Students go behind bars for PSA

LYNN – The images are stark: students behind bars, scared, nervous and in the case of Alfredo Gonzalez, looking up with large puppy dog eyes.But the Lynn English High School students aren’t in lockup, they’re in cages, and it was their own idea.”It was a PSA on dogs,” said Tiffany Caban, 18.”It was about adopting a pet,” explained Esmeralda Bisono, 17.Students in Ken Vorspan’s advanced television production class were charged with shooting public service announcements. Broken up into small groups, the students had to create, script, shoot, act and edit their own PSA.Vorspan said the project is always fun, and when good groups come together, it can be great. Bisono, Gonzalez, Caban and Maite Cardenas made a great team because each brought a particular strength to the project.”Alfredo is really good with the camera, Esme is great at editing, and Tiffany and Maite are really good actresses,” he said.The concept also flowed easily, Cardenas said. The students were tossing around ideas for the project when Caban mentioned she had volunteered at the Northeast Animal Shelter on Highland Street, Vorspan said. Nearly the entire production plan came together from that one conversation.A few weeks later the quartet found themselves at the shelter crawling into cages.In the opening scene, the camera pans down a hallway of dog pens, but instead of seeing puppies behind bars, you see the students.”I was in there 10 minutes, and it didn’t feel right, I wanted out,” said Bisono.Across the bottom of the screen it reads, “If you were locked in a cage all day wouldn’t you want someone to care?” That is followed by a plea to provide homes for pets.Vorspan said he thought the scene with the kids in the cages was the most important part of the project and probably the hardest to carry out.”You’re in your dog cage, you feel funny, kind of embarrassed, maybe, but each of you got it,” he said. “You acted it out, you stayed in the role.”Bisono said the hardest part was deciding what music to use.”We talked about that for two days,” she said.They toyed with the idea of using Canadian singer Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel,” which she sings in a public service announcement for the ASPCA but that was quickly scrapped. Instead they went with an original piece played on piano by Vorspan’s cousin, Marc Nitchum, a New York musician who died last year.”I know he would have liked that,” Vorspan said.Getting the dogs to play their role also proved to be a little tricky. Gonzales said the goal was to shoot the saddest-looking dogs, but every time Caban walked by, they’d perk up, wag their tails and bark happily.”We got one great shot of a puppy who looks happy then drops his head and looks sad. We figured Tiffany must have left the room,” Vorspan said laughing.Bisono admitted it was hard not to be smitten by the dogs, but Caban insisted they were professional, got in, got their shots and left, and all are happy with the almost final project.Vorspan said the PSA isn’t quite finished, but when it is, they will send a copy to Northeast Animal Shelter. It will also be aired on LynnCam on both the local access cable station and the educational station, and they will also air it on the school’s morning news show.”And I think I will put it on YouTube,” he said. “They have a YouTube sort of Emmy Award, maybe I’ll even enter it for that.”