WTCG/WTBS 2 TBS Off-air 1979 Jay Cordova 2022-01-11 | WTCG has just become WTBS, after Ted paid for a new transmitter for the school radio station "WTBS" (I believe Notre Dame?) and acquired his long-wanted call letters. This is late 1979, and you're seeing all the PI's (per inquiry) commercials that let Ted not only expand WTBS, but help pay for a lot of things not possible without these PI's (ginsu knife etc). In short order, the WTBS Update would gain a well-known sense of humor from Bill Tush and the crew. Within 3 years, I would start doing a lot of the on-air look of the station overnights, and along with all of my TBS friends back then, start turning this local station into a good-looking national cable channel (the first of many standard cable channels). It's incredible what a small group of people did for little money, but with almost total freedom for everyone to use and develop their talents with Ted Turner's encouragement. What a place to be! Thanks to Guille Gomez for all of these airchecks. TAGS - vintage TBS Ted Turner WTCG Update Bill Tush
TBS College Years 720p/60 Jay Cordova 2024-02-17 | Started as a Ga Tech student doing audio on wrestling Saturdays. Taught myself all the gear by reading manuals and help from friends. Then one summer, hoping to do audio on the news, my boss Pooch Johnston turned me loose to "do anything you want to for anyone you want to, learn whatever you want to, you have total freedom with schedule and everything - just keep me posted". This lasted for years, I was my own boss and had the luxury of choosing all these projects on this reel - often delivering unexpected "surprises" to the promotion dept especially, when I thought a new movie open, promo graphics, etc. were needed. Even chose to help CNN who I didn't even work for. TBS Sports and TBS on-air my favorite people to either accept projects from or give surprises to. Right place, right time, great boss, and this kind of freedom is not heard of these days! Very, very lucky.
CNN Larry King Live - Original Open by Jay Cordova Jay Cordova 2024-01-08 | CNN revised and updated this original open and idea many times over the years, beginning with Larry's 10th anniversary year, and the CNN Production Team did a much nicer job with different and greater software. I was pleased they stuck to the original simple idea I'd pitched to Larry's producer Tammy Haddad.My pitch for this Tammy was a 1-minute quickie using my hands as the animation and telling her about big gold letter wrapped around Larry's RCA Mic. I told her I had been a big fan since the beginning, heard Larry mention her all the time, and this was a very special project I was doing in my spare time, so no deadline and I wanted to do something especially nice for her. She agreed and loved the idea, called me occasionally just to hear "it's looking nice", and never demanded to see any samples of progress. I ended up liking Tammy a lot, and she never pressed me on time or asked to see anything.This open was the last thing I left with CNN before leaving for new job producing entire on-air graphics packages for stations around the country. Tammy had left CNN and I didn't know it. Months passed and I wondered why the new open didn't air - Tammy would have called. Then I got a call and LKL's new producer introduced himself asking, "what is this great open?? We didn't know it existed and want it on the air asap. He asked if I could change the background to have shots of Larry in it, not necessary he thought that would be nice. I said sure, and I'm happy to do it on my own time to get it on the air pronto; it was a special open I wanted to see used. His idea looked nicer than what I had, I dropped it by, and it aired the next night.
Northside Hospital Presentation Jay Cordova 2024-01-08 | Producer: Rick Salcedo | Design/Graphics/Animation: Jay Cordova
CBS Archive: 1972-73 Series Music Themes 44.1kHz Jay Cordova 2023-09-23 | From a decent quality 1/2" reel-to-reel tape, sent by the network to affiliates. There may be a sampling rate mixup. I believe this is the correct playback of the 44.1kHz capture file, but it's possible the original file is actually sampled at 48kHz, making this recording play 8% faster than the other. Maybe I'll figure it out one day - Please let me know if you which is the correct speed :)
CBS TV Show Themes 1972-73 Season (48kHz) Jay Cordova 2023-09-20 | From a quality reel-to-reel sent to affiliates. Run through multiband compressor on "broadcast" sound setting and sounds better IMO, more like the original off-air sound.Interpreted digital file as 48kHz, when original sample rate may have been 44kHz. So this version may be 8% slow. If anyone knows if this is the correct key and speed for these themes, please chime in!
Hugo the Hippo - from Bill Feigenbaum Jay Cordova 2023-08-16 | I haven't watched this, but it was a DVD gift from director Bill Feigenbaum, who told me at the time this was, in some circles, a popular animated movie he created. I did take the time to restore this film to its original 24fps, plus beefed up the audio quality with a multiband compressor.Thank you to the copyright owner who is allowing this usage. No copyright infringement intended - a gift from Bill Feigenbaum to all of us.
