What - We would like to capture young people’s thoughts about the government’s plans to create a smokefree generation. We would like a collection of videos from various young people. We will use these on social media and encourage those in the videos to use and tag @LTA_London.
Format
· 10 – 30 sec soundbites/vox pops
· Shot in vertical portrait format
Question - Raising the Age of Sale: Describe your feelings about raising the age of sale on tobacco products every year, so somebody who is 14 now, will never be able to be sold cigarettes? (This will be the ending of cigarette sales to those born on or after 1 January 2009)
Vouchers
We will be selecting 10 videos from any of the submissions that give a range of views, and giving vouchers of £50 each to them.
Submissions
Can you send your videos to shelby.davies@cityoflondon.gov.uk by the 20th November, 2023
Age
We are looking for people aged 16-24 and you may need parental consent to do this please contact Shelby for a form.
Background to question
In case useful we have produced these key points that may be helpful in preparing people to respond.
Ensuring that nobody who is 14 or under today will never be able to legally buy cigarettes is a massive step towards achieving a Smokefree generation, and ultimately making smoking obsolete as there is no safe age to smoke.
Nobody wants their child to take up smoking. This will ensure they can’t.
Tobacco is a uniquely lethal and addictive product, and this proposal would all but eliminate the uptake of smoking for future generations.
This initiative has huge support in London with over 70% of those surveyed people supporting it.
When the smoking age was raised from 16 to 18 in 2007 it had significant impact in reducing the amount of young people smoking
In the UK 90% of lifetime smokers start between the ages of 10 and 20 years
Guide to recording the videos
· The following guide may be helpful in shooting the videos:
A steady image - If you have access to one do use a tripod to reduce camera shake. If not, try resting it on an object that will give a good angle of the subject. If this is not possible, and shooting as selfie, keep the phone close to the body and rest elbows on a sturdy object nearby.
Reduce background noise – Try to find a relatively quiet place to film, without loud or variable background noise. If there access an additional microphone to be nearer you that is great.
Best lens to use - Ideally use the lens on the back of the camera as this gives much better definition; although will mean, in reality, it would probably need somebody else to shoot it, so they can frame it better. If this is not possible obviously just go for the selfie lens so the subject can frame themself
Lighting – try to have good natural daylight if possible. Or strong white light if indoors.
Setting - Where possible good if filmed in a contextual setting – either related to their community/home location– trying to avoid plain backgrounds and white walls wherever possible.
Try to avoid overusing zoom - as a phone’s camera uses digital zoom the quality will lessen quite quickly so just, if possible, try to move the camera nearer with just some zoom to get the framing correct.
Shooting mode – with iPhones (if that is what you have) there is now setting called cinematic – this can often look better as gives more blur to the background and make the subject (i.e., you) stand out more.
Leave time at the start and end of each clip - make sure to leave a few seconds at the start and end of each clip, as this makes it a bit easier for us when editing. It would be preferable to take each one as separate clip, as this will both be more manageable and will avoid sending too big a file that can reduce the quality.