Judging Criteria

All PSA submissions must be submitted by March 18, 2009.

Juding criteria will be based on clarity of message and quality of craft for both categories: 18 & younger and 19 & older. Each judge will be asked to give each entry a score from 1 (weak) to 7 (strong). Judges will respond to the following questions:

Message (worth 70 percent)

1. Is it clear to you on first viewing what the message of this piece is? (36 percent)
2. Is the message stated effectively? (34 percent)

Craft excellence (worth 30 percent)

1. What is the overall quality of cinematography? Are the shots properly exposed, well-framed and well-lit? (11 percent)
2. What is the overall quality of sound? How clearly intelligible is dialog and/or voiceover? Are all elements of the sound mix well-balanced with each other? (10 percent)
3. Are shots cut and audio cues arranged to produce a piece whose pace is in proportion to its overall duration? (9 percent)

Each judge’s scores will be added to produce his or rating of that entry from 0 percent to 100 percent. All judges’ scores for each entry will be averaged to produce an overall rating. The entrant with the highest score will be deamed the winner.

In the unlikely event that two entries achieve equal rating, priority will be given to the entry with the higher score on message.