Grades 6-12 Public Service Announcement (PSA) Contest
This contest is open to all grades 6 - 12 students in the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts.
**Click
Here for the parental release
form (word document)
A Public Service Announcement (a PSA)
is, in essence, a video commercial
designed to raise awareness or change attitudes, rather than to sell a product.
Examples of previous Public Service Announcements are those that promote
buckling your seat belt in a car (the Click it or Ticket television campaign)
or
those designed to discourage drug use in teens (the This Is Your Brain On
Drugs campaign).
The Contest Guidelines are below. Students in schools should
form groups of
students (size is flexible, but we will not accept an entry from extremely large
groups, such as hundreds of students), and those groups should together
produce a Public Service Announcement video. That production must be
designed to raise awareness and improve other teenagers attitudes around the
issues of aggression and bullying in school.
Within the guidelines below, content may be anything that
students consider
would be effective in raising awareness about bullying and aggression among
teens. Student production groups might consider, as suggestions, the following
questions: What is bullying and why does it happen? What can be done about it?
Who can you turn to when you are bullied?
At this time, funding permitting, we plan to offer the FIRST-PLACE winning team
a limousine to escort them to the Awards Ceremony. Winning schools,
supervising adults, and others are welcome and the students families will also
be
invited.
Contest Guidelines
1. The video must be produced, written, and acted in by
students.
2. The student group producing the video must be under the
supervision of a
teacher, coordinator, guidance counselor, theater teacher, or
other adult in
the student groups school. The supervisor may be a volunteer
adult (e.g.,
a parent from the community) if the school authorizes the
project.
3. The PSA/video may be in digital or analog format. It may
be submitted on
video tape or DVD, or may be made available on a school-run
website
where we can view it for judging purposes.
4. The PSA/video must run between approximately 30 and 45
seconds.
5. Content must be appropriate for all audiences. Submissions
will be
disqualified if they contain:
a. Obscenities of any type;
b. Inappropriate or offensive
language of any type, including racial,
ethnic, or group slurs;
c. Nudity;
d. Sexual innuendo, sexual content,
sexually suggestive filming
techniques; or
e. Any other content which the judges
decide is inappropriate for a
school contest.
6. Parental releases (found below) must be obtained for every
student
under age 18 who is immediately
involved in the production. People
who do not play a vital role do not need them. (For example, students who
help run a school television studio
but only assist in this particular
production tangentially would not be
part of the winning team and
therefore do not need releases; but
anyone who speaks on camera or
anyone who is actively involved in
the production must have a parental
release.) The parental release is
necessary because the winners names
will be released to the press and
their PSA/video may be aired on cable or
network television.
7. Productions must be turned into MARC by February 15th,
2008.
Submissions should be sent to: PSA
Contest, Massachusetts Aggression
Reduction Center, Bridgewater State
College, Bridgewater, MA 02325.
(Please take care to package DVDs and
videotapes appropriately.
PSA/videos may also be posted on a
school website for judging; in that
case we only need the appropriate
link.)
This contest is open to any 6th thru
12th grader in the state of Massachusetts.
** WINNING PSAS FROM LAST YEAR MAY BE VIEWED ON THE MARC
WEBSITE***
Last Modified: October 25, 2007
