To receive full credit, these blog assignments must be posted by SUNDAY night, April 25th at midnight. If you post late, please email me your post directly at sdebross@uvm.edu as soon as you are able, and I'll give you partial credit.
1. PSA Projects DUE!
Completed PSAs are due at our last class meeting (4/27) which is a potluck lunch at my house. I will email directions separately. Please upload your PSA to YouTube and email me the URL. Also, please bring a copy of your PSA on disc to our last meeting. PSA’s will be aired on the UVM station, local cable channels and shared with environmental groups.2. PSA Reflection
Blog a summary of your experience creating your PSA, focusing on the process and your learning (no need to describe your PSA in detail - I've seen it and it will be posted to our course blog!) How was scripting, storyboarding and filming the PSA? How well did your group work together? Do you feel you effectively educated your audience on your selected environmental/media theme? Self assess your work with regard to educational content, clear intent, engagement of audience, effective use of props, visuals, sound, movement and text. Is this an effective tool for environmental activism?
Choosing the PSA topic of texting and cellphone use while driving was a no brainer. This is a serious pet peeve of mine. Lucky for me my other two PSA partners felt just as passionate about the issue as myself. So when we first got together to brain storm the message and layout we all agreed that we wanted both a strong pointed message and that none of us wanted to be seen on film. With those two things as our driving force we ventured into the on-line video clip realm.
ReplyDeleteBy utilizing what was already on Youtube we found and edited many short clips into one solid PSA message. Our first attempt at the PSA was a little bit off topic and far fetched so we had a take two. Really thank god for Trevor who was our technology man. He was familiar with the imovie system and seemed to navigate it with ease. I know only how to write and research on my computer so without him we would have been in trouble.
Although I do feel that the work load was a little off center, with Trevor doing all of the editing, I think it balanced out for the most part in the end. What we have now is a beautifully synthesized message. The music, the imagery, and the timing all blend well together to send an emotional and powerful message. Don't drive and text. Hang up your phone. As a tool for environmental activism I think this is highly affective. A good PSA can be a sensory experience that leaves you thinking about the topic long after the 60 seconds are up.
Most of all, I have learned how much planning and time goes into making just one minute of quality film. We had to take the time to come up with an overarching theme or purpose of our PSA, as well as a target audience. Those two focuses would determine the language, facts, music, and visuals we would use. For the story board, we came up with three or four topics that we would cover in the minute long film with text. Each group member came up with background facts for a topic, and we compiled them and ended up narrowing our storyboard to just a few keys facts that we wanted to convey to our audience of voters in VT. It seems like filming was one of the easiest parts. Just one group member, Nate, took an hour or so to gather a group of people at his home, Slade, and filmed a live smoking scene. We will use just the one visual as background, and have our facts come across the screen one at a time. We really wanted to emphasize a group of people peacefully using marijuana in a pleasant setting, while pointing out logistical reasons why it has unjustifiably become illegal in society.
ReplyDeleteOur group worked together okay. It could have been more efficient and cooperative. We never met as an entire group outside of class, and so email was a key to communication. We were all really busy, and had conflicting schedules. The final product is due in two days, and we are not finished. I emailed my group members a few hours ago to figure out how and when final editing will take place, but haven’t heard back.
I think that we were effective in educating the public about an issue that effects the social environment of our state, and many places around the world. The key point is that, by making marijuana illegal: excessive time, money, and jail resources are wasted on a so called “crime” that is relatively passive.
Our intent is quite clear, because we state our intention at the end of the PSA and give resources for viewers to act upon what they’ve seen. It is educational because we use real facts that have an effect on real people in mainstream society. Everyone should be aware of the implications of marijuana legality. We didn’t really use props, movement is no too intense, and we haven’t decided on background music yet. My hope is that my group can agree upon a calm, familiar song that won’t offend anyone or give bad connotation to our subject matter. Media of any kind is certainly good for activism of any kind, including environmental, because the media is what people see on a daily basis in our society. The media is how messages are relayed to millions of people, across state and national borders.
After finishing the final edits, creating the PSA made helps me summarize this class, and remember a lot of what I learned. The group chose a very broad topic, to be "unplugged" which is one of the baisc messages of this course. The first reading, "Feed" conveys this message the most. That society is plugged into media, electronics and advertising and it has a brainwashing effect. Deciding what props to use in the video, the emotions the actors should be expressing helped understand the concept of unplugging much better. Articles from this class suggest texting, watching a TV or computer screen all day changes our attention efficiency. In other words new generations are having trouble reading books and getting a deep understanding from literature. Their brains are wired for fast advertising and an explosion of images.
