New direction in quit campaign

Six northern suburbs schools, including Balga Senior High School (SHS), are competing for the Best Television Commercial title in the Smarter than Smoking Young Directors’ Festival. The festival has Healthway funding and media expertise from Murdoch University and is designed to get students to produce a 30-second anti-smoking television commercial. Balga SHS students produced two commercials based around the impact smoking could have on a young person’s health and how to stand up to peer pressure. As a director of one of the commercials, Year 9 student Andrew Lawrence said the idea was to show that smoking was a ticking time bomb and could affect someone’s health at anytime. Clapperboard operator Aleisha Bynder said she wanted to prevent children from smoking and encourage them to be active instead, which was the idea behind the commercial. ‘I was raised with people around me smoking so I really don’t like it because I’ve seen the effects from it, including yellowing of the teeth, bad breath and cancer,’ she said. ‘Smoking ruins your life; you want to have a good future and smoking doesn’t allow that.’ Teacher Tina Richardson said the students were at a crucial age and that helping them make sensible and wise decisions was important. Festival entries would be showcased and a winner announced at a special screen event at Event Cinemas in Morley in November.