STOP PRESS: Wins Bronze in Industry Effectiveness category at 2011 IVCA Awards
You Be the Judge is a campaign run by the UK Criminal Justice Reform Directorate. It is designed to increase public awareness about how criminal sentencing works. Initially it took the form of open days where people attended mock trials in an actual courtroom, heard the evidence and passed sentence. They then heard what sentence the defendant would have actually received.
These events proved popular but of course could only reach a limited number of people. The obvious solution was to try to replicate the experience online using interactive video. I was commissioned by Speakeasy Productions, who won the project , to work with producer Mark Turner to develop a creative treatment and to write the scripts.
The main creative challenge was how to get across the considerable amount of contextual information about sentencing without killing the drama stone dead. My idea was to use the Clerk of the Court as the presenter/narrator. This provided an authoritative voice but one that was also part of the courtroom scene. I have always favoured the use of mentor figures in training dramas. Professional presenters can come across as censorious or patronising and to have a presenter pop up in the middle of a courtroom scene would have killed it stone dead.
The interactive drama pauses to allow you to record your views about the evidence and at the end you get to pass sentence, based on the same Sentencing Guidelines used by judges and magistrates. These are designed to achieve consistency and fairness across the country.
The response so far has been very good. Over 10,000 people have seen the videos already and they haven’t even started marketing it yet. Responses have so far recorded a positive attitude shift of 36% which means that over one third of viewers felt better informed about sentencing policy – which sounds like a result!
So why not give it a go and see how your sentences compare? Click here: You be the judge
Tags: interactive video, linkedin
Leave a comment