babbling brook. We both looked at them, smiled and moved on. We were surprised to be accosted by 4, maybe 5, pubescent teen girls, who stood in our path 5 minutes later .
They accused Celia of taking pictures of them down by the water, using me as 'cover'. We were impressed by the leader's bravery in doing this (peer pressure?) and Celia happily showed them the series of pictures she'd taken. Of handsome me. I was at pains to point out, gently, that we were perfectly within our rights and that I was a photographer and knew the law.
But the girls were adamant. They saw the pictures on Celia's phone and could zoom right in and yes, there they were, so please delete them. This Celia did. The girls were satisfied, and moved on.
We discussed this situation. How radicalised these kids must be to believe and think that anyone taking pictures is breaking the law / is a paedophilic child-abuser. We thought it sad that kids are frightened (in school? By parents/ influencers?) in this way.
Of course they had no right to demand this deletion, and we reinstated the images from the phone's recycle bin, but we both agreed that it's a sad and bad state of affairs to get into. Especially for this new, upcoming generation.
My view is that if you're out and about in public then brace yourselves, because you're going to be filmed left right and centre all day long, on CCTV, on phones and yes, on hidden cameras.