FOX 5 Atlanta Production Reel - Jay Cordova Jay Cordova 2023-05-03 | Ten years after the FOX Network had begun, many of their stations had been previously independent stations, not network affiliates in large markets. After many previous rejections by WAGA, FOX finally managed a deal to purchase Atlanta's 45-year CBS affiliate WAGA-TV (FOX then aired on UHF Channel 36). This was considered a big coup for FOX in the nation's10th largest market, with a large and dedicated audience, and excellent local news programming. My first thought was that this abrupt change for WAGA's long-time dedicated and conservative viewers would be a shock to WAGA's audience, and that many viewers would be lost initially with the abrupt change. I proposed to WAGA a "transition package", instead of the FOX station package the network provided all of their new stations. I had low expectations, but WAGA and FOX agreed, and these are snippets from that transition package that first introduced FOX5 to Atlanta.
NBC Historic Rare 1960s TV Show Promos - Part 3 Jay Cordova 2023-04-29 | Bill Feigenbaum's 60s NBC work and more. Will catalog later.
NBC Historic Rare 1960s TV Show Promos - Part 2 Jay Cordova 2023-04-29 | First, the complete version of the Rowan & Martin promo cut off in part 1. Then more of Bill Feigenbaum's work. Bill designed and animated all of this artwork, which was virtually the entire NBC promo look of this time - a one-man promo production machine. From 1980s film transfer.• It all adds up on NBC• Tonight Show open incomplete• Thursday Night This Fall - Daniel Boone, Ironside, Dragnet 68, Dean Martin• NBC Daytime promos, NBC Sports open, NBC Week• Man from Uncle Friday 8:30• NBC Experiment in Television• CBS All in the Family• Time-Life, Wishbone, Command, more• Monkees Monday 7:30• I Dream of Jeannie Next, then Roger Miller• Tarzan Friday 7:30, Man from Uncle, The Virginian, Bob Hope, I Spy• NBC Week Thursday (dupe) Daniel Boone, Ironside, Dragnet, Dino• Danny Thomas Tonight at 9• Annie Get Your Gun Sunday In Color!, Jerry Lewis, Huntley Brinkley open• NBC Week promo all shows - 1966? (has Star Trek)• Star Trek premiere promo Thursday Sept 15 "Galactic Premiere"
Feigenbaum Productions 1980s Demo Jay Cordova 2023-04-29 | Bill Feigenbaum was responsible for designing, illustrating and producing almost all of NBC's promos in the 60's. He went on to produce for all of the networks, and CBS Sports. See much of Bill's groundbreaking CBS Sports work here, highest quality from 1" broadcast tape, here in other postings.
Introducing CNN - 1980 TBS Sales Prex Jay Cordova 2023-04-28 | Produced by WTBS to sell CNN to local cable operators. He could've called it "Turner News Network", but Ted Turner called it "Cable" so that existing cable subscribers would feel like they should be receiving it, and "call their cable operator" to get it. Also, Ted was cable's fierceist advocate, promising cable ops he would "make those wires sing" with good programming to help grow cable.
Jay Cordova TBS Production Demo Reel | College Years Jay Cordova 2023-04-14 | Pooch Johnston was head of Production at TBS and my boss. I was a part-time audio guy on wrestling and a college kid from Ga Tech. One summer, I asked Pooch if I could work full-time during summer break, hoping to be lucky enough to do audio on the news. He told me, "You've been doing great teaching yourself the video gear. I want to turn you loose for the summer; keep learning whatever you want to. You can do whatever you want, to whenever you want, and for whoever you want. Or you can just keep learning more." I had only been experimenting teaching myself the Chyron, and this opportunity seemed crazy; it shocked and stunned me.I ended up with the absolute luxury of choosing what I thought best to try to improve on-air, for TBS, TBS Sports, and CNN. Sports always had great projects; TBS on-air was super important to keep up with top quality, and I did all I could for CNN's prime-time, as a TBS employee not even working for CNN.
MANNIX TV Show Opens - CBS Sunday Nights Jay Cordova 2023-02-21 | A bunch of different MANNIX opens - yearly revisions and music changes. Great 3/4 time theme song by Lalo Shifrin. My favorite is the theme with the piano solo!
