Solvents: A Parent's Guide compilation

Content warning:

not suitable for young children

Trigger warning:

Child death; sounds of drug use

I accept this guidance

Solvents: A Parent's Guide compilation

1992

Harrowing public information campaign aimed at kids and parents.

Sometimes, less really is more. These five very short videos, produced by the Central Office of Information (COI) for a 1992 public information campaign, set aside the usual visual shocks to deliver their alarming message with only sound and text. The results are genuinely both chilling and upsetting, and it's hard to see how they could have been any more so with the addition of images.

The first video, 'Choking', establishes the template for the series. We hear the desperate sounds of a young boy coughing and struggling for breath, while stark, white-on-black text tells us, "This is a 9 year old choking on a solvent". We then hear an adult man choking on tears; "This is his father being told of his death," reads the text. The video ends with an alarming statistic: "Sniffing aerosols, glue and gases kills 100 children a year."

Three more videos follow in similar vein: 'Sniffing', 'Nightmare' and 'Whispering'. Though all the voices are performed by actors, they're utterly convincing and almost overwhelmingly moving, especially all at once. Only the final video in the compilation - which gives information on how to get hold of the leaflet 'Solvents: A parent's guide', and may have been appended to each of the other videos in the campaign - includes narration.

The minimal approach of these videos makes a fascinating contrast with another COI film on the same subject, made a decade earlier. Illusions: A Film on Solvent Abuse (1983) was an epic 40-minute nightmare, in which dozens of disaffected young kids, their faces buried in bags of glue, drift aimlessly through a series of desolate urban and rural locations. The bleak and disorienting effect was enhanced by woozy camera work and a haunting soundtrack by Michael Nyman.

Be Careful Out There!: Public Information Fillers

How the COI used wit, imagination and fear to keep us out of harm's way.

For over 60 years, the Central Office of Information gently persuaded, humorously cajoled and even terrified us in the name of keeping us safe and well. The COI oversaw all kinds of government messaging in print, posters and radio as well as film and video, and much of it bypassed the British public (intended to encourage trade or other overseas interests, or as training for officials). But the COI is best remembered for its public safety campaigns, especially its 'public information fillers': short, direct messages warning us off myriad dangers, from cigarettes to slippery floors, fireworks to fridges, and shown in advert breaks on big screen or small. Many fillers from the 1970s and 80s - like Charley Says, the Green Cross Code Man and The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water - are now considered classics, enjoyed by generations who weren't even born when they were made. This collection takes up the story after that 'golden age', and sees the COI enter the digital era. In the process, the public information fillers took on a new visual sheen and their makers embraced a new bag of video tricks. But they also faced off new dangers, from the distractions of texting while driving to the menace of online predators. Ultimately, though, the COI met a foe it couldn’t fight, when at the end of 2011 it closed after 65 years, a victim of the coalition government's austerity.