A four-year-old boy sticks his small feet into his father’s brown work shoes, large enough to wear on his head. He shakily tries to walk, giggling and tripping inside a pair of shoes ten sizes too big for him. The screen fades to black and a message appears: Millions of moments like these will be taken away. This message is replaced by a final warning: Tobacco is still killing 1 in 5 Americans. 

Commercials like these are aired on television nationwide, not to sell, but to save. Called “Public Service Announcements,” they are only a couple of minutes long, but still reach millions of viewers around the country every day. Now at PHS, sophomores are picking up a camera and trying their hands with their own PSAs.

“A PSA is a short film that must be concise and persuasive to a particular audience about a particular message,” sophomore English teacher Debora Hill said. “The best ones appeal to our emotions – they can make us laugh or they can make us shocked. Also, they have a call to action, like something that people can do or a place they can go for information.”

These 30-second films are what’s come of the evolution of the sophomore Media Project, also known as the Documentary project.

“There are all kinds of ways to give persuasive messages beyond just the documentary format,” Hill said. “Ms. Foster and I have been working on the project, really streamlining it, so it emphasizes the skills that we think are important for our students to learn.”

“I love it so far,” sophomore Maura Phillips said. “I feel like this is what school should be like. It’s engaging, it’s using different kinds of media, it’s incorporating different ideas and styles. It’s not just about memorization.”

Mirroring new Common Core standards, Hill believes in the importance of maintaining a connection with the use of media in school learning.

“It’s a multimedia world,” Hill said. “If we are responsible teachers we should teach our students to both be critical of media messages and be able to create them as well.”

Because of the new form of presentation, students have been able to go beyond the usual persuasive essay.

“It offers a lot of different ways to interpret the same message,” Phillips said.  “We’re doing consent [for our topic] and I think that could be interpreted in so many different ways depending on the media. I think it’s important, the way you convey what you’re trying to say.”

Most of today’s widely discussed topics are being covered, such as bullying, drunk driving,  feminism, consent, misconceptions of ethnicities, and starting school later, but some unusual topics are being talked about as well, including the importance of reading, misconceptions of teenagers, water conservation, paper waste, and even discrimination of students who choose to not drink or party.

Sophomore Josh Landheer is working on a PSA about teen drinking and is using multiple forms of media to create his message.

“We are using a song about teen drinking and showing how the media glorifies it,” Landheer said. “I am really excited to see how it all comes together and how it compares to other groups with the same topic.”

“Something that’s different about this project from other film projects that we’ve done is that it’s real. It’s a message that the student believes is important for the community to hear,” Hill said.

Reaction to the new project has not all been positive.

“I think it lacks a bit of direction,” sophomore B.D. Schwarz said. “We aren’t really given enough space to work with it. If we were given maybe a minute instead of thirty seconds it would be much easier for us to conceptualize the project.”

Conceptualizing the project has indeed been tough for students.

The project must be between 20 and 40 seconds long, though according to Hill, PSA’s are often that short, based on the traditional airtime of TV commercials.

“It’s amazing the amount of impact you can have in such a short amount of time,” Hill said. “It may seem easier than making an entire documentary, but not necessarily. Ms. Foster and I like it that way. !t requires some skills and critical thinking. You really have to hone in on the message.”

During the portion of Day on the Green dedicated to service learning, the sophomores will be in the Alan Harvey Theater, viewing selected PSA’s and voting on the top creations.

“I’m excited to see our final product,” Phillips said. “I have such a clear vision of how it should turn out. I really hope that it does turn out well.”