Uploaded July 2015 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
For this November sweeps 2006 spot, we sent one of our producers (rather than recognizable on-air personalities) into various elementary school campuses with a hidden camera, and for much of the time, he got to just stroll through these schools, and even into heavily-populated areas like the cafeteria, unchallenged. At the time I was editing, there seemed to be some genuine confusion as to whether or not our producer’s identity would be disguised on-camera, so with that in mind, I did show his face but tried to obscure it as best I could in case a different call was made before (or even after) the spot hit the air.
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 or 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.
For this November sweeps 2006 spot, we sent one of our producers (rather than recognizable on-air personalities) into various elementary school campuses with a hidden camera, and for much of the time, he got to just stroll through these schools, and even into heavily-populated areas like the cafeteria, unchallenged. At the time I was editing, there seemed to be some genuine confusion as to whether or not our producer’s identity would be disguised on-camera, so with that in mind, I did show his face but tried to obscure it as best I could in case a different call was made before (or even after) the spot hit the air.
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 or 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.
