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Thomas Brown - The Broken Toy Project

Thomas Brown knows a thing or two about school bullying. “Six years of my childhood was emotionally obliterated” states the national speaker and filmmaker.” I was one of those kids who would wake up to go to school ready to vomit my guts out.” “The thing is, a lot of people don’t get it. To a lot of people this is a natural part of growing up. They think that if a kid is bullied, all he or she has to do is just stand up for themselves and it all magically goes away. If it was that easy, all victims would do that in a heartbeat,” Brown explains. “But it is a very complex problem, heightened by a sense of being alone with no or very little support from your peers and in some cases, your teachers and schools.”

“Many children are told to quit tattling when they report themselves or someone else being bullied, and victims find that they have few if any friends, because according to kids, if you take up for the kid being bullied, then you get bullied yourself.” “This sense of terror, helplessness and hopelessness has led to countless youth suicides across the planet, and even more frightening is the fact that in just about all of the fatal school shootings, the shooter or ‘killer’ was a child being tormented and bullied at the time of the attack,” “It shouldn’t take too many brain cells to figure out that the school bullying problem is out of control and the consequences are most dire,” explains Thomas Brown.

Since 1981, Thomas has created seventeen educational films that dramatically explore the school bullying issue. While he admits that the first five of those films, produced with very primitive equipment, were ‘stepping stones’ to better produced films in the future, there was no doubt that the films had power and I saw emotional reactions in children that was pretty profound. In 1991, Thomas created “Broken Toy,” an eight-hundred dollar home movie that has since become one of the most successful educational films ever produced, and has been followed by eleven additional school bullying dramas, some of which have won film competition awards, and are all being used in English-speaking schools worldwide. Thomas considers the Macrosystem’s Casablanca stand-alone editors to be a vital factor in why his films work so well.

“In 1999 I became aware of the Avio ST. I was looking for two editing decks with flying-erase heads. Bored with the AG series of pro line of Panasonic industrial products, I considered the possibility of shooting and editing on digital hi-8. It was while I was on the phone with a dealer in Canada that I first heard about the Avio. The more the guy explained it, the more I knew I had to have it … and I would be saving a lot of money in the process!” explains Thomas.

Thomas elaborates on what happened next. “When the Avio ST arrived, I immediately hooked it up and watched the VHS instruction tape. It did nothing more than confuse and irritate me. I just couldn’t figure it out. I had heard that Casablanca was so much easier to use than PC-based editing, and this tape made it seem much too complicated. Later that evening I decided to just play with the machine and teach myself how to use it. Before dawn I had figured it out and was one amazed and happy camper with not only how easy it was to use the unit, but the precision and professionalism that came with owning such a product.”

“Since that time it has been a love-affair with various Casablanca units, especially the Prestige. With the built-in DVD authoring, you have a studio in a grey box about the size of an old front-loader VHS deck and the result is amazing, Brown explains. “I currently own a loaded Prestige with 256 MB of memory and a 300 gig HD, and I couldn’t be happier. Eventually I will upgrade to one of the ‘S’ series models, but for now I’m content.”

“It amazes me the number of people who swear PC-based editing is the only professional way to go, and of course they have never even attempted to edit on a Casablanca product. It’s like it is beneath them to try something new. Well I HAVE tried PC-based editing and the process is a giant hassle wrapped up in a software package. One very expensive program crashed the first five-minutes I tried to use it, and I have a very good computer,” Brown states. “There is absolutely no reason to make PC-based software so ridiculously complex and unstable, and yet they do in most instances,” explains Brown. “I’ll continue to stick with the Casablanca OS, and be a happy man for it. I think OS8 is nothing short of awesome and so stable, “Brown concludes.

Brown’s films have caught the attention of many television news and talk-show producers. Since 1993, he has appeared on over twenty television shows, including “Oprah,” “Leeza,” “Danny,” “Charles Grodin,” “Good Morning America,” “Dateline,” “Home and Family,” CBS Evening News and several separate news-magazine shows on CNN. His work has also been featured in numerous educational and news magazines across the globe.

Thomas continues to make films. He just completed a film about kids with Asperger’s who are bullied, called “Ant Boy” and is working right now on two additional films; “The List” and “Silent Ovation,” both dealing with school bullying in one respect. If he can find a cooperative high school and sports department, Thomas wants to produce “The Final Quarter,” which will be an educational film about high school sports hazing, and there are more films in the development stage as well.

The films that Thomas Brown has edited on a Casablanca product include “Joey,” “Scars,” “The Lesson for Today,” “The First and Last Day of Middle School,” “Inbox,” “The Power of One,” “Epilogue,” “Storm,” “16,” “Ant Boy,” “Tears on the Highway” and “On One Winter Day.” All of the films are currently in distribution throughout the United States and the U.K. Thomas still travels to schools across the U.S. and Canada presenting his anti-bullying awareness program to students, school personnel and parents.

For more information about The Broken Toy Project, e-mail Thomas at film1x1@roadrunner.com