Director of woman walking in New York video Rob Bliss answers questions on Reddit

FIRST there was the video, then came the rape threats and the parody.

Now, the director of the video of a New York woman walking down the street who was verbally harassed more than 100 times in 10 hours has admitted how the video was edited on Reddit.

The short clip made headlines around the world this week after it showed Shoshana Roberts walking through streets in broad daylight wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

She’s filmed by director Rob Bliss, a 26-year-old from Chicago, who walked in front of her with a Go-Pro strapped to his back wearing gym clothes with sunglasses on and earphones in.

The camera captures a range of catcalls which range from friendly to downright creepy and has been viewed more than 18 million times online.

However it’s also come under fire for racism, as the majority of those men shown in the video are black or Latino.

The backlash comes after Mr Bliss — who made the video for Hollaback, an organisation that aims to end street harassment — admitted that a number of scenes featuring white men were edited out.

“We got a fair amount of white guys, but for whatever reason, a lot of what they said was in passing, or off camera. So their scenes were a lot shorter, but the numbers themselves are relatively even,” he said.

“Also, we didn’t always capture the audio or video well- there’s a siren that kills the scene, or someone walks in front of the camera, so we had to work with what we had. Cities are noisy, and full of people that walk in front of the camera, you know?

“By chance, this is how it looked, but we really did have a broad spectrum of people that said/did something.”

Shoshana Roberts has received rape threats after featuring in a campaign to end street harassment in New York City. Pic: AP/Peter Morgan. Source: AP

Mr Bliss also defended the fact that white men make up less of those features, saying it isn’t “abnormal statistically” for New York.

“Honestly we did have a lot of white dudes in this video, but for whatever reason it worked out that they would be the ones to say something just in passing, or from a distance off camera. This made their screen time fairly short by comparison, but the numbers were relatively similar.

“As the video says at the end, it was upwards of 100+ harassments, so obviously not everything was shown, otherwise we’d have a video that’s too long for inteet attention spans. But really it was across the board, just about everyone said/did something while we filmed.

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Hollaback has also responded to criticism, saying “we regret the unintended racial bias in the editing of the video that over represents men of colour.”

However the group said they hope it will be used to demonstrate that harassment is directed towards woman of all races by an “equally diverse population of men.”