Video aims to stem teenage drinking
By Nick Sambides Jr
Bangor Daily News (Maine)
Copyright 2006 Bangor Daily News
Enfield, Maine — Death never came easier to a teenager than it came Saturday to Michael Arell. Loaded on beer — portions of a cooler’s worth of bottles and a 175-pound keg — and unmindful of the dangers of mixing alcohol and water sports, Arell took a canoe into Cold Stream Lake and soon sank like a stone.
Paramedics from Penobscot Valley Hospital of Lincoln, state police, Penobscot County deputies, state game wardens and even Lincoln patrol officers responded quickly to the surreptitious teenage beer bash on Davis Road, but all they could do was fish the 15-year-old’s body from the water. All under the watchful eyes of WABI-TV Channel 5 cameraman Peter Hewett.
It was all fiction, of course — for the purpose of taping a 15-minute anti-teen-drinking video targeting the evils of camp partying — but if Arell and the other creators involved have worked their magic properly, it will seem horrifyingly real enough to prevent some errant teens from drunken drowning.
“Just to save one person, that’s all that matters,” Deputy Peter Stone of Enfield said Saturday as he watched the taping, for which he volunteered his house on the lake.
Funded by a state Drug-Free Communities Grant through Penobscot Valley Hospital, the video will be one of three productions deputies will use in anti-drinking lessons, said Stone and Amy Woodman, project coordinator for the grant, who works at Penobscot Valley Hospital.
The video, which will be finished by next spring, also might be incorporated into a larger program by WABI-TV in April, which is Alcohol Awareness Month, said video producer Steve Hiltz, a member of the station’s production crew.
The video is intended to supplement “One For Over The Line,” an educational video done for the deputies 10 years ago that discussed the perils of teenage drinking and driving, Stone said.
The deputies and producers changed the focus of the latest production because “we’re going to more and more camp raids” to stem illegal teenage partying.
“Kids aren’t drinking in town the way they used to,” Stone said. “They are going to gravel pits and their grandfathers’ camps, so we wanted a camp scenario.”
Annie Gabbianelli O’Reilly, University College of Bangor assistant professor and a free-lance writer who scripted the video, found a volunteer crew of area teenagers, including Arell and members of the drama club at John Bapst Memorial High School of Bangor and tried to make the production as realistic as possible, she said.
“They exceeded our expectations,” O’Reilly said. “They got into it so much it was scary.”
To allow the actors to improvise, O’Reilly and Hiltz tried to follow the script only in broad outline except when specific lines were needed. The actors threw themselves into the production with so much verve that Hiltz and Hewett frequently had to tell them to stop so Hewett could ensure that he had the shot and the improvised dialogue.
“We just had a concept for every scene. If we tried to control them more with a script, they would be reading lines rather than reacting to one another,” Hiltz said. “The challenge will be controlling their improvisation and fitting it into the narrative.”
“It’s the first time I have ever played someone who died. It was interesting,” Arell, 16, of Bangor said. “The EMTs were pretty realistic. They were doing exactly what they would do in a real situation. The hardest part was trying to breathe so that it wasn’t noticeable.”
The paramedics were impressed enough with Arell’s performance to give him a gift: the bag valve and mask they used in their unsuccessful attempt to “revive” him.
The youthful actor was pleased.
“Let’s hope,” he said, “that it’s the last time that I need one of these.”