PSA Project Blog Entry #1

What is the role of public service announcements in our media culture? What are some of the topics your group thought of for your PSA? What is your group's plan for your PSA? What role did you play in creating the plan?

Public service announcements play an important role in our media culture. They inform us of different issues that are relevant to what is happening, and give us possible solutions for those issues.

Our main topic that we came up with was texting and driving, because that is a huge issue that we face daily. Although we knew that this subject had already been done, we felt that many people still didn't understand the possible consequences of texting and driving, and that they take it too lightly.

Many texting and driving ads we see today focus on teens, mainly females. We want to make a PSA that will not only target teens, but adults as well. We're planning on comparing texting and driving to various things you wouldn't do behind the wheel. We'll start with humorous things such as letting your dog drive, or driving blindfolded. Then we will move on to more serious things like drinking and driving, and then end with someone texting and driving, and we will show a possible result to texting and driving.

Along with my other group members, I helped in coming up with the initial idea of having texting and driving as our topic. Nobody in our group did one specific thing, we all worked together to come up with the idea, and making it a little bit different than the other ads by comparing it to other things you would never do behind the wheel.

Blog Post # 2

An effective advertisement for me is the commercial for the Magic Bullet. It is effective because although I know that it probably doesn't work, and that I could make all of the same foods without it, the advertisement for it make me want to buy it. The infomercial has many funny cheesy characters that catch my attention, and then they go on to make many foods that look delicious. Advertisements usually relate to a specific audience that would most likely buy their product, and they show this audience how the product would improve their life, and why they need it.

Blog Post #1

I was not in school when MTN came to class on Thursday, but on Tuesday we learned about production. Since I wasn't here on Thursday, and I just found out about our assignment where we choose which clip we're going to critique, so I haven't put much thought into it. I think that I'm going to do a PSA.
Media literacy is important because if you didn't have the ability to analyze certain ads and commercials, you could be easily swayed to think one way or another. By being able to create videos, you can help educate others on a certain issue and make a certain issue known.