School Threats Are No Joke
Client:
34th Judicial District Attorney's Office, El Paso, TX
Scope:
Full video production, concept through delivery
Deliverables:
Live Action PSA, Animatic, Spanish Language Version, Photography
Collaborators:
FBI El Paso, Multiple El Paso School District Police Departments, EPCC Valle Verde Theater Club
Overview
School threats had become a weekly problem across every school district in El Paso. Bomb threats, gun threats, and social media posts were being made by students without understanding the consequences, and law enforcement was dealing with it constantly. The 34th Judicial District Attorney's Office, along with the FBI and school district police departments across the city, needed something that would stop a student cold. Not a flyer. Not an assembly. A video that showed exactly what happens when you make a threat. Cromatica produced it, and it became the center of one of the largest public safety campaigns El Paso had seen.
The Brief
Every school district in El Paso was seeing gun and bomb threats every week. The majority were students who thought it was a joke, not understanding that a threat, real or not, is a third-degree felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Social media was making it worse, giving students a platform to post threats anonymously, or so they thought. Law enforcement needed something that would cut through to students in a way a policy document or school announcement never could. The ask was simple: make them understand what actually happens next.
The Production
The video follows a single continuous shot tracking law enforcement through the process of locating and arresting a student who made a school threat online. No cuts, no coverage, just one unbroken take that puts the viewer inside the moment as it unfolds. The decision to shoot it that way was intentional. The intensity builds because there is nowhere to look away.
Coordinating that shot required directing a crew alongside over 30 police and FBI agents on set, all playing their actual roles. Every department, every position, every move through the house was directed and choreographed to make the sequence feel real because it was based on exactly how it happens. The EPCC Valle Verde Theater Club filled the student and family roles, grounding the fiction in something students could recognize as themselves.
A Spanish language version was also produced to reach the full breadth of El Paso's community, and a photoshoot was completed alongside the production for press and campaign materials.
The Campaign
The video was the anchor of a city-wide public safety effort. District Attorney Bill D. Hicks held a press conference on September 4, 2024, to officially launch it, with representatives from the FBI and school district police departments from all six El Paso school districts standing alongside him. From there, the video went directly into schools, shown to students across every district in the city.
Distribution didn't stop at the classroom. The campaign was also released as a reel through FitFam El Paso, the city's most followed social media account with over 600,000 followers, putting it in front of the exact audience it was made for. KFOX14/CBS4 picked it up and covered the launch, extending the reach further. One video, built around a single shot, became the face of a multi-agency public safety campaign that touched every corner of El Paso.
