Public information film

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Public Information Films (known as PIFs) are a series of government commissioned short films, shown during television advertising breaks in the UK. The US equivalent is the Public Service Announcement (PSAs).

Contents

[edit] Subjects

The films advised the public on what to do in a multitude of situations ranging from crossing the road to surviving a nuclear attack. They are sometimes thought to concern only topics related to safety, but there are PIFs on many other subjects, including animal cruelty, protecting the environment, crime prevention and how to vote in an election or fill in a census form.

Many of these films were aimed at children and were shown during breaks in children's programmes during holidays and at weekends. The general low-budget quality and the infamous static "crackle" before them gave them a Hammer Horror style aura. Some of them were quite terrifying and remained ingrained in the child's psyche well into adulthood. Many of them involved or were narrated by celebrities of the day.

[edit] History

The earliest PIFs were made during the Second World War years and shown in cinemas; many were made by and starred Richard Massingham, an amateur actor who set up Public Relationship Films Ltd when he discovered there was no specialist film company in the area. They were commissioned by the Ministry of Information. After the war PIFs were produced for the Central Office of Information, and again by private contractors which were usually small film companies, such as Richard Taylor Cartoons.

They are still being produced although they are rarely shown in the same frequency as their peak in the 1970s. Some believe modern PIFs are not as hard-hitting as they should be and have suffered due to political correctness. If the messages are not hard-hitting enough then the message can be lost considering older PIFs aimed at children (and adults) relied quite strongly on "scaring them straight" and the message remained with a child right through into adulthood, although recent drink-driving and anti -smoking PIFs have bucked this trend.

Some advertisements and charity appeals have gained the status of honorary PIF among fans, including Cartoon Boy, a 2002 campaign about child abuse produced by the NSPCC, and a 1980s British Gas advertisement about what to do in the event of a gas leak.

PIF's have a nostalgic cult following and a DVD was released in 2001 called Charley Says: The Greatest Public Information Films in the World, comprising the contents of two earlier VHS releases. A sequel was released in 2005.

[edit] Famous public information films

Some famous classic PIFs include:

  • The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water, a terrifying PIF, where the Grim Reaper, (voiced by Donald Pleasence) warns children against the dangers of playing in and around water.
  • The Green Cross Code Man, played by David Prowse who advised children about crossing the road safely. An earlier road safety campaign targeted at children featured the animated squirrel "Tufty", and a Tufty Club for young children was later founded.
  • Protect and Survive, a series of films (never shown) advising the British public on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. They would have been shown constantly on all television channels in the build up to a war. Voiced by Patrick Allen.
  • Joe and Petunia, a series of animated PIFs about a couple whose amazing stupidity caused dangerous problems for everyone around them. They appeared in only four PIFs ("Coastguard", "Water Safety - Flags", "Country Code" and "Worn Tyres"), but their popularity grew so quickly that it was decided to kill them off in the last one. However, they were "resurrected" when "Coastguard" was remade in 2007 with updated references: Petunia is reading Hello and listening to an iPod; Joe wears a Burberry cap and phones the desktop PC-using coastguard on his mobile phone.
  • Alcohol and Water Don't Mix, a PIF about the dangers of swimming whilst inebriated.
  • Play Safe, a 10-minute-long film made in the 1970s warning children about the dangers from pylons, electric substations, overhead power lines and other sources of electricity when playing outdoors, which was divided into short films for placement within commercial breaks.
