MIDDLEBURY — A video featuring a story by a Middlebury six-year-old and created by a Middlebury College student has “gone viral.” The eight-minute film “The Scared is Scared” by Bianca Giaever, who graduated from Middlebury this month, was posted on the Vimeo multimedia sharing website last month.
After Vimeo designated it a “staff pick,” the video was viewed more than 655,000 times. It was written up at many online news sites, including the Huffington Post, CBS News and USA Today, among many others. The video was also widely shared by average citizens on social media sites like Facebook.
A Google search of the term “The Scared is scared of things you like” on Tuesday yielded about 4,370 hits. A browse through the first few pages of results shows post after post of people on their blogs and websites telling how much they like the video and urging friends and readers of all sorts to watch it.
The film creatively illustrates an original story by six-year-old Asa Baker-Rouse of Middlebury. The precocious, moving tale of a bear and a mouse features a swimming pool, pizza, a piano-shaped cookie, and a message that people of all ages would do well to keep in mind: “The Scared is scared of things you like.”
Giaever created the video as a final project for her independently designed major in “Narrative Studies.” Her adviser, Associate Professor of American Studies and Film and Media Culture Jason Mittell, guided Giaever through earlier courses and was a touchstone for her in the making of this film. In addition to introducing her to Baker-Rouse (a friend of Mittell’s own son) and providing the water wings used in one shot in the film, Mittell modestly takes no credit for “The Scared is Scared.”
“Throughout the month, my role was primarily to assure Bianca that there was potential in her ideas and that the audio and video she was putting together was excellent,” Mittell wrote on his blog. “Bianca’s video is exceptional … in its success in communicating with a distinctive voice and style that feels fully realized.”
Check it out here:
 
the Scared is scared from Bianca Giaever on Vimeo.