Uploaded July 2015 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
Produced literally at the last minute (the night before this particular special report aired), this spot was actually a godsend. Until this story fell into our laps, we were going to open November sweeps with a story about the alternative-medicine fad of “ear candling” – not a very auspicious piece with which to convince our viewers that the rest of the month will consist of news that they can’t live without. The stills of Air Force One, the shuttle and the stealth bomber all come from our new graphics service, as did the various government agency logos, while I shamelessly filched the various blueprint graphics from assorted web sites. It’s actually a fairly simple spot, but it sure looks cool. I also edited the news package in question because the promo was so well-liked that the news department wanted to utilize the graphics and “look” of the promo into the package itself. This is one of the better specimens from the late 2003/early 2004 "make promos without any footage" era.
A NOTE ABOUT VIDEO QUALITY
I began archiving my work-related video years before YouTube existed. It was an age of darkness, an age of limited web storage, an age of... {shudder} ...dial-up connections.
More to the point, my work archive at my site was all dependent on... {shudder some more} ...Adobe Flash. These videos were converted, usually from either the master MII or Beta tapes of from VHS dubs, with a program called Sorenson Squeeze. Sorenson is great for what it does, but with scenes featuring a lot of motion, there's often a lot of pixellation and motion artifacting that's considered unacceptable these days. The Sorenson files were also generated at a very small resolution, and thus the video extracted from them could only be the same resolution. (I no longer work at any of the TV stations for whom I produced these spots, and as such no longer have access to the master tapes.)
I hope you enjoy this little walk down local TV memory lane.
Produced literally at the last minute (the night before this particular special report aired), this spot was actually a godsend. Until this story fell into our laps, we were going to open November sweeps with a story about the alternative-medicine fad of “ear candling” – not a very auspicious piece with which to convince our viewers that the rest of the month will consist of news that they can’t live without. The stills of Air Force One, the shuttle and the stealth bomber all come from our new graphics service, as did the various government agency logos, while I shamelessly filched the various blueprint graphics from assorted web sites. It’s actually a fairly simple spot, but it sure looks cool. I also edited the news package in question because the promo was so well-liked that the news department wanted to utilize the graphics and “look” of the promo into the package itself. This is one of the better specimens from the late 2003/early 2004 "make promos without any footage" era.
A NOTE ABOUT VIDEO QUALITY
I began archiving my work-related video years before YouTube existed. It was an age of darkness, an age of limited web storage, an age of... {shudder} ...dial-up connections.
More to the point, my work archive at my site was all dependent on... {shudder some more} ...Adobe Flash. These videos were converted, usually from either the master MII or Beta tapes of from VHS dubs, with a program called Sorenson Squeeze. Sorenson is great for what it does, but with scenes featuring a lot of motion, there's often a lot of pixellation and motion artifacting that's considered unacceptable these days. The Sorenson files were also generated at a very small resolution, and thus the video extracted from them could only be the same resolution. (I no longer work at any of the TV stations for whom I produced these spots, and as such no longer have access to the master tapes.)
I hope you enjoy this little walk down local TV memory lane.
