Courtney Becker, Megan Crowley, and Madeline Weinberger

Dr. Erin McLaughlin

Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric

November 2, 2015

Walkers: Get Out of the Way

When our group first came together to discuss what the subject of our PSA would be, we

all very quickly gravitated toward using a Horatian approach to discuss the many bikers on

campus. We first went through each of our lists of potential topics, but throughout the discussion

we consistently leaned toward poking fun at bikers. None of us bike to our classes, and have

each experienced frustration at one point or another with someone riding a bike. One story about

a bike collision particularly stood out. A couple of weeks ago, a girl was riding her bike down

the middle of a path another group of girls was crossing. Instead of moving, slowing down, or

just stopping, the biker continued on her chosen path, briefly ringing her bell at an attempt to

alert the girls that she was coming. When the two collided, the biker flew over the handlebars

and hurt herself, and blamed the girl walking by, who hadn’t seen the biker approaching, for the

accident. As a group, we thought it was interesting that people thought the girl on the bike had

the right of way in this situation instead of the girl walking by, and decided to focus on what we

perceive to be the issue of biker privilege.

Once we decided on our topic, we discussed how to approach the subject in our PSA. We

all liked the idea of using certain aspects of the juvenalian rape PSA, but in a much more fun and

lighthearted way. Victim blaming was one of the most significant aspects of the juvenalian PSA

we incorporated into our own PSA. In fact, our entire PSA centered on the idea that walkers are

at fault if they get hit by bikers, when in reality the bikers are the ones who should be most aware

of their surroundings. We also decided to use many of the comedic aspects of the Horatian PSA,

such as physical comedy, which is on display when a walker dives out of the way of a biker on

the path. Additionally, we wanted to play up some of the more traditional aspects of serious

PSAs, so we decided to shoot the narrator in front of a plain background, play somber music in

the background at the beginning and end of the video, and film interviews with people other than

the narrator in front of the Golden Dome, an iconic Notre Dame interview spot on campus.

While writing the script and storyboard, we had bikers in mind as the intended audience

and wanted to make it clear that our praise of bikers and derogatory tone toward walkers is

meant sarcastically. We achieved this by adding in several lines of exaggeration, as well as

responding to a very reasonable counterargument in a very unreasonable way. We say that

instead of holding bikers responsible for crashes, walkers should watch where they’re going

because the bikers may be traveling at such high speeds that they can’t see their surroundings or

completing other tasks as they ride, causing them to lose control of their steering abilities. Most

people watching our video would understand that this is a ridiculous argument and that in each of

those situations, if a crash were to occur, the biker would be at fault. We hoped that if a biker

were to watch our PSA, he or she would listen to these arguments and realize that expecting

someone walking by to dive out of the way of an irresponsible biker is unfair, and that he or she

should be more conscious of his or her surroundings while biking. We also stuck to a traditional

PSA format during the writing process by interspersing interviews with a biker amongst the

narrator’s dialogue, making the situation seem more desperate than it actually is, and reporting

made up statistics to the audience in an attempt to make our argument seem stronger than it

actually is.

Our biggest problem during filming was the weather on the day we shot our outdoor

footage. It was a very windy and slightly rainy day, so it is much more difficult to hear Madeline

during her dialogue outside than it is to hear Courtney when she is speaking in the One Button

Studio. Even though Madeline was speaking very loudly during her scenes, she is partially

drowned out by the sound of the wind. Because of the subject of our PSA and the script we

wrote, we couldn’t get any footage over fall break so we had to shoot everything when we

returned, and since our schedules are so different, the windy day was the only day that worked

for all of us to get together to film. The problem with the windy background noise was

unavoidable. In addition to the wind problem, though, the microphone on the iPad isn’t as high

quality as the one used in the One Button Studio, so even without the wind it would most likely

still be difficult to hear Madeline speaking during her scenes. The volume difference during

filming made the transitions between narration and interviews, or interviews and music, more

jarring because Madeline’s dialogue seems so much quieter than the noise throughout the rest of

the video.

Aside from the lower volume, the iPad footage created some other editing problems when

we put together the video. To better fit everything we had wanted to fit into the frame, we had

shot the iPad footage vertically. When we loaded the clips onto WeVideo, however, we found

that the footage did not fill the screen, which was something we hadn’t foreseen. We fit the clips

to the screen to fix this problem, filling the screen while cutting off large parts of the shot, such

as the top of the Golden Dome in the interview shots taken on God Quad, and making the

footage very pixelated and grainy. The shot where this is the biggest problem is the one of the

person riding his bike through South Quad as he zips up his jacket and swerves because he has

taken his hands off the handlebars. In the original version, his hands coming off the handlebars to

zip his jacket and his subsequent swerve are very clear, but they became less so when we edited

the clip into the PSA. This disappointed us because the moment fits into our argument very well,

but in the end we decided that the more pixelated version of the shot was actually more

aesthetically pleasing than the smaller, vertical version of the shot.

We added music to the PSA once we were done editing the video because “Musical

notation and performance constitute a symbol system, one that employs roles, markings, sound,

key, harmony and rhythm to communicate meanings” (Herrick 6). The slow, somber music that

opens and closes our video enhances the faux-seriousness of the PSA. We took a classic PSA

technique, using a sad piece of music to convey the magnitude of a problem, and poked fun at

the supposed problem the video addresses. The jaunty, fast music underscoring the sped-up bike

ride from Badin Hall to South Dining Hall highlights the ridiculousness of the biker’s decision to

bike from her dorm to the dining hall, which is located directly across the path. Finally, we chose

to play reverent music alongside the clip of the “new bikers of the day,” because we felt it

conveyed the message that the bikers at Notre Dame are esteemed and privileged members of

society, but in a way that again pointed out the absurdity of this idea.

We do believe that our PSA can be labeled as satire because “The satirist is not content

with the world as it is; or more precisely, he is not content with the world as it is; or, more

precisely, he is not content with certain things in it, which to him seem black. In his attack he

blackens them yet further, in the hope that after blushing with due shame they will turn white”

(Ziv 40). We think that the treatment of pedestrians by bikers on campus is black, and blackened

it further in our video by exaggerating the behaviors and opinions of students who bike at Notre

Dame. We hope that the video causes some bikers to be embarrassed at the exaggerated behavior

on display in the PSA and pay more attention to walkers in the future (Ziv 40).

Works Cited

Herrick, James A. "An Overview of Rhetoric." The History and Theory of Rhetoric. 2nd ed.

Boston: Allyn and Beacon, 2001. N. pag. Print.

Ziv, Avner. "The Social Function of Humor in Interpersonal Relationships." Soc Society 47.1

(2009): 11-18. Print.