The writers and directors of Choices

Chris: She left you in the dirt, man.
Monte: Dirt?
Chris: Dirt.
Monte: C'mon man, look at me, I'm so fresh and so clean. Let me tell you something, my game is like fine wine, it gets better with time.

When Carolyn Perry saw her script turned into a film for the first time, she was elated. As one of the four high-school students who co-wrote Choices: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, she helped develop the authentic dialog and the scenes that later address pregnancy, peer pressure and sexually transmitted diseases.

Actors Erica Neass and Josh King in Choices

"Here in Orlando, in the school that we attend, we've seen a lot as far as pregnancy and people not knowing about diseases," Perry says. "Not just HIV, but also the other permanent diseases such as herpes. So we wanted to put that out there."

In the scene quoted above, Monte, Chris and Lou are sitting down to watch a basketball game, and Chris is giving Monte a hard time for having failed to hook up with a girl Lou has bet Monte can't "play." Viewers of the short film have already learned that Chris is father to a baby girl. In a few minutes, Lou's girlfriend will arrive and, after the other two boys leave, Lou will talk her into unprotected sex when he finds he is all out of condoms.

The young actors are believable, the dialog is straight from the street and the schoolyard, and the situations are realistic and presented without condescension—all hallmarks of the short films distributed by Scenarios USA, a New York nonprofit that gives young people the chance to write and produce their own awareness-raising videos. Each year, during Scenarios USA's "What's the REAL Deal?" script-writing contest, participants ages 12 to 22 can submit poems, essays, raps or actual scripts for consideration.

"We ask young people to write about HIV/AIDS, unwanted pregnancies, sexual identity, violence, issues, choices, decision making, love, lust—having them look at the full spectrum of what it means to be sexually responsible," says Maura Minsky, one of the nonprofit's co-founders.

Minsky and Kristin Joiner, the group's other co-founder, formed Scenarios USA in 1998 as a replica of a similar program in West Africa. Scenarios from Africa (formerly Scenarios from the Sahel) sponsored a film contest in 1997 to raise HIV/AIDS awareness and received responses from thousands of young people. The program's success inspired Joiner to attempt a similar feat in the United States, and Minsky, a veteran of film and television production, joined her. Scenarios became an official nonprofit in November of 1999.

Teens Involved, Start to Finish
Each year's film contest generates anywhere from 200 to 500 entries from each of three regions, some written by individuals and others composed by groups. The selection process is intense, with teams of four readers working through ten entries each. Thirty scripts are picked for a final round of review, and one from each region is chosen to become a film. The writers are then notified and paired up with professional filmmakers and crew who travel to the writers' hometowns to produce the short films. Young people have worked with Hollywood names like director David Frankel (Sex in the City), director Griffin Dunne (Practical Magic) and producer Avram Ludwig (Swingers).

Writers are involved from start to finish—they help dress the characters, choose the music and have a real say in how their story is produced. "They're right on the set," Minsky says, "so if something is happening that they don't like or don't understand, they can yell, 'Cut!' and say, 'You know what, this doesn't feel right to me.'"

Peer-to-Peer Communication
It's important that the writers are heard during the production process, because the end product must appeal to and connect with their own age group. The films, which run about five to 15 minutes each, are generally publicized and distributed in the writers' hometowns and via public health and educational agencies, like Planned Parenthood and the National Coalition to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. The videos are intended to be an educational tool to replace the antiquated, decades-old sex education and awareness videos that some school systems still use. Currently, teachers, peer educators and community groups in 37 states use the films to get teens thinking and talking about sexual health.

"The videos out there now are very boring and very old," says Anabel Perez, the director of programs for the HIV/AIDS Technical Assistance Project in Brooklyn, New York. "They're not hip, they're not funny, they're not fresh, and Scenarios videos seem to be all that and more."

The films have elicited a wide response from students. Most reactions are positive, from nodding and laughter to deep discussions of life, love and sexuality. Perry recalls that Choices brought some of her classmates close to tears: "It was very powerful."

Actresses Lisa Ackerman, Kristina Bartlett, Nicole Cassesso and Enelyn Villar from Lipstick

Dealing with Controversy
Lipstick, written by five peer educators for Planned Parenthood in Orange County, California, almost didn't become a film at all. Lipstick called for a scene shot on a school soccer field, and area schools refused to let the crew use their property once they discovered the script's subject: a high school girl who comes out to her friends as a lesbian. The controversy reached local papers and traveled by word of mouth as far as Spain, where one of the writers, Simone Lance, was spending a semester.

Three days before shooting, there was still no location to be found, and the film's director (Michael Apted, The World is Not Enough) had limited time on his hands. At the last minute, a local community college volunteered its soccer field and the project was saved. Since then the film has been screened at film festivals nationwide, including the Garden State Film Festival and Washington DC's Gay & Lesbian Film Festival and the Melbourne Queer Film Festival. It also aired on Showtime during Valentine's Day weekend, 2003.

Janet Aponte, writer of From an Objective Point of View, checks sound.

Other films have achieved similar success—Just Like You Imagined? a series of vignettes dealing with dating and relationships, screened in January 2003 at the Made in Miami Film Festival. From an Objective Point of View, a quirky and funny film about two best friends who vow not to have sex without consulting the other, was screened at film festivals in Rhode Island, New Mexico and New York. Brenda Nieborsky, Scenarios program manager, estimates that about five million people see the videos every year.

"I think people are really pleased with the quality of the films," Nieborsky says. "The content, the nature of the dialog, the realness of the characters, and the honest looks into teenage lives."

Plans for the Future
Scenarios recently added study guides for teachers to its Web site, to support educational discussions of the films. The program is also working to develop deeper community partnerships and hoping to expand their reach to the Midwest; although the contest is nationwide, the nonprofit primarily focuses its efforts on three areas: New York City, the Rio Grande valley (Texas) and Miami-Dade County in Florida. To widen its net would require more funding, and Scenarios—which employs only four full-time employees, one part-timer and an intern—operates on a modest $250,000 annual budget, predominantly grants and donations.

According to a yearlong evaluation conducted last year, participating in the program affects the way young people view sexuality. The evaluation included surveys of all the teens involved in the contest, and interviews with those who actually were involved in making the movies.

"They didn't see it, at the end, as just having intercourse," Minsky says. "It was also about self esteem, communication, feelings— Their definition of sexuality changed. They also found that they have value in the stories they have to tell, that they have opinions that matter.

"It's a realization. Teenagers think about a lot of things and have a lot to say, and I think we need to bring them in on the conversation."

Top Photo: The writers of Choices, Eve Liberus, Jermaine Wall, Darius Moore and Carolyn Perry, with director Tamara Jenkins.

Resources:

• Learn more about Scenarios USA and how to order videos.
  Watch Choices, Lipstick and other Scenarios winners online.
• For a different kind of teen storytelling, look at the Digital Stories on the Digital Clubhouse New York Web site.
• Planned Parenthood has a number of resources dealing with teen sex, sexual health, and pregnancy.
• For more resources, visit our Teen Sex and Pregnancy topic pages.
  

Talk Back

If you've got comments or questions about this story, we'd like to hear them. Send your response to Susan Phillips.

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Kate Ashford is a former Connect for Kids intern.