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Piracy: What's the big deal?

Tips for Teachers
With illegal downloads among young people on the rise during lockdown, Media Smart has created a resource with plenty of application to Drama. John Johnson offers some practical tips
Adobe Stock/ Klyaksun

It's really easy to see an illegally downloaded film as ‘free’, but there is a real cost that many of us – teachers and students alike – are all too unaware of. With the various lockdowns in the past year, young people are online more than ever, and this has led to one in four over 12s illegally downloading film content in the past three months.

Media Smart, the advertising industry's educational programme, is working alongside partners including Sky and The Industry Trust to develop a new accredited secondary school resource ‘Piracy: What's the big deal?’ While these resources lend themselves brilliantly to PSHE and Media Studies, there are also many pertinent crossovers with Drama, given that piracy impacts on the livelihoods of many in the creative industry.

Competition

A great way to get your students engaged in learning about the subject of piracy is the opportunity to win £2,000 worth of film equipment for school, and a film download voucher for each group member. The competition is based on students creating a storyboard or 1-minute film that dissuades their peers from engaging in piracy.

The closing date is 28 May 2021 and teachers can access the piracy education resources via the Media Smart website. Below you will find some activity ideas to use in lessons, making this a great choice if you are stuck for a Year 7, 8 or 9 project for the first half of the Summer term.

Editing software

Most students will want to work towards creating their own film and, with the different editing software available, this could be a really engaging way to enthuse your young people. Finding the right software may depend on equipment availability, for example. If your school has a policy that allows mobile phones for educational purposes, some of the software below works well on a phone and can be the easiest way to get the footage and editing completed in one place.

Adobe Rush is a great place to start and can be downloaded for free for a laptop, smart phone or tablet, offering a fairly professional version of Adobe's Premiere Pro. Another useful resource is Clipchamp, which is an ‘inbrowser’ programme, meaning that students will not be required to download any software and can edit as they go. Clipchamp is free and easy to use, though students will need to register with their email address.

Those with Apple devices may want to use iMovie – again this is free and is fairly intuitive to use. For those students wanting to produce something more professional looking, Adobe's Premiere Pro is industry standard, but harder to use and a paid subscription is required.

Use the activities below as a ‘way-in’ to preparing for the 1-minute film that aims to dissuade young people from watching or downloading pirated TV or film content.

Activity 1 – Case studies and scenarios

There are some excellent teacher resources available on the Media Smart website including a range of ‘scenarios’ based on how piracy can impact a scriptwriter, can lead to people's personal details being hacked, or fraud being committed because of illegal downloads.

Using these stories with students will no doubt lead to them sharing their own experiences and show them the impact that piracy can have. Using techniques such as hot-seating and role play, ask students to step into the role of a victim with others in the class acting in role as the police or lawyers. Film some of the interviews for possible footage to use in the ‘final cut.’

Activity 2 – Consequences

Ask students to create a scene where a young person shares the new Marvel or James Bond film, months before they are released in cinemas, with their friends. Then ask the same students to play a scene that shows a consequence. It may be a legal consequence, something that impacts the family who use the same computer for work/school, or perhaps an impact on the creative team behind the film. Once you have played both scenes, experiment with using editing to create a contrast between both scenarios.

Activity 3 – A world without….

As a discussion point, ask students to think about what the worst-case scenarios could be if piracy continues. Will this put people in the creative industries out of work, for example, or will it lead to nothing on the internet being safe due to malware and fraud attacks? Will it be so costly to the film industry that no new content is created?

Make a list and ask students to storyboard an imagined future where one of these scenarios comes true. Storyboard templates can be found on the Media Smart website.

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