ReplyDeleteFilming the PSA went by fast, our group picked a time after class and we completed it in a little over an hour. Editing was a little more tricky, that took up almost three hours. Since we did filmed a lot of clips the organization was not great, and we had to go through a lot of footage. The flip camera turned out to be a handy tool. Its size is advantageous for filming from different parts of the set, whether it be a corner or from the floor. The film quality did not seem to be lacking either which is good.
The final product looks good, I was a little worried halfway through the editing stages but after we added music and cut the volume on unwanted sound it looked much more professional. We also added slides with educational information that should motivate people to get outside intead of spend the day watching television. I learned more just researching the facts about how long Americans spend on the interent or how many text messages teenagers send a month. I feel good about our PSA, and I think it matches and improves upon the previous ones we viewed. Hopefully the rest of the class feels the same way
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ReplyDeleteAfter a lot of thinking, we ended up changing our whole PSA, and I think that was the best choice we made. Doing a project on something we were more interested in and had a strong connection to made the project so much more impactful and so much more of a pleasure to make. We didn’t really use a storyboard, but we knew what we wanted and how we wanted to lay it out. I think we all had an idea of what we wanted the project to look like, and I think at the end, we were all able to achieve this final image. I feel that people watching this will be impacted because of how much of a hold media really has on beauty and this standard of what people need to look like. I feel that people would second-guess magazines, models, and celebrities after seeing our project and think differently of what they are seeing. I feel that we put out a clear product and statement saying that beauty really isn’t what it seems to be, and it doesn’t need to be that way. I feel that since we use everyday people within our project, you can relate more because we aren’t using the typically “beautiful” person. We worked well as a group and all put in our input towards the end. We ended up using most of the interviews that we did together, which I think made the project come together even more as a whole because we all spoke to these people and had to hear what they had to say. I really enjoyed this project and the final result was way more than what I expected. I enjoyed doing the project and the whole editing and seeing what people had to say. This would be a good tool for more media related environmental activism and how is impacts people…. I only wish that it didn’t have to be a minute, because we had so much to show and talk about and we could have done a full length movie with all the interviews we had.
ReplyDeletePSA Reflection:
ReplyDeleteThe PSA was actually a little easier to make than I had anticipated. I expected the video editing to be the hardest part, but surprisingly I only ran into a few glitches. The main problem I ran into was research and finding the clips we wanted to use. I looked at the ones my group sent me, since I did the editing, and the problem was that some of them were not easy to cut from or had good real life texting and driving footage; they are related to texting and driving, but sometimes the actual footage just wasn’t good. We also ran into a lot of trouble finding information on number of deaths and accidents. A lot of the stuff we found was just cell phone use in general and the facts varied per website, we tried to take an average, but it was still tough.
The storyboarding at first was tricky, because our plan at first was to make a PSA that was just related to cell phones and how some people are rude and are always texting, however we switched it slightly last minute and replanned our storyboard. In the span of about two minutes we had a simple storyboard for texting and driving the sounded effective. The scripting was fine, hard to find the research but what we found works and we believe is effective.
Our group worked well together. I did most of the editing and less of the actual research. I searched for facts and footage, but in terms of the initial planning I was not as much of a key member. Amber and Sarah did most of the initial research and planning, which was good because it gave me a strong base to work with for the editing. I then researched more footage and facts to work with, but overall it would have taken a long time to edit and put together without the strong base they gave me. Overall, we worked well together.
I believe that our PSA is very effective. I have showed it to at least 10 different people in my dorm to get their opinions, because in the end the best source for me to edit it and fix it is actual audiences, what works what doesn’t. Everyone felt it was very strong, powerful, deep, and heart-wrenching. I think it stuck with them. Some people commented that they didn’t know it was the same as driving drunk or that half of teenagers do it. This was a good sign because it showed they took something in and it was effective. People also really liked the song and how that flowed well, because it was catching and sets a good tone for the PSA. I also didn’t plan this, but time-wise the music goes in perfectly, especially when the chorus starts up. I believe our film is an effective tool for environmental activism because it seems to be remember and if played enough it will hopefully stick in ones brain. People may say they aren’t affected by advertising but after seeing crashes and facts about texting and driving they may think twice next time they drive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnrmD1gLK80