$382,900.
Production Budget & Fund-raising Goal
PROPOSAL
Bully Blues is an important project. When completed, this spirited musical production will reach thousands of teens with a message of hope, compassion and tolerance. Bully Blues will touch the bullies in this audience and help them realize the devastating effects of their behavior toward others. And, it will reach the victims of bullying and encourage self-confidence and bully-resistance.
Bully Blues will be distributed in two ways. First, as a one-hour public television special, and next as a video/DVD, packaged with discussion materials for distribution to schools.
Much has already been accomplished. All 14 songs that make up Bully Blues have been written and composed. The script has been written and refined. The production team has been assembled. One song (Tiny Guy Rap) has been produced as a music video to illustrate the style and production qualities we are aiming at (The complete script, including all the songs is available on request).
But a production of this scope must be done with a commitment to quality and with a profound respect for its audience if it is to succeed in its mission. Much still needs to be done. The producers have established an initial budget of $306,650 for the production of the Bully Blues video and an additional $76250 for writing and producing workbooks, duplication and packaging (A detailed, itemized budget is available on request). This budget can come from a single source or from a variety of sources.
The producers are also looking for a distributor with a broad reach and a committed marketing budget who can get this program into schools to reach its intended audience.
BACKGROUND
Everyone is affected by the bullying behavior that can be observed in every human environment. Approximately 160,000 students miss school every day for fear of attack or intimidation. It is estimated that 30% of American students are involved in bully behavior either as bully, victim or mob member. Each role in the bully drama: bully, victim, bystander, or mob member leaves a lasting scar on the participant. Nowhere is it more obvious or harmful than in American middle schools and high schools. An observer needs to spend only a short period of time between bells in the average school to witness: physical abuse, verbal intimidation, sexual harassment and extortion. Between those classes the five minutes of fear makes it very difficult to refocus on the teacher’s lesson. A recent poll found that 33% of students are afraid at school. This fear leads to attendance problems, poor academic performance, and even early school drop out. Although we frequently turn a blind eye to these activities, there are tragic occasions when national attention is focused on the horror of a Columbine or a Red Lake where victims become bullies. Everyone wonders, “How could this happen?” It is estimated that 2/3 of school “shooter” incidents blame bully behavior as a factor that helped cause the incident.
Bully behavior is not only generated (as once thought) by students with low esteem, but is frequently exhibited by high esteem students. Athletes, the socially popular, and student leaders sometimes unleash their power on those further down the social food chain. Bullying occurs in all age groups, between and within genders, and among all racial and ethnic groups. Girls are more likely to be bullies in a group setting. Studies show that while males bully both males and females, girls tend to bully other females.
There is no single magic bullet that can curb the enjoyment obtained by the bully or mob as they watch the spectacle. There is a need for programs that call attention to the problem, stimulate awareness and provoke discussion. Current thinking is that the most effective way to curb bullying is by having comprehensive school anti-bullying programs.
THE SOLUTION
There can be no single solution for curbing bully behavior, but this proposal is for the creation of a powerful tool that can be used in schools to make students and faculty aware of the devastating effects of bully behavior. This proposal is for producing a one hour rock opera on video that is packaged with workbooks and teacher materials to be used in bully awareness campaigns in junior high school and high school settings.
Treatment
As the creators of Bully Blues (John Chapman, composer and lyricist, and John Leben, producer and scriptwriter), we want to identify and combat some common bully/victim behavior in teens that often extends into adulthood. We focused on four common bully relationships, boy bully/boy victim, girl bully/girl victim, boy bully/girl victim and boy bullying himself. We also touched on a fifth relationship, parent bully/teen victim as another cause of future bully behavior in teens.
We know how difficult it is to reach a teen audience. It can’t be done with lectures and classroom assignments, but, we thought it can be done with music. Why not illustrate the damaging effects of bully behavior through song and dance. The choreography will illustrate the bully behavior and the victims’ reactions to it. In some songs, heartfelt pain will be dramatically exposed through the performer’s words and actions. In others, the performance will make fun of the behavior and mock it as obviously unacceptable and un-cool.
We think many in our teen audience will recognize some of the behavior we are illustrating, either in themselves or in their classmates. It is our hope that recognition will lead to self-examination and a positive change in bully behavior in our audience. The tone and style of the production will mix humor with hurt and drama with exuberance to present painful truths about bullying in a digestible and entertaining format.
Bully Blues is made up of fourteen songs. Each song has a specific theme relating to an aspect of bully behavior, sometimes from the bully’s point of view and at other times from the victim’s. The songs are like vignettes illustrating relationships between the 12 teen cast members. The focus is always on issues of bullying behavior and its effects, never on extraneous subplots or academic issues.
Characterizations will be stereotypical and somewhat exaggerated. The simple plotline of teenagers starting high school and ending up at their senior prom is important only as a loose structure for presenting and performing the musical numbers. The music and dance are entertaining vehicles for communicating the message of compassion and acceptance.
The play takes place in the halls, gymnasium and front steps of a high school. The opening number is in the gymnasium at the ten-year reunion of one of the school’s graduating classes. At this point, the cast members are in their 20’s remembering back to how it was in high school. Four cast members sing a reflective song about their high school days. There are four verses to this song, each verse sung by a past victim of bullying and illustrating a specific bully/victim relationship.
