If London Were Syria
8 /10 1 Votes
Duration Language English | Director Martin Stirling Country United Kingdom | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date 5 March 2014 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
If London Were Syria, titled on YouTube Most Shocking Second a Day Video, is a short film commercial (the YouTube video is 93 seconds) created by Don't Panic London for Save The Children UK, marking the third anniversary of the Syrian Civil War. It features a young British girl experiencing the effects of a hypothetical civil war on the streets of London. Everything depicted in the video was based on the factual accounts of children in Syria. The video's purpose is to depict what life is like for kids as war erupts in their country, in order to bring attention for kids involved in the ongoing Syrian Civil War.
Contents
The video was shot over the course of two days, and combines the second-a-day and photo-a-day video formats, featuring a young girl's life as it progresses from normal to complete chaos in the course of a year.
Plot
The video features a young British girl experiencing the effects of a hypothetical civil war on the streets of London, by showing a second a day of her life for several days over the span of a year, from one birthday anniversary of hers to the next.
In the opening scene, the girl is at her birthday party, with her parents and friends near her, and a cake with candles in front of her. She is asked to make a wish. Over the next few days, she continues to live an ordinary life with loving family and friends, but soon London is engulfed in war. By the end of the video, she has lost her father while running with her mother and her face is disfigured. On her next birthday, she is seen at a hospital bed and is again presented by her mum with a cake and a candle and asked to make a wish. The video ends with the line "Just because it isn't happening here doesn't mean it isn't happening." It is revealed at the end that the video is based on true stories of what children living through the Syrian Civil War experienced, and highlights the work of Save the Children to improve the lives of children in Syria and around the world.
Reception
The ad was released on 5 March 2014. It received news coverage immediately in many UK newspapers and magazines including the The Independent, Telegraph, Huffington Post (UK), Express, Metro, and The Mirror. It was also covered in Time Magazine, Adweek, Al Arabiya, and the Washington Post. The coverage in the Washington Post noted that the video would only seem shocking to people who had not experienced or read closely about the lived experiences of people who had gone through civil wars, and highlighted the newspaper's profiles of refugees from civil wars.
The video acquired more than 23 million views on YouTube in less than a week. The reasons for its virality were dissected by a number of commentators, including Fairsay and The Drum. The following factors were identified: strong emotions, a video title ("Most Shocking Second a Day") that created what Upworthy has called a "curiosity gap" by providing just enough information to make people click to want to know more, and a smart initial paid promotion and publicity in the right circles. The video was also listed as the first of five highly successful nonprofit branded videos in the first quarter of 2014.
In November 2014, American actor Ashton Kutcher posted an A Plus article about the video on his Facebook page (A Plus is a website co-founded by Kutcher, who is also Chairman of the Board). This resulted in 10 million page views of the video and made it the second most-viewed brand video of the week on YouTube.
As of April 2015, the video has accumulated over 46 million views on YouTube. According to Don't Panic London's website, the video was featured twice on the Reddit front page, was shared 920,000 times, and caused Save the Children's YouTube channel subscriptions to increase by over 1000%.
As of March 2017, about 56 million views were present on YouTube.