http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1g9RV9OKhg
Very heart-wrenching film. Of course as a news photographer, I wonder, how did the film makers manage to get some of that footage? There’s a videographer (or cinematographer) right there, constantly rolling, and the kids continue with their spontaneous bullying behavior, and none of them seems to even notice that the camera is there. Having shot news for over 20 years, the one thing I almost always experience while shooting video of ANY crowd or group of school kids under the age of, lets say, 16, is that it’s nearly impossible to roll on any shot of video for more than 30 seconds without SOMEONE eventually ruining the nats with "hi mom" or "what’s the camera for?" or "what TV station is that for?" or "Is that live?". Usually the only way you can get students to NOT do and say the above-mentioned stupid things is to talk to them beforehand and ask them not to…-in which case they then usually start behaving too well for the camera, and DON’T engage in fighting or bullying.
How on earth do they get the kids to just continue to be themselves without reacting AT ALL to the nearby presence of a camera? Were the school kids at the time told that the filming was for some other subject matter other than bullying?
I’m a news photographer, not a documentarian, so when I see documentaries like this one, I’m always curious about the behind-the-scenes logistics of how something like this was made.