What began four years ago as a contest entry for the Will Rogers Foundation, AU seniors Ben Connors and Chris Kosek will soon have a public service announcement they wrote featured in movie theaters across the country.
As a teaching assistant in Professor Sarah Menke-Fish's Understanding Mass Media Class, Connors learned about the contest offered by the Will Rogers Foundation to write a public service announcement to be shown before theatrical trailers.
The public service announcement is about teen stress, an issue the Will Rogers Institute wanted to focus on.
Connors decided he had a good a chance as anyone and contacted his good friend, Chris Kosek. They ordered a pizza and decided to write a couple scripts to submit to the Will Rogers Institute. One of those scripts made it through the School of Communication filters and was submitted to the foundation.
Two years after later, Connors and Kosek learned their script was chosen to be produced and shown on movie screens in the coming months.
Originally, Connors explained they came up with the writing as a visual joke to attract teens and their parents. Their original script featured a high school teenager going through her entire day without a sheet of paper, said Connors. Like most teens without paper, she wrote everything on her hands and body with a blue pen.
When she arrives home, her mother is shocked to discover her daughter is covered in ink and is now "Blue Man Group blue," Connors said.
Connors said the main idea was to ask the question, "Is stress making you blue?"
In the spring of their junior year, Connors and Kosek got an e-mail saying the talent for the PSA had been chosen. When Connors downloaded the updated script, he was surprised to see it was titled the "Muppets Public Service Announcement." Muppets had been cast as all the secondary characters. The institute offered to fly the pair out to Hollywood to see production.
Connors thought he would initially miss production as he was in Nigeria for two-and-a-half-months shooting a documentary about a company founded by two SIS graduates. However, production was moved back one week, so he was able to attend.
They were picked up at Los Angeles International Airport by a limo and put up in a hotel. Terri Hatcher was also featured in the film, which was filmed at a high school in Pasadena.
Connors described the set in the Pasadena school as "spectacular." Production fell on his 22nd birthday, which he described as "my best birthday since my eighth ... which was Muppet-themed."
Millions will see his film now, but Connors said he does not deserve all the credit.
"I'm real proud, it has brought me a lot of attention which I feel is undue," Connors said. "All a writer does is seed an idea. In fact it comes together with the work of everyone else. I feel really humble about it."
Connors is completely uncertain about what he wants to do after he graduates this year, he eventually wants to communicate the understanding of the world through visual media. "I'm really into non-fiction right now, but the rest of my life is to come, I may do some service such as the Peace Corps" he said.