The Culture That Hurts - ID# 111
Homewood-Flossmoor
Division: A
Public Service Announcement
Entry Description
PSA for violence.
Recent Teacher Comments
- 3/13 11:05 am - Good audio balance & choice of music bed.
- 3/13 11:04 am - Story would benefit from more shot variety. Even just a different angle would help to maintain interest, rather than a single shot of a talking head. A 2-camera shoot would have been great for this. A change of angle would give more impact to some of her more powerful words.
- 3/13 11:03 am - The side text at :20 needs to be on screen longer to be read, and perhaps a bit larger. Text is more powerful when smaller pieces are revealed at a time, as opposed to a long paragraph all at once. The Resource Hotline should be listed as a separate text element to increase the impact and visibility.
- 3/13 11:02 am - First-person account is very engaging. Good definition of 'Rape Culture'--those two words could be bigger than the definition to give them impact on screen. They're powerful words.
- 3/12 11:01 pm - Positives: I love the topic and the strength of the girl being interviewed. Her message is powerful and, unfortunately, all too familiar. The simplicity of the message is powerful. The framed shot is well done and the added shot of her looking stoic is a nice touch. The audio is very well mixed and the music is well chosen. Improvements: I think inter cutting her interview with broll of the school building, people in the hallways, etc. would have added some flavor to the piece. When your titles appear on screen, make sure they use proper punctuation. Each sentence needed a period at the end. I also think a different voice was necessary to read the ending message. Most of your audience won't read that part and that's what you want them to take away from the whole PSA. All in all, it was a decent PSA, but more layers and nuance were needed to finish its important message.
- 3/3 10:07 am - Positives: Great topic for high school. Nice direction you gave people at the end. The actress seemed sincere. It felt like she was telling her story.
- 3/3 10:07 am - Improvements: If you are going to have her talk the whole time, then you need to keep us interested. You could change the shot from medium to close; add a secondary shot on a track; change angle. For the text, it needed to be a stronger font and be larger than it was. It came in and wasn't aligned that well. Find those key statements and reinforce it more. Lastly, have her read that last statement. When you ask the viewer to read the most important statement at the end, you risk losing them
Judge 1
Positives: The testimonial was good. Good, clear sound and easy to understand. The lighting was nice and the white back round worked well.
Improvements: After you establish this girl talking at the beginning, put in some cutaway video. Example, when she talks about being inappropriately touched in the hallway, cut to a POV slo-mo shot walking through the hallway in between classes. Also, once you've established that it's this girl talking, you could cut to her standing against a locker and watching people as they walk by and mix in other shots of like her feet standing there while you see other feet walking by or an extreme close up of her eyes as she is watching others walk by. When you show her doing things that everyone does as you hear her testimonial it makes her and her story much more relatable. Otherwise you just see her talking and while you feel bad for her because of what she is saying, you don't really relate to her.
Judge 2
Positives:
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Judge 3
Positives: An honest testimonial really makes your message direct and clear. Addressing the camera speaks directly to the viewer.
Improvements: Not much shot variety here. I like how to cut to a different shot of her at one point, but it needs more of that. You could have edited her testimonial down to omit a few awkward pauses and phrases, especially if you had a few other b-roll shots to cut to. The real substance of what she's saying would probably fit effectively in 45 seconds.
Judge 4
Positives:
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