By Elianna Mintz, ICB Reporter 
Fifteen students sat around a table looking expectantly towards the front of the room. They hailed from colleges and high schools across the country, from California to Michigan to New York to Florida. “Message, Audience, Plan” flashed on the screen as they scurried to take notes. These three words, the catalyst that brought them together, would be etched in their memories.
These dedicated students gathered in Baltimore, Maryland for a one-day Israel advocacy seminar orchestrated by The David Project late last year. It was not a typical David Project Israel advocacy seminar focused on providing college students with talking points. Rather, the seminar focused on advocating for Israel through the medium of film by addressing a select group of students who had experience with Israel-focused video production and strategic thinking.
“Over three billion videos are viewed every day on YouTube,” University of Michigan student Jeremy Borison told
ICB. “When video becomes as popular and significant as it is today, we must take advantage of this means of advocacy to provide a positive view and share the truth about Israel. That’s why I decided to attend the seminar.”
The one-day seminar was jam-packed with sessions on Israel, YouTube and videos, and each student received a flip camera and a USB wrist-band loaded with video-specific links and resources, as well as general Israel campus advocacy information.
The seminar comprised five main segments:
1. Using Online Video for Advocacy: Techniques in Storytelling, Video Production and Online Distribution
2. Understanding the Current Conversation About Israel
3. Video and the Israeli Government
4. Messaging: iEngage & Making the Progressive Case
5. Breakout Sessions
Each session supplied students with their personal message, audience and plan for their videos.
According to the David Project’s former video and multimedia coordinator, Matt Cohen, these are the five secrets to making your best Israel advocacy video.
“Each is essential in order to create an effective video and to make sure it gets viewed by the intended target audience,” Cohen told
ICB. “Throughout the day, we referred to the themes of message, audience and plan either directly or indirectly to reinforce the way they are interrelated.”
The first session, taught by CEO of See3 Communications Michael Hoffman, informed students of their ideal audience and provided techniques to enhance their overall message and plan. After viewing exceptional YouTube videos, such as
Facebook: Unfriend Coal,
Beauty Pressure and
Dove Onslaught(er), and discussing what made them so persuasive and powerful, students learned that a narrow audience creates the largest impact and a genuine, simple, emotional and short message is the most engaging.
Participants learned that a successful video is imbued with a story to contextualize its message, offer a perspective and further motivate viewers of the video to take action. Additionally, Hoffman stressed that an appealing title can improve a video’s rating tremendously.
A specific technique that students picked up while viewing other YouTube videos was creating a parody of what others in your community are talking about online.
Amanda Zimmerman and Rochelle Windman, students at American University (AU), came up with a video for their campus that would play off of their campus’s
WONK campaign, which aims to highlight different areas of strength for each student. At the beginning of each school year, students can select a free WONK shirt that depicts what they consider to be their special talent.
“The campaign is widely known on campus and often criticized or seen as a joke by students,” Zimmerman told ICB. “The bottom line is that students talk about it, and every student knows about it, which was why I thought it would be a good creative base to work off of and would interest people enough to watch the video.”
Zimmerman and Windman plan to produce a video that will display students in Israel WONK shirts and show how students can be pro-Israel in addition to pursuing their other talents.
The seminar did not view video-making in a vacuum. The David Project’s program specialist/analyst Kelly Ward provided students with basic information about current Israel topics on campus to help them fine-tune their messages and talk about Israel in various ways.
“The David Project believes in comprehensive Israel education,” Ward told
ICB in an interview after the seminar, adding that it was important to delve into "significant international events with students to make sure they understood the nuances of the different situations, their possible repercussions, and how the Palestinian UDI [Unilateral Declaration of Independence] and the release of Gilad Shalit could impact Israel, the Middle East and the international community moving forward.
“It is our hope,” Ward added, “that the students in attendance deepened their personal understanding of Israel while also learning more about how to use video as a medium to educate and connect their friends, classmates and larger campus community to Israel.”
Later in the day, the Israeli Embassy's minister of public diplomacy, Noam Katz, explained how the Embassy uses video to influence key audiences to promote Israel’s national security interests.
“Such influence,” Katz told the group, “motivates people to act, develops their opinions and provides them with information.”
The David Project’s campus coordinator, Avital Kranz, presented the iEngage movement, which detailed how to use video to holster your message to reach a diverse campus audience. Exercises during this session drew on a variety of school identities to enable students to relate an Israel message to different groups on campus, including Greek life, athletes, drama and Glee clubs.
At the end of the day, students worked in breakout groups to piece together everything discussed throughout the day by developing a concrete plan for a video to be produced immediately upon returning to campus.
To ensure that students follow through with their videos, (which must be completed by the end of January), The David Project staff will check in with students to discuss the progress of their videos. Cohen stressed that staff will be available to the students in any way they need, including helping to flesh out an idea or script, providing feedback on a rough cut of a video or helping to market and promote it.
“The seminar was incredibly successful,” Cohen remarked to
ICB. “One participant told me he went back to campus feeling much more energized and invigorated after the seminar, returning with several great ideas to take him through the rest of the year. I couldn’t think of a better way to sum it up.”
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