  • A PIF about fire doors featuring the late Patsy Rowlands as a tea lady in an office building, who wedges open a fire door for her own convenience. A fire starts and spreads rapidly because of the open door, and we see employees escaping from the building, with a soot - blackened Rowlands being offered a cup of tea by a firefighter.
  • Amber Gambler, about the dangers of racing through amber lights before they turn to red.
  • One Minute, with a timer appearing at the bottom of the screen to "count down" the last minute of a little girl's life as she runs out into the road and is hit by a car, because her mother, who calls "I'll be with you in a minute..." was not watching the child properly and didn't see her go outside.
  • Fireworks Safety - Parents, a PIF which pointed out how easy it is for children and teenagers to get hold of dangerous fireworks in the run up to Guy Fawkes Night, asking "Parents - where's your child tonight?" Because of its close up scenes of a child who has been severely injured by fireworks, it was judged to be so graphic that the full length film had a very limited showing and was quickly replaced by a shorter version with no accident scene.
  • Reginald Molehusband, a man who demonstrated the correct way to park safely. His reverse parking was "a public danger", bets were laid on his performance and people came from all round to watch, until the day he got it right - "Well done! Reginald Molehusband, the safest parker in town." This film is now classified as missing and is not in the archives of either the COI or the private company which now owns most of its archive footage, although an audio recording still exists.
  • The Artful Dodger, showing Fagin and the Dodger from Oliver Twist materializing on a modern street and stealing a car.
  • Keep Warm Keep Well, a campaign encouraging the elderly to take extra care of themselves in winter and advising people to keep an eye out for family and friends.
  • Children Watch Us Cross, telling parents to set a good example to children with regard to behaviour on the roads. It features a little boy talking about his family and criticising his parents' road sense, including an incident where his father was nearly run over after deciding to run across a busy main road rather than take the pedestrian subway.
  • Smoker Of The Future, in which an eerie futuristic world is presented along with the first "Natural Born Smoker". He has a large nose "to filter out impurities", extra eyelids to protect his eyes from harmful smoke, small ears (because he doesn't listen), highly evolved index and middle fingers, self-cleaning lungs and is immune to Heart Disease and Thrombosis. A follow up showed what can happen to babies whose mothers smoke during pregnancy.
  • Prams And Pushchairs, an animated PIF showing the dangers of loading shopping onto the handles of a pram or pushchair, leading to the baby in the pram overbalancing and being thrown onto paving-stones. This PIF is particularly memorable for its sketchy, Edvard Munch-style graphics, and a truly terrifying opening and closing echoed scream.
  • Matches, One of the first in a series of awareness campaigns alerting to the dangers of children playing with matches. Noted for its truly distubing premise; A POV camera shot shows someone entering a burned out shell of a house, as the person goes from room to room, you can hear the echoed screams of the family, in particular children, presumably caught in the blaze, crying out. Ending on the shot of an open cupboard (where it seems one of the kids hid to try to evade the flames), the scene burns away depicting the words Please keep matches away from children
  • Help: Pass The Message On, an awareness campaign for a newly commissioned idea, that being a flag a disabled driver could place at the side of their car if it breaks down so that somebody could stop and help them by contacting a breakdown service. However, the initiative was decommissioned shortly afterwards, as the sign proved to be more than adequate at attracting thieves to people who were unable to defend themselves.

