Day 5 Lesson - Public Service Announcement Production

 Public Service Announcement Production

Overview

Students synthesize their learning over the past week to create a short public service announcement to re-represent Iran.

 

Learning Objectives

Students delineate what kinds of representations are missing from mainstream media accounts of Iranian identity (what is being omitted from mainstream messages about Iran).

Students become familiar with public service announcements as persuasive and informative tools.

Students learn to brainstorm story ideas and draft a script for their video.

Students learn to storyboard a concept and shoot according to that storyboard.

Students understand the concept of “b-roll”.

Students edit their public service announcements according to their script.

 

Time Required

 6 – 8 hours

 

Materials Needed

Flip cameras

Process

1) Students are asked to free-write for 15 – 20 minutes their thoughts on what they learned throughout the week of the workshop – what were they most surprised to learn? Why do they think such a workshop is an important learning tool and process? 

 

2) Students  share their free-writes and workshop leader lists some of the common themes that emerge from students’ writings (e.g. workshop is good because it shows that Iran is more than just an oppressive nation)

If something emerges from this that can lead to a discussion, workshop leader should allow for discussion to emerge. For example, the day that we did this activity, my students began discussing Iranian memoirs written by women and my co-leader that day, Faeze Woodville, and I saw this as a great opportunity to discuss the book publishing industry and why certain choices are made in terms of how books are advertised. I pulled up various book covers of Iranian memoirs and we deconstructed each one, thinking about the color scheme, the text, the titles of the books, the way the authors’ names were displayed, the nature of the authors’ names themselves, the images used, and associations created on the cover.  We also were able to identify striking similarities among the various covers, titles, and ideas expressed in these covers. Some of the covers we looked at included Prisoner of Tehran: One Woman’s Story of Survival Inside an Iranian Prison; My Life As a Traitor: An Iranian Memoir;  Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran; My Sister, Guard Your Veil, My Brother, Guard Your Eyes;  Persian Girls: A Memoir.

 

3) Students and teacher view several public service announcements in order to have an idea of how to present information in a persuasive and informative way through such a format.

 

4) Students brainstorm what information they would like to include in their public service announcement and from this, students draft a basic storyline.

 

5) Students and workshop leader work together to turn storyline into a storyboard.

 

6) Students plan out and shoot their story according to their storyboard.

 

7) Students locate b-roll (photos, music) online.

 

8) Students edit their film according to their storyboard, including b-roll, credits, and titles.

 

9) PSA is uploaded to the students’ blog, “Stirring Up Identity.”