1. PSA VIDEO PRODUCTION
SESSION 1: PRE-PRODUCTION
Sean Cordes
Justin Georges
Malpass Library Instruction 2012
http://wiu.libguides.com/psaworkshop

2. What are public service announcements
and what is their function?
How many of these phrases ring a bell?
"This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.
Any"Friends is learn afriends drive drunk.“
"A mind don't let lot from a waste."
"You could a terrible thing to dummy."
questions?"

3. Purpose of the lesson
Whether you have experience with viewing PSA’s and
creating them, this lesson will discuss the function of PSA’s
and how they have helped to raise awareness on different
topics
After review of this lesson, you will be able to:
• Recognize the elements and purpose of PSAs
• Recognize how to identify key scenes and characters
• Recognize how to outline a PSA
• Recall the storyboarding process
• Recall the script writing process

4. PSA Definition
• PSAs are messages in the public interest disseminated by the
media without charge, with the objective of raising
awareness, changing public attitudes and behavior towards
a social issue.
• Public service announcements, or PSA's, are short messages
produced on film, videotape, DVD, CD, audiotape, or as a
computer file and given to radio and television stations.
• The most common topics of PSAs are health and safety
• A typical PSA is part of a public awareness campaign to inform
or educate the public about an issue such as obesity or
compulsive gambling. The range of possible topics has
expanded over time.
• It was much harder before to get message out, but now its
much easier with YouTube to self publish a PSA.
• PSA’s are often controversial or about controversial issues

5. The PSA Design Process
What steps go into making a PSA video?
goo.gl/4yAh7
These are the parts of the PSA design process:
• Select a PSA topic
• Determine goal of PSA
• Determine target audience
• Identify key scenes and characters
• Outline the PSA
• Storyboard
• Write Script
• Audio Production
• Video production
• Post-production
• Share a video via the web
• Produce a video DVD

6. What do you know already?
Lets work in groups
Think about what types of PSA’s you’ve seen in the past.
Select one that interests your group and why?
Use example PSA’s from LibGuide
Present PSA to the class

7. Are you ready to start planning your PSA
video?
This part of the lesson will help you identify elements of
video pre-production including:
• Determine what your subject is
• Determining the goal
• Determining the target audience
• Outlining
• Scripting
• Assigning roles
• Practicing the script

8. Determining the Subject & Goal
• What issue are you speaking about?
• Have a group discussion about what issues
are important to you
• Ask yourself reflecting questions:
• What do you want it to accomplish? Once you
know the goal, then you can figure out how the
PSA can achieve it.
• Why is this important?

9. Determining the Target Audience
• Who is this aimed at?
• What type of people are you hoping to reach
through your PSA?
• This will help you focus in both your desired
media outlets, and also upon your PSA content.
• How will this message help them?

10. Goal and Target Audience Example
Texting and Driving Prevention
Goal: Convey the message that
texting while driving isn’t
multitasking, it’s essentially
driving blind.
Target audience: This campaign targets young adult drivers
with a focus on texting and driving prevention. Young adults
live in a connected world where multitasking is the norm.
This manifests in the car where they recognize texting and
driving is dangerous, but do it anyway.

11. Some more tips
• Questions to think about when determining goal:
• Your first question must be, “Is this message important enough to
broadcast?”
• Your second question must be, “Is this message relevant to the
broadcast audience?”
• Deliver one core message
• Use clarity-communicate well
• Decide how controversial you want to be
• Keep it simple
Lets work in groups on the subject, goal and target
audience worksheet located in LibGuides
Refer to “Step 1: Subject-Roots and Shoots”

12. Planning the outline
• Choose points to focus on.
• Identify key scenes and characters
• Don't overload the viewer with too many different
messages.
• Make it interesting-Use a catch phrase and hooks
• Discuss with your group how you would like to
produce your videos.
• People speaking about the subject, a skit, or record
voices to be played with images and video.
• Get an idea of what media will need created

13. Gather Information
• Pull information from sources that address the leading
questions.
• Keep track of sources
• .org, .edu, .gov sites can be very useful
• Example [your term here] site:org
• Check your facts. It's extremely important for your PSA to
be accurate.
• Is the information up to date?
Lets work on gathering some information
Refer to “Step 2: Notes-Roots & Shoots”

14. Writing the outline
• Not word-for-word narration, but only the summary content
of the narration.
• Decide location or setting
• Decide style: Interview, Documentary, Man-on-the-street,
Flashback, Talk Show, News, Training, Advertisement,
Infomercial
• Decide tone: Humorous, Serious, Light-hearted, Matter-of-
fact, Sad, Mad
• Keep the length in mind! Can you do everything in 30 secs?
60 secs?
Write Outline-group activity use outline worksheet in Libguide
Organize your notes (see Roots and Shots Step 4)

15. Storyboard if necessary
• Create a sequence of drawings and directions that
represent your PSA topic
• Shot log-what type of shot
needed

16. Write Script
• Create a 30-60 second script of the spoken dialog
• Can write 2-column script-see example
• Use Real language
• Don’t have to have a lot of dialogue
• Only narrator dialogue?
• Use Emotion
• Make it personally relatable
• Practice Script prior to next session
• Assign Voice and acting roles
Length of PSA 10 seconds 15 seconds 20 seconds 30 seconds
Number of Words 20-25 words 30-35 words 40-50 words 60-75 words
Refer to “Step 5: Script-Roots & Shoots”

17. Things to think about for next time
Gather Media
• Need a completed script
• Identify images, video and music to be included in video
(royalty free? write down sources)
• Get an idea of what media will need created
• Make a shot list what shots will be taken
• Medium range, long range, etc
• Bring flash drive
• Checklist and additional resources (Step 6: Roots and
Shoots)
• We’ll start video development process (iMovie, etc)