Well known animated characters in PIFs have included Augustus Windsock, "the oldest living cyclist in the world", who appeared in two PIFs teaching children about safe cycling; Fanta the elephant, who appeared in a 1960s road safety campaign; and Dusty Kangaroo, a mascot of the Keep Britain Tidy campaign.

[edit] Recent public information films

More recent PIFs, many of which are currently still being shown on British TV, include:

  • A smoke alarm awareness campaign starring Mary Jo Randle, in which a home video is repeatedly played of a little girl opening her Christmas present, a toy giraffe, and saying "Thank you, Mummy". It then becomes apparent that the video is being watched by the grieving mother who didn't own a smoke alarm.
  • Tell Someone, a PIF about bullying, in which different children who are being bullied but are too frightened to tell an adult directly find unique ways to get the message across, such as leaving a note inside an exercise book for the teacher to find, or writing "I'M BEING BULLIED" in the blank spaces of a grandparent's crossword puzzle.
  • Daredevil. A gang of drunken girls on what appears to be a hen night are walking down a street at night by a construction site, whereupon one of them accidentally lets go of her bunch of balloons. Then a dramatic voice says 'Stand back!' and a figure reminiscent of the Marvel Comics character Daredevil comes out of nowhere from among some crowds of observers and starts swinging and climbing acrobatically on the girders to retrieve the balloons - but he loses his grip and falls. Then, just before he hits the ground the dramatic music stops abruptly and it is revealed that 'Daredevil' is just one of the male onelookers under the influence of alcohol. This advert tells viewers that too much alcohol can make you feel you're invincible, whereas, in fact, you are anything but.
  • Know What You're Getting Into, a campaign run in conjunction with the Metropolitan Police, about the dangers of unlicensed minicabs. It shows a group of women putting their drunken friend into an unlicensed minicab, thinking this is the safest way for her to get home, but we then see a close up of her crying and screaming as she is presumably being sexually assaulted by the minicab driver.
  • Golden Girl, a PIF about postal scams with an old woman celebrating the arrival of a golden envelope telling her she has won a large cash prize and must send off a small amount of money in order to be able to claim it (Classic advance fee fraud), but as she goes to post the cheque, a crowd of people with identical envelopes all follow her down the road with the advert climaxing in an ironic musical-style dance routine.
  • Carbon Monoxide - Heaters, created in 1992 after the issue of carbon monoxide poisoning came to national attention when a university student died from it. The PIF shows a young woman who switches on a faulty gas heater and settles down to watch television late at night, by morning she seems to be asleep in her chair but a close up reveals she is dead.
  • A parody of the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, showing "lookalikes" of Dick Van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes and the children taking Chitty for a drive in the countryside (using the real car that appeared in the film), only to be caught by the police and wheel clamped in midair because they didn't pay the road tax. There were initially some complaints about this PIF on the grounds that in the UK, cars registered before 1971 do not have to pay road tax, but it was not withdrawn because the PIF specifically asked drivers to "get" their road tax rather than "pay", and even cars exempt from road tax must obtain a special licence for historic vehicles.
  • Wasted; a PIF in the style of an advert for a fictional dance album called Wasted, warning people about dangers present on islands such as Ibiza, a popular destination for young people. Songs included Hard Cell, accompanied by visuals of a man being locked in a prison cell; Love Trap, in which a woman is forced into a car, and presumably is assaulted and Freefall, in which a man falls from a balcony of a hotel while drunk. The ending tag line reads "Don't get Wasted on holiday".
  • Big Baby, showing a toddler who nearly drowns when his mother goes to answer the phone and leaves him alone in the bath.
  • Easy Access, a crime prevention PIF in which two men who are locked out of their house find different ways to break in, then run into each other in the hall and realize that a burglar could have got in the same way.
  • Doll House, a fire safety PIF urging the public to fit smoke alarms and reminding viewers that young children will rely on you to help them escape in the event of a house fire, accompanied by powerful images of a child's doll house going up in flames as she sleeps.
  • When Will I See You Again, an advertisement from the Food Standards Agency showing that you may not realise your food is undercooked. It shows sausages on a barbecue and as a sausage is being lifted, it breaks into two, showing the inside which is all raw. The advertisement is played to the 1970's song by The Three Degrees, "When Will I See You Again" and the end caption says "Sooner than you think if you don't cook it properly". Two other films in the same campaign used the songs the Chairman of the Board's "Give Me Just a Little More Time (accompanied by images of a man handing out chicken legs that are clearly raw and dripping blood) and Dan Hartman's "Relight My Fire" (with visuals of undercooked steak.)
  • Ruin Lives In A Flash, an advertisement created by the Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service in 2007 during the run up to Bonfire Night. The advert consists of a sinister vision of fire, who tells of his love of being around children and the sometimes tragic consequences that befall those who are drawn to him. The advert was deemed so shocking that it was only allowed to be screened after 7.30pm. Prior to that a different advert was shown, removing the visuals in favour of written warnings with the original spoken advert over the top.
  • The SLAB a TAC Make a Film, Make a Difference (M.A.F.M.A.D.) winner from Australia in which in the style of a gothic morbid song & dance number (similar to The Rocky Horror Picture Show) a mortcian, some orderlys and a fellow corpse explains to two dead teens that there joyriding and need for speeding cost them both their lives and resulted in the pair winding up on the examining table.
  • Condom Essesntial Wear, a series of public information films from the NHS that encourage safer sex. The films depict clothes with the names of sexually transmitted infections written on them.

[edit] DETR

From 1997 to 2002, Britain's road-safety campaign was run by the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, better known simply as the DETR. This took over from the Central Office of Information's Drinking And Driving Wrecks Lives and Clunk Click Every Trip campaigns. The majority of the PIFs broadcast during this period focused on speeding - and were mostly famed for the 'Kill Your Speed' slogan, including an animated ident of a hand pushing forward - but would also focus on other topics such as seatbelt use and drink driving. Some of the DETR publicity films included:

