The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, based in Plymouth, MA had a dilemma. They had hours and hours of footage of whales and dolphins, and the challenges these mammals face each day in order to survive, but no way to get this footage made into a public service announcement to advance their cause.
No way, that is, until they contacted the Communication department at Curry College.
It just so happened that the course, Digital Documentary and Moviemaking, was scheduled to run for the Spring semester and the professor, Jerry Gibbs, was looking for a project to get students used to advanced editing and scriptwriting, prior to film and documentary projects later in the semester.
Soon members of WDSC were gathering their materials and heading to one of Prof. Gibbs's first classes of the semester. "They were our clients," Prof. Gibbs said. "The students quizzed them on the type of PSA they wanted to create and then crafted their scripts and messages around those ideas."
In the weeks that followed the class broke off into groups to log the footage, write the script and then edit the final :30 and :60 PSA versions.
The clients then came back to watch the finished pieces to see if any of the student PSAs could become their new ad for their national campaign. And their response was overwhelmingly positive!
The final versions of the PSAs will be completed in mid-May and sometime over the summer they could start to be seen on local and national television stations.
"From whale hunting, fishing line entanglements, water pollution and dolphin slaughter, there are so many things these animals face," said Gibbs. "This really opened the eyes of our students and they can't wait to see how their work might be able to influence public opinion."