reacting to shocking british psas

Viewers told me British public service announcements were wild, and they were not exaggerating. I started with a compilation of frightening old public information films, then moved through some other recommendations. As a Canadian, I’d never seen these particular films before.

What stood out was how direct they were. Rather than hinting that something bad might happen, several showed the consequence of the behaviour they were warning about. I could understand the message while still being shocked by how it had been delivered, and sometimes the way it was made distracted me from the point.

The water warning gave me goosebumps

The first film used a sinister figure calling himself the spirit of dark and lonely water. I compared him to the Grim Reaper. He talked about trapping children who were showing off or not paying attention around water, including places that didn’t look especially threatening.

I thought the warning made sense. A spooky lake might already feel frightening, but a pond or river where you’re hanging out with friends can seem more ordinary. The film was making that distinction in the scariest possible way, and I had goosebumps. I couldn’t imagine seeing that figure as a child without being frightened.

There wasn’t much left to the imagination

Another film had children going into an electricity substation to retrieve a toy. It ended with a report that a boy had been killed and a warning to keep away. I understood what the film was trying to communicate: the toy wasn’t worth the risk.

The way it put that across was particularly blunt. It didn’t leave the terrible result somewhere off screen for viewers to work out later. Watching these films, I kept coming back to how visceral and direct they were. The message and the consequence were right there.

A cartoon noise changed the anti-speeding film

One of the recommended clips was labelled as an Irish anti-speeding PSA. In it, a driver lost control and a car hit a group of children. The scene was terrifying, sad and shocking, but then there was the sound effect.

To me, it sounded like a cartoon splat. I couldn’t believe that was the noise they’d chosen for such a horrifying event. Without sound, I thought the film communicated its warning clearly. Adding that squishing effect made an already over-the-top scene seem ridiculous, to the point of making people laugh at something that was meant to frighten them.

I wasn’t laughing because I thought the children being hit was funny. It was the contrast between that scene and the cartoon-like noise that I couldn’t get over. If I’d been searching for that effect as an editor, I’d have looked for a royalty-free cartoon splat. It felt completely at odds with the seriousness of what was happening.

Broken glass didn’t need to show the injury

A short film about broken glass on a beach made its point much more simply. I worked out what the warning was about before it finished, and it didn’t even need to show a child actually stepping on the glass for me to imagine how horrible that would be.

That reminded me of a horror film where someone steps on a nail. The thought was enough to give me the painful sensation. It was direct and to the point without needing the same kind of explicit consequence as some of the earlier films.

Frightening and effective weren’t quite the same thing

A later fire-safety animation felt much milder. It looked like a children’s film and ended with a warning about lighters and matches, but I didn’t think it had any of the force of the earlier examples. I didn’t like it, and it certainly didn’t scare me. After what I’d just watched, it felt as though very little had happened.

The stroke-awareness campaign was different again. It used a fire comparison and gave viewers a way to remember the warning signs. I always forgot the acronym, so I thought this was something I needed reminding of. It spooked me, and I didn’t want the woman in the film to die, but it also gave a clear message.

I gave that one about eight out of ten. It wasn’t the scariest thing I’d seen, but I thought it was effective, which was the word I’d been looking for. The water film had frightened me, the cartoon sound had distracted me, and this one combined being unsettling with giving information I could follow.

Watch my full reaction to the public information films.