PSA Project
Target Audience: High school students
Message: Drugs can lead to consequences like lack of school performance, financial issues, poor judgment, etc...
Action Step/intended impact: Prevention and awareness of drug abuse
Significance of the issue: Falling into the habit of abusing drugs while in school can have a large impact on your grades and relationships, and therefore your future.
Summary: A homeless man is recognized on the street by an old school friend. Concerned, the friend asks him what happened. The homeless man has a flashback to his days in high school, where he fell into some bad habits and got involved with the wrong people. Afterwards, he replies explaining that he shouldn't have let his friends pressure him into doing drugs.
Self Evaluation: I believe I deserve an A for this project. It had a clear message and showed the consequences if actions were not taken against drug abuse. While not exactly hard hitting emotionally, I'm confident that it will be taken more seriously than most other projects. The PSA was an original idea, and had a non-linear plot that still made sense. Technically the video, while it could have been better, was adequate for the amount of time that we had to complete it. Some of the parts were filmed after school due or into lunch due to the complexity of the project relative to the amount of time that we had. Class time was used efficiently to get as much work done as possible. Going off of school grounds to shoot some scenes added some difficulty with time since my group was unwilling to stay after school to finish the scene, however I feel like it added to the realism of the PSA and was necessary. If I had more time I would have definitely changed the PSA quite a bit. I probably would have done some lighting setups, storyboarded more, and had more scenes with faster cuts instead of less scenes with slower cuts. I would've also redone a lot of the lines, the acting in the PSA was definitely sub-par. Overall, I'm unhappy with the outcome, but that's only due to the lack of time and help I had to complete this project. Considering how much I rushed everything I'm quite proud of it, and while it doesn't meet my personal standards I think it exceeds expectations for this class.