PSA Blog

Stay in School PSA

For this video, my group wanted to use the Direct TV-style commercial structure and transform it into a PSA about staying in school. The video would be a slippery slope that showed one girl dropping out of school and it escalating to her waking up in a random place.

In pre-production, my group worked on writing the script for the PSA and began figuring out locations to film each part at. Once we had a script finalized, I began creating storyboards and figuring out the props needed for each scene. After we finished planning the film, we were ready to begin production. My group filmed the video at several locations which made the production of the video take a lot longer than expected. But once we got all the footage from all the locations, we were able to begin editing. Editing was quite simple for this video except we had to add in whip pan transitions to make the flow of the video work. Once the clips were all sequenced, we added a color grade and music and we were finished.

I was the DP for this film. As the DP, I didn't really learn anything new, but I got to spend more time working in the art direction department. For this film, I chose all the costumes and most of the locations and helped figure out all of the props. I am usually only behind the camera or directing for a film so it was fun to do something different.

Through this project, I became more comfortable behind the camera. I haven't been behind the camera on a project in a while since we started working on the feature film and it was enjoyable to get to film something again.

I also became better at project management through this film. My groups PSA required several locations which took a lot of planning to organize. Because of this, my group had to thoroughly create an efficient way to film all these scenes in one day so that we could have the video turned in on time.

If I were to do this project again, I would edit it with different music and work on creating a more similar style pan in all the shots. I believe the music we used was too upbeat and this was because we didn't have a lot of time with editing to carefully select music that would fit. I also wished the pans flowed better together which is something I would want to work on if we did the project again.

I would use all the locations and actors again if I was to recreate this project. I believe all the locations were very different and aesthetically fit the mood of the video. I also believed my dad's voiceover fit the deep voice style we needed very well.

The experiences from this video that I will take into my next project would definitely be wanting to try out other production roles. I'm usually involved in very similar roles on set and trying new things like being an art director or costuming was very enjoyable.

Overall, this project was kind of stressful to work on at the same time as the feature, but I believe my group was able to pull together a good PSA at the same time as working on the feature film.