  • Julie, about the importance of rear seat belts, which ran for 5 years between 1998 and 2003, and was so successful it was repeated in France.
  • Procedures, with home video footage of young children accompanied by a voiceover which talks the viewer through the steps taken by police officers when they are informing the family of a road fatality victim. It is then revealed that each of these children were killed by speeding cars, and the 'Kill Your Speed' tagline is shown. Funeral Blues, a similar PIF, used the same technique but with audio of John Hannah's reading of a W.H. Auden poem from the film Four Weddings and a Funeral.
  • Don't Look Now, in which a young girl is seen in various situations, such as playing in her room or in a school playground, but keeps turning to the camera while her voiceover repeats "You're going to kill me", sometimes expanded with a line such as "Without even thinking about it". The girl is then shown crossing a road, as she says "You're going to kill me one day". She then turns as she is about to be hit by a speeding car, and her narration continues "...unless you kill your speed."
  • Mistletoe and Wine, a montage of accidents and fatalities with Cliff Richard's Christmas song Mistletoe and Wine playing on the soundtrack. The juxtaposition is intended to shock motorists into changing their habits by scaring them straight, and is compounded by the irony of having "wine" in song. This was accompanied by Silent Night, another Christmas campaign ad with similar accident footage.
  • Vectorscope, a cinema-only seatbelt PIF which showed sound measurement during a high-impact crash. The crash was played out, then repeated in slow-motion as the voice-over (performed by Ewan McGregor) graphically described what each of the sounds were (breaking bones, etc). The final sound was that of a seatbelt being clicked into place. A radio version, with slowed - down sound effects, featured voiceover by Tom Baker.
  • Alan and Kate, perhaps DETR's most famous campaign, which was another anti-speeding initiative. There were four PIFs, each involving similar routine between two unconnected characters - a young woman who walks to her new job (Kate) and businessman who drives along her route (Alan). Alan repeatedly drives 35-40mph in a 30 zone. On the first day,the second day], and the third day, Kate crosses the same road unscathed, and the tagline reads "Today, he got away with it". These circulated for around two or three months, until finally on the fourth day she is crossing as he is approaching, his vision impaired by a lorry which turns off, and he kills her when he cannot react in time.

[edit] Think!

Think! is the current road safety promotional campaign, from the UK's Department for Transport. Their adverts so far have included:

  • Videophone. Filmed on a mobile phone camera, it shows a group of teenagers who are joking and showing off in front of the camera as an unseen friend films. One of them turns to cross the road, but only looks one way and is run over by a car coming from the opposite direction. The Think! website claimed that to make the effect as realistic as possible, the creative team asked a real group of teenage schoolfriends to film themselves with a camera phone, then "added in" the crash with a stuntperson.
  • Crash, the 2005/2006 drink-driving commercial, where some men are drinking in a bar. They offer one of the group "one more", even though he's driving. They see an attractive woman who walks over, only for the room to suddenly shake and lurch, with sound effects of a car crashing. The drinking driver's face smashes into the table, like hitting the dashboard of a car, and the woman is thrown across the table and lands on the other side of the room, as if she had gone through the windscreen in a car crash. The screen then focuses on the suggested driver's face as the narrator states "It takes less than you might think to become a drink driver".
  • Moment of Doubt, the 2007 and current drink-driving campaign, in which a man goes to order a drink at a bar. The barman has the lights dimmed around him as he impersonates many different voices, such as two police officers talking about revoking his license, and a woman at the end crying that her husband has no longer got a job. The light returns to normal, as does the barman, and asks "So, what's it going to be?"
  • John, a PIF about driver fatigue, filmed in night vision. The advert shows a sleeping man, and the voiceover informs us that "Tonight, John will die in his sleep. He's comfortable, warm, and has his family by his side." It then zooms out to show us that he is driving along a motorway, with his family as passengers. The car crashes into a side barrier and overturns, as the caption reads "THINK: Don't drive tired".
  • Slow Down, shot entirely in black and white and in slow-motion, presented as mock CCTV footage of a speeding car failing to stop for a small boy crossing the street and hitting him. To add to the effect, the voiceover states "Had he been travelling at 30 miles an hour, it would have stopped here", shortly before the boy is hit.
  • My Home, a cinema-only PIF aimed at teenagers stressing the importance of paying attention whilst crossing. A young boy, Tom, introduces us to his family and friends, who all seem very downtrodden and depressed. He then spots his girlfriend across the road with another man, and runs across to find out what's going on. A car approaches as he is in the middle of the road, and drives straight through him. He looks at the camera and says "That's the second time that's happened to me this week. It hurt a lot more the first time". His grieving girlfriend is then shown placing flowers by the side of the road.
  • Second Chance, a seatbelt safety campaign which begins with the wreckage of a car crash that has claimed four lives, then rewinds itself back until the point in which the men got into the car. It then plays in real time, but this time the men put their seatbelts on and survive completely uninjured.
  • How Close? A motorcycle awareness campaign, intended to alert car drivers to pay attention and keep a vigil for incoming bikers. A man is seen driving his car, then checks in both directions at a junction. He drives forward, and is immediately hit by a motorbike. It is shown again from different perspectives, then again from the original camera view, to show that the biker is clearly visible coming towards him. This time, he sees him and the accident is avoided.
  • Split Screen, a PIF accompanying new UK legislation making it illegal to use a mobile phone while driving. It is played out in split screen, with a man on the left receiving a phone call from his wife on the right. During the conversation, he suddenly crashes his car and is left unconscious and bleeding, as his wife shouts frantically down the phone to him. Jack Davenport says in voiceover "You don't have to be in a car to cause a crash. Think - the moment you know they're driving, kill the conversation".

