Experimen-teen

"Let's do a teen shoot," says Anna. "Ok, cool," I say. I have a couple teenage nieces, so it should be easy to gather them, one or two of their friends, and maybe a couple other teens, that they don't know. I'll make the clothes, Anna will take the photos, and Rob will do the video portion. Simple enough right? All we have to do, is pry them away from their rooms, air pods, computers, Instagram, game consoles, Roblox, Tic Toc, group chats, TV, selfies, and every other thing that consumes their "busy" teenage lives, just for a few hours. We got this.

Due to the pandemic, I know many teens have been physically isolated from their friends. I was hoping this opportunity would spark some excitement in them, in hopes that they could enjoy a little of what most of them have missed out on, over the past year or so. It would allow them the chance to step away from all their gadgets and enjoy the outside world for a little. Teenagers are social creatures, who need peer interaction, as they navigate through these teen years. It allows them to learn more about themselves, as they learn about the people, they surround themselves with. They rely on each other for laughter, fun, validation, esteem, friendship, and so much more. I can't even begin to imagine how my friends and I would have survived a pandemic in our teenage years, without cell phones, social media, face time, cable, Netflix and Hulu. During my teenage years, we lived to be able to hang outside with our friends. It was always at least eight of us outside at any given time to play king ball, double dutch, wall ball, tops, cards, or just sit out on the steps and talk about teen shit. We never stayed in the house unless we were on punishment. I'm super grateful that my nieces, along with many other kids, are homebodies. They could sit in the house day after day after day, even before the pandemic. I can't even imagine the effect a pandemic would have had on me and my friends.

Well, my one niece flat out told me no. Ok cool. One down, lol. My 15 year old niece agreed to do it, so I asked her if she has any friends, that she thinks would like to do a photoshoot. She names about 2 or 3 of them. Ok, we're getting somewhere. But first, I need to know their ages, parent's names and numbers, how well you know them, if they're mean or nice, if they get along well with others, if they're respectful, so forth and so forth. I was asking all this to kill two birds with one stone. One, to make sure I could tolerate them, and two, to see what kind of people she considers friends. Ha!

Anyway, I reached out to the parents, and now we have two teens for the photoshoot. Ok, cool. No worries. I put out a call on social media, while Anna reached out to a few people she knows. The idea was to have the teens act as if they've known each other for years, were classmates, and decided to hang out for the day. We settled on three females and two males. We were careful in making sure the teens we chose, looked close in age, and not like adults, so that the audience could take away from the commercial, exactly what we visioned they would.

The young ladies sent me ideas of their styles, and I got to work on executing their ideas. We decided on dresses and a crop top, in their favorite colors. The young men would wear KeiwoB tees.

Ok, so how you get five teens to act as if they've known each other for a long time? The plus side was that the two young men already knew each other, and one of the young ladies, was my niece's friend. I mentioned to Anna that we should do an ice breaker, and ask them some fun questions, so they could get to know one another, in order to feel relaxed amongst each other. Success. They all laughed at each other's answers, got to know each other's names, favorite foods, hobbies, etc. Us adults on the sidelines, let out sighs of relief, because I'm sure you all know teenagers are hard to please.

We decided to do the photoshoot in Center City Philadelphia, where many teens hang out to shop, eat and just enjoy each other's company. We took lots of photos, video, ate a little, and headed over to our secret location for part two. We decided to use smoke bombs so that we could really make the commercial pop. It almost became an epic fail because they started coughing, and their eyes started watering and burning. They toughed it out though. *Clap, clap, clap* Good thing Anna and I bought an abundance of smoke bombs, because we had to create the effect about three times. The dope silhouette you see at the beginning of the commercial, was by default, due to the direction the smoke traveled in the tunnel. Divine intervention. We all laughed, played some music, danced around, raced, and took more photos and videos. Afterwards, we wanted to treat the teens to some fun and food at Dave and Busters, but that plan failed. Dave and Busters wasn't serving food and we were starving. We headed over to Nifty Fifty's, sat outside, ordered a bunch of food and grubbed. I was happy to see that all the teens got along so well, and that they all looked as if they were really enjoying themselves. I had so much fun, and for a few, seeing all the fun they were having, took me back to the carefree times I used to spend with my friends.

As always, this would not have been a success without my WeAllOne team! I love the way we all come together to execute each other's ideas and goals. Big shout out to the parents, that allowed their teens to be a part of this project. Until next time!