Response to How to make Videos, selection from part 2 and PSA

For my final project, I’m going to be producing a Video Blog (or a “Vlog”) of myself discussing the issue. I think this will be the best way to cap off this course because I don’t think a PSA would work best for my issue. In the reading we had to complete about preparing PSAs, it states that PSAs work best on issues where there are either specific announcements to make, have a clear and easy-to-understand issue or are requesting a very specific action. The Women’s March fit none of these bills, so I decided to go with a video blog.

For example, in the Huffington Post collection of PSAs we had to watch, I was particularly impacted by the friends don’t let friends drunk drive PSA of the two cups crashing into each other and the glass breaking, with the friend’s hand being the only thing that stops the last glass from breaking. This PSA works because the message is simple: “don’t drink and drive”, and there is a clear call to action: “if you see your friends drinking, don’t let them drive”. There is a clear audience. However, for the Women’s March, there is no way a PSA can be produced when the March itself seems confused about its aims and causes.

This was the video that inspired me to do a video blog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96AiJPl4ElY. I would say that it is not one of those channels that I would readily click on if I was browsing youtube on my own, but after i watched it, I thought the host was actually quite brilliant and had a lot of important things to say, and the execution of the vlog was also good.

One of the reasons I think the vlog was successful was because it seemed as though the host had the video scripted out from beginning to the end. The “How to Make Videos” reading talks about this in the section on how important it is to have your videos scripted. The difference between quality vlogs and just talking-head rant videos are that the hosts have a script, or at least a guideline on what they will be saying throughout the video.

Several parts of the “How to Make Videos” reading was important in scripting my Vlog because it reaffirmed a couple of points where I may have erred in producing my podcast. The reading states that often producers, in an effort of sounding balanced, often make the mistake of sounding extremely long-winded. In my podcast, one of the biggest lessons I learned in the editing process was that editing would have been a whole lot easier if I had not tried to pad the questions I was asking Megan. The Vlog that I referenced above does a really good job of discussing the issue without sounding too crass. It pushes the envelope without breaking the envelope.

I am currently in the scripting process of my Vlog but I am unsure yet whether or not the Vlog will be of just me or an exchange between me and a friend discussing the topic of the Women’s March. All I know is that the exchange will have to be heavily scripted if it is going to be just me, but if it is the exchange, I think I’m going to have to go against the reading to allow a little more freedom in the filming process. I am personally a big fan of “Buzzfeed Unsolved”, and the conversational style of the show. I think I’d like for an opportunity to be able to produce this, and I think it would serve better to put some legs below the story.

A PSA would be easy to produce but for such a controversial issue as the Women’s March where so many people have opinions about how effective it was, creating another short “PSA” where all it does is a call for action, will actually detract from the cause than add to it.