Northridge : Students Get Word Out on Smoking

Alone in a deserted cemetery, a teenage boy enjoys a moonlit walk--and a cigarette. As the smoke slowly filters down to a nearby grave, a restless zombie rises from the earth and directs a rotted finger to the tombstone.

“DIED FROM SMOKING,” it reads.

Created by an eager group of students at Nobel Middle School in Northridge, the macabre message is part of an animated public service announcement to warn people about the hazards of tobacco.

“They’re doing everything,” said Nigel Zeid, associate director of AnimAction, a 7-year-old program that teaches children worldwide how to bring their messages to life in two-day animation workshops. “It’s all the kids’ art.”

Thursday morning, 104 students met in the school’s library to brainstorm ideas for the 30-second anti-tobacco spots. Soon after, each student took pen and pencil in hand and set to work creating 300 full-color drawings for each scene.

By Friday, each table was strewn with the brightly colored results.

“You have to make each one a little different,” 13-year-old Kelley Kaufman said, describing the tedium of the work. Her all-girl group used a magic-trick metaphor to communicate their message, “There’s No Trick. Don’t Smoke.”

Across the room, 12-year-old Alana Schnee’s group was busy finishing up their scene, which pitted a super-powered cat against a gang of smoking rodents.

“He snatches the cigarettes from the mice and then throws them into a giant ashtray,” she said, describing the action.

As the day wound down, it was time to put the drawings to the ultimate test: the camera. Shot on 16-millimeter film, the 12 scenes will be transferred to videotape and shown at a school assembly on May 6. Entries selected from 27 Los Angeles Unified School District campuses will face off in a June competition, Zeid said.

And even if their scenes are only seen by a small audience, some former smokers said they’ve already gotten the message about cigarettes.

“It’s really stupid,” one eighth-grade girl said. “Your hair smells. Your fingers smell. It doesn’t even relieve your stress.”