AU students win Telly Award for their anti-vaping PSA video

Staff report

Communication seniors Ana Winters and Madison Broadwater have won a Telly Award for their public service announcement video about vaping.

Winters and Broadwater’s video, titled “Lungs of Rubber,” took home bronze in the general student category. Other winners were from the University of Tennessee and the University of Denver.

Winters is grateful for the award.

“Winning this award means a lot to both Madison and me because we put so much creativity and effort into our PSA,” she said. “We hoped our message would be impactful, so it's exciting to see that it was so well received.”

Arthur Takahashi, an adjunct in communication and political science, advised Winters and Broadwater, who made the video in the Audiovisual Media Production (COMM 3030) class that Takahashi teaches. They also had editorial support from Kalpana Ramgopal, who works in AU’s Center for Instructional Innovation. Takahashi also works in CII.

"Madison and Ana produced the most creative PSA I have seen in COMM 3030,” Takahashi said. “They came up with a unique idea and spent a lot of time and resources to pull it off. I am proud of what they have accomplished, but most importantly I appreciate the amount of effort they put into this project and the many revisions they went through to produce this award-winning PSA.”

Winters said she and Broadwater already had good chemistry before they began creating the video.

“Since we were already friends before working on the project, we knew each other's strengths when it came to filming, editing and creating content, which made collaborating really easy and enjoyable,” Winters said.” The idea came from a presentation we saw in class about a high school athlete who became the first person to receive a double lung transplant due to vaping. His doctor described his lungs as looking like 'tire rubber,' and that statement really stuck with us. From that moment, we knew we wanted to create a project that would show the serious consequences of vaping in a memorable way.”

The COMM 3030 class where the film was produced pairs students who work on a 30-second PSA each semester in coordination with Maryclaire Regan of the Georgia Cancer Center. Regan is the community program coordinator for the Georgia Cancer Center.

Students like Winters and Broadwater pitch their story ideas, film the scenes and then edit a final product. The videos are presented to the class and a panel of judges with professional expertise in visual communication. Various awards are given, with an overall excellence award to the top video.

The students choose where they shoot the videos, and Winters and Broadwater did their shooting at an Augusta-area tire store. They noted that made a huge difference in how well the video turned out.

Each semester, Regan works with the Audiovisual Media Production class to produce the 30-second PSAs based on current campaigns for the Georgia Cancer Center. This program began in 2013, and over the years AU students have won Telly Awards for their videos on several occasions.

Below is a link to Winters and Broadwater’s bronze-winning video.

Note: At the top of the page, Madison Broadwater (L) and Ana Winters completed their project for the Georgia Cancer Center in AU’s Audiovisual Media Production (COMM 3030) class taught by adjunct professor Arthur Takahashi. (photo courtesy of Ana Winters for the Bell Ringer)