St. Charles student directs YouTube hit about bullying

"Stupid. "Hippo." "Useless."

One by one, the young narrators repeat those cruel labels during the roughly 7-minute-long film, "The Bully."

Jonah Maxwell, the director, recorded their voices because he wants to remind victims of bullying - and the bystanders - to "speak up."

"If it's happening to you, you have to tell someone," he says in the film.

And here's the kicker: Those mature words come from a 12-year-old.

Jonah is a seventh-grader from St. Charles. And in less than a week, the video, posted on YouTube, already has garnered more than 170,000 views, praise from his peers and a big thumbs-up from his dad, Dave Maxwell, a professional filmmaker.

"I'm just blown away," Jonah said of the response.

He tackled the project, not as a school assignment, but to shine a spotlight on "quite a personal subject," Dave Maxwell said. To develop the script, Jonah invited his friends and classmates to share how they have been taunted in text messages and online.

"A few of them really opened up," Dave Maxwell said.

Narrators in the film open up about being too embarrassed to show hurtful text messages to their parents.

"It makes my world very small because that is now my sole focus, just surviving," one says.

Jonah also is candid about his own experiences with "verbal teasing" about his accent when he was a new student in the second grade. His family had moved from Dublin to St. Charles in 2011.

He now has a tight-knit group of friends and gave them an advance screening of "The Bully" before he posted the video to YouTube.

"You have to believe that good people who are willing to help you are around," Jonah says in a voice-over. "You just have to find them."

He also has the confidence to continue filmmaking. Jonah started mapping out the story for "The Bully" during a plane ride home from a family vacation last January. His dad provided equipment and the editing software, but the directing and writing were all him, said Dave Maxwell, a show director and designer for Bright Red Design Inc.

Jonah hopes to pursue a career from behind the camera and has his sights set on documentaries and action movies.

"That would be a dream for me," he said.