Stepping onto the playing field of film, five students from the Albemarle High Advanced Filmmaking class were given the opportunity to create the holiday drunk driving public service announcement commercial for the Albemarle County Police Department in December.
The filming took place at Principal Jay Thomas’ house and the 30 second production aired all through December and stopped in the new year. The PSA features local Virginia actors and creates a message about finding a ride home if you have been drinking.
“Working on a PSA broadened my view of opportunities for filmmaking, as I realized how many organizations must need commercials, PSA’s, etc. filmed,” junior Marie Ungar said. “As a student, it felt really incredible that the police department entrusted this job to us–like ‘the real world’ decided to take our skills and interests seriously.”
The students had already bonded and became a well-organized team prior to the filming date, just through their class time together. When they showed up on-site, they fell into the routine of setting up the cameras and lighting, hooking up the sound, and switching into using the filming language.
With little bumps in the road, such as the cold weather and the wrangling of child actors, the commercial and the extra outtake (to provide the ACPD with another option) were filmed quickly and thoroughly.
“We really got a say in what the final product turned out to be and it gave us an idea of what that experience could be like in a professional environment. Definitely something we should continue doing as part of our Filmmaking class,” junior Lily Casteen said.
Though only five students were on set, the writing and brainstorming was done by the whole class. The advanced filmmaking students spent a day writing their own ideas and then sharing them with the class.
Once the primary objective was picked, they then moved on to squeezing in as much description as they could into the allotted time. The outline was then made and passed on to senior Sarah Luria for the rough draft and then the final. But before all of this, the proposal from the ACPD had to be offered.
“Officer Jeremy Lange [from the ACPD] came to me after hearing that we had a pretty solid filmmaking program at AHS and contacted me about wanting to produce,” filmmaking teacher Trevor Przyuski said, “I really liked how the police gave us creative control of the PSA and trusted us to come up with a concept for the ad.”
This was the first out-of-school experience most of  the crew got as their projects are usually limited to school scenery and school hours. “I enjoyed learning a little bit more about filming professionally and what really goes on behind the scenes,” junior Rachel Gatling said. “It was also nice working with other actors that weren’t just kids from school.” Although the commercial is no longer playing on television, both the aired commercial and an outtake are on YouTube by searching “ACPD PSA #1” (the aired commercial) and “Scrooge You” (the outtake).