Environmental PSAs bring awareness to SMC

Last Thursday at 7 p.m., Santa Monica College held the "Students For the Environment PSA" series, in which several public service announcements about the environment were submitted by students of all ages.

Amber Katherine, professor of environmental politics at SMC was present in support of David Zucker, a film director who was able to make the PSA presentations possible.

"Students inspire me. I get a lot of good information from them that I don't get from adults and they just know how to say things in different ways. I want to be an inspiration for them as much as they are an inspiration for me," said Zucker. "My goal is to go into schools and talk to different organizations, talk to students, film clubs, art clubs, to inspire them to make a public service announcement. Thirty seconds to a minute, that's all I ask."

Amber Katherine discussed the environment and all the constant abuses the Earth is experiencing due to common carelessness. "There are signs that we are in what some authors are calling the countdown to catastrophe, so what I try to do in my class is empower students… your generation, students in my class are going to be the change-makers and the problem-solvers," Katherine said. "There is limitation to life on Earth. We have limits. On the other hand, our social structures, our values in regards to how we want to live, say that we need growth. We need to grow all the time. We're growing so fast we're exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet, and that's a crisis."

Several young students were present to witness the display of their PSA along with supporting families. Molly Cinnamon, 14, a freshman at Harvard Westlake of Beverly Hills was among one of the young attendees.

"I decided to do an animation because I feel that it brings some severity of the situation that we're in concerning the pollution of our ocean," said Cinnamon. "It really makes the audience members think that our situation is much worse than it is actually portrayed in this film, and it gets some thinking a little bit more as opposed to doing some live action and showing exactly what is happening."

Other submissions included an animated skit from 11-year-old John Kimrey. Kimrey had taken an animation class over the summer, and in the fall he was presented with the project of creating a PSA for the environment in which his work was selected for the event.

Kou Collins, a senior at Santa Monica High School also submitted two PSAs for the series. Collins is an active member of the project Team Marine, which serves to encourage others about conserving water.

For more information on how to get a PSA production evolved, visit projectfoundsound.com or email David Zucker at dz@projectfoundsound.com.