PSA For Santa Monica History Museum

Production and Post Production On A Digital PSA

Part 1

This Public Service Announcement is shot on a Sony XD CAM and is a project that I started several months ago as a freelance producer for City TV Santa Monica . I got involved through my membership with Women In Film which is a professional organization that is great for networking, learning, growing, and finding friends and opportunity.  I recommend membership to this organization to everyone is is planning to or is working in the entertainment industry. Making PSAs is a great way to help your community and gain experience as a producer or a director.  Keep in mind that because the PSA is a short format that doesn't mean that it is not a professional production that needs high production values. 

Santa Monica History Museum and The Making Of The PSA 

My client is the Santa Monica History Museum and they are located on 7th Street beside the Santa Monica City Library.  The steps to making a PSA for a client are straight forward and much like any other type of a digital production.  As a producer you must plan to meet with the client several times before anything else gets done. Make a form that the client will fill out answering questions for you that you need to understand.  Ask the client what the message of the PSA is and they only get one message.  If the PSA attempts to address more than one then it is doomed to fail.  Find out in your form of questions who the client views as the main audience.  This answer will tell you if you are making a PSA that will speak to children, women, men, what age group and what part of the country or globe do they live in.  Make of list of all the questions you need answered in order to hire a writer for the PSA script.  Ask the client what tone they wish their PSA to have and what key words or phrases they want to be heard and seen. Make sure the client supplies you with any graphics, font, text and information that you will be passing on to the post-production people. 

Based on how the creative brief question are answered your writer will come up with three scripts for you to choose from. Once a script is finalized by the producer and executive producer take that to the client for approval.  Once the script is approved and everyone knows what is to be made it is time to finish up on hiring crew. You will need all the usual crew as you would for any other PSA.  Plan to shoot for two days and if you have one location then you might get it done in one day.  

In my next post I address the post-production process. 

Special thanks to Red Giant and Harry Frank for support with After Effects plug-ins.