The SnehAI and Internet ke Champions film series

The Interne-T-rap

In the form of a rap song, we introduced the dangers of the internet and at the same time how instead of becoming a trap, the INTERNET can empower you. 

The lessons and advice that we had to communicate, we chose to deliver them in a format teenagers could find engaging and interesting. The rap verses were written by our own Swarup Deb.

Films as Anecdotes

These films were made to show situations and incidents where teens can become vulnerable to online crimes and how they can deal with them

Cyberspace ke sitare shows a bunch of teenage kids compete amongst themselves to become the next Social Media Influencer and while doing so they experience the flip side of that coin - attention on the internet is not always positive.

Pyar, Pics aur Privacy talks about a teenage girl, Richa and her dilemma of whether or not she should share her nudes with her boyfriend Raj, and the pressures and dangers of sharing private photos.

Bully ki Pol Khuli tells the story of Sonu, who unable to handle a NO from his crush, goes down the rabbit hole of Cyber bullying.

Trap in a gift wrap tells the tale of Mona, who thought she found an art admirer of hers. He was an artist himself at grooming.

Gaming Shaming talks about Riyaaz, whotakes the shortcut to win the race of growing up faster and ends up losing...control.​​ The short addresses how children can get caught up in sexual exploitation traps present online.

Breakup ke Baad shows how young people can get caught in revenge pornogrpahy through the story of Sara, who after being dumped by Lucky, burns in her own rage of revenge

Staying safe on the Internet

Through these series of films, we intended to encourage the youth to make make safer more responsible decisions on the internet, and when necessary seek help from Cyber Cells.

In Dil, Dimag aur Virus, the brain and the heart together find the formula to be safe online, talking about possible dangers and how to avoid them.

SnehAI and friends summarise the steps to be safe online, introduce the SnehAI chatbot that can help us beat the villains online by becoming “Champions of the Internet”.

Making of SnehAI and Internet ke Champions

Research

For this project with the Population Foundation of India, we were looking at creating messaging and resource to protect Indian youngsters from child exploitation on the internet, following the release of their AI chatbot SnehAI.

We were looking at stories and points of view of schoolkids and how we could appeal to them.

We did interviews with the children, with an organisation named Chalo think karen and discussed their views on social media pros n cons and how to be safe on social media .

We had prepared a questionnaire for the children asking them about incidents that happened with them on social media platforms and whom have they approached. We also had a meeting with child psychologist of a renowned school in Kolkata who gave us few insights on child sexual exploitation and the gaps in the communication.

Through these conversations, the missing link was that we identified was the call to action. Children who did face such situations did not know what to do to seek help, or whom to approach. So with this project we actively worked towards filling this gap.

Story Development

The film was essentially for hinglish(hindi and english) speaking tier 2 city teen age children.

PFI had designed SnehAI chatbot to become a resource for children to approach and ask for advice and help. Hence, to introduce SnehAI as the expert on online safety, we developed the stories to have a learning or lesson in the end that was told by her.

We extracted the key messages from our research findings on the subject and in collaboration with PFI's team we finalized the 9 themes for the films, each addressing a different form of online exploitation.

Character Design

We created characters specific to the region of Northern India, who could be relatable and who could represent the kids we are speaking to.

Our explorations:

Characters used in the film

While creating the head and the heart characters we also kept in mind how we could exaggerate them during animation.

Backgrounds

Since the stories are meant to appeal to teenagers in Hindi speaking Northern belt of India - mainly the Tier II & III towns- the backgrounds needed to be detailed with Indian nuances.

Backgrounds in the films