Train Safety PSA - ID# 547
Maine West
Public Service Announcement
Entry Description
This is a PSA about safety and being distracted while near trains.
Copyright Info
Recent Teacher Comments
- 4/30 2:27 pm - The visual layout of the text bubbles feels a bit scattered at times, occasionally blocking the main actor and making key moments harder to see. The upbeat music initially sets a tone that seems like it will lead in a different direction, which creates an interesting contrast. A strong creative choice was cutting the audio right as the train impact approaches, which adds tension effectively. The closing factual text also works well as a clear and impactful finish. Overall, nice work.
- 4/29 11:56 am - Nice job overall. This was really effective, particularly with the music and the character never looking up, it created an ominous feeling that something was going to happen. In particular, the impact of the music bed going silent was fantastic. Your texting worked really well, though it could be a bit larger to ensure someone could read everything and hit the point of the "emptiness" of the non-response. Keep up the great work!
Judge 1
Positives: The camera movement allowed the viewer to be a part of the scene, moving along with the main character. The dramatic music cut and hard cut transition convey a level of importance to the videos message.
Improvements: A nice to touch elevate the piece would have been to motion track the text bubbles to the person walking/the phone. The text bubbles were hard to read and could have used less text on screen. The use of lighting and color correction could have been used to help convey the mood and environment better.
Judge 2
Positives: The thing I liked the most about this PSA is that while it is explicitly about being safe around trains, it implicitly doubles as a PSA about how phones are a dangerous distraction. Nice job on the 2 for 1. The variety of angles was nicely done, especially the over the shoulder shot that brought the ear buds more prominently framed was a good touch at reinforcing the message and emphasized how the main character was looking down at their phone instead of being aware of their surroundings.
Improvements: A change that would help this would be to start with the actor putting in their ear buds, and having the audio change from natural sound to music. It could allow a little fore foreshadowing if you had the sound of a train approaching in the nat sound that get drowned out by the music. Another improvement would be the placement of the text messages. The opening shot the text is covering the main character, which I found distracting. Now… if the placement was supposed to be distracting (i.e. the message of the PSA don’t be distracted), then it should’ve been more obvious. Also a could be fun to shoot and think through how to frame up each shot and where you could place a text message bubble that covers something in the real world that the character should be paying attention to. Maybe have the “. . .” cover up the blinking red lights?
Judge 3
Positives: I'm a fan of the shot cutting to black to leave the mom's text "I love you" in frame to really emphasize the sense of loss when not paying attention at a train station.
Improvements: The song choice doesn't quite match the seriousness of the message, unless this choice is intentional to support the surprise of the subject getting hit by a train. The text bubbles are also very hard to read. There's a risk in all these artistic decisions running a bit comedic, unless that is your intention.
Judge 4
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Judge 5
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