Climate Change Video With Exploding Kids Backfires
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CREDIT: YouTube |
Sony today publicly condemned the year-old environmental group 10:10 for its "No Pressure" video and withdrew its sponsorship, just days before the organization's planned 10:10:10 global awareness day on Oct. 10. The organization aims to encourage individual, schools and businesses to reduce their carbon emissions by 10 percent in 2010.
Released last week, the video includes three scenes of exploding people including school children. It was scripted by "Notting Hill" director Richard Curtis and includes actress Gillian Anderson and French footballer David Ginola suffering the same fate as the children for not caring enough about climate change .
The company removed the video from its site after receiving complaints from the public, but the film remains in circulation on YouTube, as a result of posts from outside the company.
However, 1010 posted its own behind-the-scenes video showing how the film was made and includes comments from the young actors such as, "I'm very up for getting blown up to save the world." The video was posted by Mr1010video over the weekend in the midst of the controversy.
While the organization said it intended for the video to be humorous, 10:10 director Eugenie Harvey chalks up the "mistake" to a young and creative team, and assures her constituency that the team "will learn from this" in a statement of apology on the website.
The apology did not go far enough for corporate sponsor Sony who said the video was "ill-conceived and tasteless."
"This video risks undermining the work of the many thousands of members of the public, schools and universities, local authorities and many businesses, of which Sony is one," the company said in a statement.
10:10 claims to have over 3,500 company members on board including Adidas, U.K. mobile carrier O2, and British newspaper, The Guardian, along with nearly 100,000 individuals and over 2,000 schools.