There are a number of ongoing cinema campaigns produced by Transport for London in conjunction with Think! One of them, aimed at teenagers, uses the slogan "Don't die before you've lived" by attempting to show how an entire life can go to waste for lack of attention on the roads. The latest PIF, Shattered Dreams, depicts a young girl who walks out of her house and across the street without looking when she is run over. She shatters on impact and then we see projected scenes from what would have been her future, showing her becoming an Olympic athlete. But because she died, none of these events will happen and they shatter too. Others in the series featured a boy appearing in a mock trailer for a hit film and a young pop star showing viewers round her house in the style of MTV Cribs, but it is then revealed that both were killed in road accidents as children and did not live to become famous. There is also a cinema only advertisement featuring the view of a driver in his car who is driving too fast. Along the way of his journey we see people singing the song in the background until he knocks over a motorcyclist and the music halts.

[edit] Anti-Smoking

Anti-smoking campaigns have become a staple of British advertising as new and more significant risks are discovered on a regular basis. Most of these adverts come from the NHS, but others are made by the British Heart Foundation. Some of the best known examples of these campaigns are:

  • Cigarettes and Arteries, an advert depicting fatty deposits eminating from the ends of lit cigarettes and falling onto the smokers' clothes, then showing footage of a dummy artery being squeezed to reveal a huge build-up of similar deposit inside.
  • The Silent Killer, a campaign about the dangers of second hand smoke, played out at a wedding reception. It focuses on the fact that most lethal cigarette smoke is invisible, and does this by making it visible in stark black, as many guests (including children) inhale it without realising.
  • Impotence, highlighting that smoking can damage your penis. It shows an index finger and a middle finger posing as a man's legs, with a nearly burnt-out cigarette in between.
  • Hooked, one of the more controversial campaigns, which showed computer-generated hooks being pulled out of the mouths of smokers, the message being that they should 'get unhooked' from the necessity to smoke.
  • Anthony Hicks, showing a dying man lying in bed, hooked up to machines, talking about how his daughter is going to visit him to say goodbye. This was one of several non-acting sufferers to take part in these adverts, though few others are easily traceable online. The end message states that Hicks died shortly after the advert was filmed, and before his daughter had a chance to visit.
  • Smoking is Poison, a threefold campaign featuring real people at work describing the safety procedures they use when encountering certain lethal chemicals, before the narrator catches them off-guard by announcing that these are some of the many chemicals inhaled in tobacco smoke. The three films in this series focused on Benzene, Formaldehyde, and a Cocktail of various poisons.
  • Smoking Children, featuring a group of young children who exhale cigarette smoke from their noses to make the point that passive smoking is as dangerous to children as if they were smokers themselves.

[edit] Quotes

  • "Hey! You two must be out of your tiny minds!" -- Alvin Stardust in a well known PIF about child road safety, as he rescues some young children from rushing out in front of speeding traffic
  • "Remember, there's no cure for hearing damaged by industrial noise - and no sympathy either." -- From a Public Information Film about wearing ear protection at work
  • "I won't be there when you cross the road, so always use the Green Cross Code." -- The catchphrase of the Green Cross Code Man. The "I won't be there when you cross the road" was added when, after the campaign was first run, it emerged that some children literally thought the Green Cross Code Man would come to help them if they were in danger on the road.
  • "Polish a floor, put a rug on it, and you might as well set a man trap" -- From "The Fatal Floor", a film showing a man being injured from slipping on a carpet that has been placed on a polished floor
  • "Get a routine, show your intention, fire prevention, fire prevention. Check and make sure you close every door, we mean your life could depend on your bedtime routine!" -- The chorus to the song in the Bedtime Routine film, in which a couple sing about taking fire precautions last thing at night.
  • "He may as well have come in his underpants!" -- from a 1970s film about wearing the correct protective equipment in an industrial environment. Delivered in a deadly serious manner by the narrator, without the slightest hint of irony or humour.

[edit] External links

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