For my Education class titled, Digital Literacy, one assignment was called the Public Service Announcement. This was my final project/assignment for the year. The main theme of the project was to create a one minute (60 second) Public Service Announcement (PSA). The objective for the PSA was to pick a topic related to an issue of any social concern of our choosing. The PSA could take almost any form of the tools and technologies presented to us throughout the year. The tools including, but not limited to iMovie and StopMotion. The PSA is essentially designed to be an educational commercial about the issue we chose.
To begin the assignment, I had to select a social issue and consider how my video would be a call-to-action to the viewers. The project took about a month long to create and produce. On Wednesday, April 17th my classmates and I showed each other’s our drafts of our PSAs. After feedback and constructive criticism, we were then asked to revise our drafts for the final product. On Monday April 22nd, the class presented our revised and final version of the PSA to the class for grading (30% of our grade for the course). A part of the grading process was to complete a self-evaluation, peer-evaluation, and evaluation from my professor. Verbal feedback was also received from the class.
The following week, the class presented our PSA’s to a group of Agnes Scott faculty and staff for feedback. I overall recieved positive feedback from many of the professors present. I was very proud of my PSA. As an Environmental Science and Sustainability minor, environmental preservation was the social issue I decided to discuss. The format I chose for my PSA was classical music by Validli and only using pictures. The beginning starts off with beautiful images of oceans and waves. I then transition to a man throwing away a water bottle, not recycling it. I then, use fast-almost stop motion speed- to transition between pictures of oceans being covered in waste produced by humans. I liked making my video without a voice over, because I believe the music speaks for itself. The pictures change on the beat of the music for a more dramatic effect. Hearing feedback from my peers, the artistic style I chose with the music matching the pictures was very popular and effective. Even on the last day of class, my peers still talked about how amazing that technique was.
This project was challenging, yet exciting. It was challenging because I had to produce a sixty second video about a broad and complex topic, but that is what made this project fun. I had to challenge myself, explore and research unsettling pictures of land-filled waters, and patience by timing the pictures just right with the music. If I could do this project again, I definitely would. This PSA project allowed me to chose a topic of my choice and explore it in my own creative way.
Attached below is the PSA produced.
