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).

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[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 only concern 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.
  • Jo 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.
  • Play Safe, a long film made in the 1960s 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.
  • Drink And Drowning, showing some ways in which accidents can happen if you go swimming or boating under the influence of alcohol.
  • 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.

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:

  • 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.
  • Shame. An anti-drink driving television advertisement made in Northern Ireland to be shown throughout the island of Ireland, which won the gold award for the world's best commercial in the live action category at the International Broadcasting Awards 2001 in Las Vegas. The advert is both shocking and graphic and shows a car with a drunken driver at the wheel, crashing through a fence sideways after losing control of the vehicle, and thereby rolling over and killing a child playing football in his garden. It was launched late in 2000 and was designed to shock motorists out of drinking and driving in the run-up to Christmas and cost £250,000 to make.
  • 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. 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. Slightly ironic is the fact that in Glasgow, there is a popular mobile phone video entitled "Ali stops a bus", which shows a similar thing but with a bus, and was "performed" by a young English boy named Ali. His fate has not yet been confirmed.
  • Crash, the 2005 and current (as of 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 fades to black as the narrator states "It takes less than you might think to become a drink driver".
  • 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.


  • Advert, a PIF about road-crossing. It shows an extremely dramatic advert for a Hollywood-esque film, starring a teenager called Scott Smith, with such scenes as him kissing the girl etc. and then the advert switches to the character of Smith crossing a road, and then he is abruptly knocked down by a car, and the advert goes silent, then fades to black with the slogan 'Don't die before you've lived' on the screen.
  • Robocop- a gang on girls are walking down a street at night by a construction site, wherupon one of them lets go of their balloon. Then a dramatixc voice says 'Stand back!' and Robocop com,es out of nowhere and starts swinging on the girders to retrieve the balloon-but he loses his grip and falls. Then, just before he hitas the ground the dramatic music stops abruptly and reveals 'Robocop' is just a man under the influence of alcohol. This advert tells viewers that Alcohol makes you feel you're invincible, wheras, 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 Cell Shock, 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.
  • 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 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 1960s song "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 "Give me a little more time" (accompanied by images of a man handing out chicken legs that are clearly raw and dripping blood) and "Relight My Fire" (with visuals of undercooked steak.)
  • Ask FRANK, an Public Information Film series which advertises the government's Talk to Frank anti-drugs campaign. Films include a brain shop which offered replacement brains to those who had developed mental illness through cannabis use, a game show designed to show the effects of peer pressure, and a child who asks drug users various questions about their drugs, such as "What does that stuff (Cocaine) actually smell like?" and "What's wrong with your face?" All the films end with the "Talk to Frank" phone number.

[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

  • Attack of the PSAs, Remember the PSAs that you grew up with? Well, they're back. Every Wednesday there will be a new video of some our favorite Public Service Announcements throughout time.
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