Their most painful memories are illustrated in part by brief flashback cutaways using character animation. The animation segments in this first number illustrate memories of past bully/victim interactions. Later animations show wildly exaggerated mental pictures of dark thoughts or hopeful dreams of cast members.
At the closing bars of this rather lyrical opening song, the camera zooms slowly into the eyes of Jill, a past victim of abuse by her high school boyfriend. She remembers her first day as a freshman at the high school. In this transition to the past, the camera slowly defocuses, then refocuses on Jill who is now back in time to her freshman days on the steps of her high school. The closing bars of the song dissolve into a single sustained note as the camera zooms out to show Jill and the rest of the cast standing in still postures as if frozen in time. As the camera reaches wide, the front door of the school creaks open and Mr. Geezer, the school counselor peeks out, looking over his new crop of freshman students, still frozen in time. He steps outside and lets the door slam behind him. The door slam is like an exclamation point, breaking the frozen spell and setting off an energetic and rollicking song and dance number illustrating the same four bully/victim relationships introduced in the memories of the opening song.
As the opera plays out, we see bully behavior and its devastating effects on the victims as well as the bullies themselves. Through song, we learn how insecurities, revenge and self-loathing, when unchecked, can spill over from personal relationships to society in general.
The most dramatic song in the opera is sung by a bully victim who daydreams about the Columbine School tragedy, and fantasizes about taking his revenge with a gun. This song and the potentially disastrous results of bully behavior on one bitter teen is the emotional climax of the opera. The song dramatizes the ultimate price society pays for bully behavior and the social isolation of its victims.
The final act brings the cast back to their ten-year reunion and we see that for some, bully behavior continues into adulthood. Some past victims have gained self-respect and refuse to be bullied. Others have not learned a thing and continue in abusive relationships. The play ends in an upbeat tone with a rousing musical number performed by the whole cast. The song is about the wider implications of bully behavior to society in general. It suggests that the mob behavior, peer pressure and person-to-person abuse learned in high school can morph into broader societal problems later such as racial and ethnic intolerance.
Casting of the twelve students and the school counselor will take place in West Michigan where there is a healthy community theater tradition. Shooting will take place in a real high school location in West Michigan. John Chapman (the composer and lyricist) has done some preliminary recording of the songs, but Al Weener, our musical director, is polishing the pacing and the instrumentation. It is our plan to professionally record each song in Al’s studio, Mid Coast Media, in a controlled studio environment and to use lip-synch techniques during the actual filming of the song and dance numbers. There is limited dialog that helps advance the plot and reinforce the theme, and that dialog will be recorded during video shooting.
Hannah Leben, our choreographer, is working on the dance numbers. These dance numbers will be recorded film-style using one video camera and multiple takes. Singers will use lip-synch techniques to follow the pre-recorded music. We will shoot a combination of extended segments and short segments of the dance. During editing, the dance segments will be cut to the pre-recorded music to form complete song and dance numbers.
For some songs, animated segments characterizing the cast members will be produced to illustrate painful memories, daydreams, violent behavior and wishful thinking. These segments will be inserted during the edit in the appropriate places, cut to the tempo of the music.
After casting, the producers envision a 30-day production schedule that consists of 15 days of rehearsals and prerecording of music and 15 days of live shooting using a Sony HVR-Z1U High Definition camera shooting on DVCAM tape. Editing will be HD using Apple Final Cut Pro HD.
As a school counselor with 30 years of experience working with high school students, John Chapman has seen first hand how bully behavior can distort perceptions and adversely affect a student’s mental state. His counseling work has brought him close to his students and given him an intimate understanding of their emotional needs. John Leben has produced many video programs for teen audiences, including several in collaboration with John Chapman. He uses stylistic techniques and a profound respect for his audience to create video programs that teens will watch, understand and relate to.
History of Bully Blues
The rock opera was written by John Chapman, a high school counselor. John has been a counselor for thirty years and a guitar player for forty years. The songs in the production were originally recorded by a teenage rock band out of Bloomingdale Michigan. The female voice was performed by a ninth grade student. The anti-bullying message is wrapped in musical genre spanning classical rock beats to rap. Currently the production is set up as a PowerPoint presentation with interactive music. The Bully Blues is also being produced as a school play at Bloomingdale High School. One of the 14 songs has been fully developed into a five minute digital video. The video can be downloaded at www.lebenproductions.com . The video production is complete with actors, singers, dancers, and animation. This mini-production is a thumbnail for an entire production.
Workbooks
Three workbooks will be developed to stimulate discussion of bully issues in the classroom. The first workbook would be oriented towards junior high school and high school students. It will include discussion questions related to the movie content and include scenarios that might occur in their school and how students could handle those situations in a positive way. This workbook will be extensively illustrated in a comic book format with photography of the cast shot during production of the video.
The second workbook will be a leader’s manual that could be used by the teacher or Peer Assisted Leaders. This workbook will be in a similar format as the student workbook and contain suggestions and lesson plans for conducting bully awareness sessions.
The third workbook will be aimed at an adult audience of teachers and school staff. The content will deal with recognition of bully behavior and positive strategies to arrest that behavior.
.jpg)