Initially, I did consider only having the groups' reaction to what they see, but I felt like it was a bit of a cop-out, because I, as the author, didn't know what they were seeing, and I'm a firm believer that, especially when it comes to anomalous objects, the author should know what's happening behind all the 'data expunged' sections, as well as the [REDACTED] parts.
So whilst I may still do the above, I currently feel unsure on it due to not knowing what my fictional audience is seeing, and that just doesn't gel with me.
I've been 'researching' (although I was interested in PSAs prior to this, so it's not all new to me) this week, probably watching well over 100 PSAs, mostly happening to be from the '70s to the '90s, though some are more recent, and they're from all over the world. I've seen shock tactics, I've seen dark humour, I've seen real-life images of people who've suffered due to various things, I've seen some great special FX make-up, I've seen creepy, I've seen gory.
I've seen all these things, and yet I'm still struggling.
I think I'm mainly struggling because people seem to find the most 'scary' PSAs (and normally the most effective ones, both anecdotally and shown in research studies) tend to involve some degree of 'gore', whilst being realistic, and I'm finding it hard to use gore effectively in the context of an anomalous SCP object, as I'm also a strong believer that gore can be used to great effect, but shouldn't be used for the sake of it.
I mean, if I were writing a proper PSA against drink-driving (for example) and research was telling me shock tactics and gore worked the best, I would do that. But writing a fictional PSA for a site that I know has sometimes struggled with gore being used for the sake of it being used, I'm finding it difficult.