Stanley Kubrick Zeiss f0.7 400mm lens Jay Cordova 2023-02-21 | This is for camera buffs, about Stanley tracking down the BNC cameras he wanted his camera guy to mount a NASA 400mm lens onto. The Barry Linden scenes with only candlelight, pretty amazing.
NBC Bonanza/Phyllis Diller Promo 1960s Jay Cordova 2023-02-21 | Bill Feigenbaum was single-handedly NBC's on-air promotion department in the 1960s, and he makes a cameo appearance in this promo. Well, sort of, as you'll notice the opening screen.
CBS Chicago WBBM Channel 2 News promo 1970s Jay Cordova 2023-02-21 | Quick upload of a low res but good quality film, with long version of the great news theme. And well-kerned Aachen Bold font at the end, blowing my thoughts that I was the first one to use this font heavily on-air for all TBS Sports stuff mid-eighties.
NBC Historic Rare 1960s TV Show Promos - Part 1 (Creator: Bill Feigenbaum) Jay Cordova 2022-01-11 | In the last half of the 1960's at NBC, one man was single-handedly producing almost all of NBC's on-air promos: the brilliant Bill Feigenbaum. This is the first taste of what Bill gave me years ago on 3/4" videotape and a direct transfer from what were 15-year old films of his work he had transferred in 1985. All of this is his work, and note that puts an illustration of himself in several times as "Feigenbaum the Fire Eater" :). Bill's illustrations were THE "look" of NBC these years, remember?This is a raw post of interlaced footage; the rest will have to wait until I can process it properly, color-correct, etc. After all these years, I don't still seen any of this on the internet anywhere.1. Captain Nice promo - had to be January 19672. I Dream of Jeannie promo - Moves to Tuesdays this fall NBC Week Sept 10-173. Annie Get Your Gun Promo4. "NBC Special" intro5. Star Trek promo - Moving to Fridays (the death slot) this Fall6. FEIGENBAUM THE FIREATER - into Bonanza "new season" promo7. The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show - Sunday of NBC Week Sept 15-218. Feigenbaum the Fire Eater closes out promo!9. Man from U.N.C.L.E. - New Day New Time - Mondays This Fall10. DRAGNET 1967 promo11. Captain Nice promo #2 - Monday 8:30 (Jan 9, 1967 mid-season premiere)12. Audio sounds better on "Audio Devices" reel-to-reel tape!13. Irving Berlin's "Annie Get Your Gun" promo - special 90-minute show Sunday 8:3014. "Recall" panty hose commercial (obviously done by Bill)15. Kraft Music Hall promo - Herb Alpert, Louis Armstrong16. NBC behind-the-scenes promo for COLOR TV!17. NBC behind-the-scenes promo for their remote shooting of COLOR TV18. Annie Get Your Gun promo #219. TARZAN - full hour promo Friday 7:3020. Ironside - coming This Fall Thursdays21. Miss America promo for live event - Saturday22. promo cuts out before end, sorry. I'll patch and complete later; there's a lot more!
WTCG - SuperStationWTBS Atlanta 1979 Jay Cordova 2022-01-11 | WTCG off-air 1979 just before the calls were changed to WTBS and the station became SuperStationWTBS. The Elvis promo at the head -- I don't know who in promotion put this together, but it's hard to believe these days that it aired!! With thanks to Guille Gomez for all of these airchecks. TAGS - vintage TBS Ted Turner WTCG Update Bill Tush
TBS Hallway Gang - Razamataz Jay Cordova 2022-01-11 | The gang at TBS roaming the hallways having fun! These are the folks who built TBS into the network it is.
Birthday Horse Riding! Jay Cordova 2021-04-07 | My great escape and with great thanks to the best cowboy in the world Ed Dabney, and John and Renee Hilpertshauser.
Vaccination Day Jay Cordova 2021-03-31 | Mercedez Benz Stadium was amazing - in and out in 30 minutes! Huge kudos to everyone involved with the organization.
How to tame my scared Stray Cat awwww Jay Cordova 2021-03-24 | I've been trying to make friends with this cat for a Month! She's beautiful.Literally one foot at a time, then the last few days Boom! This!! She's in on the Jay Cordova "How to pet a cat" routine and we're buds. The thing is, I cannot bring her in; I've got one too many already arrrrgh.UPDATE Oct 2022 - I succumbed long ago, and she's been a family member for a year and a half now.
Jay Cordova Production Reel - Springboard & Sprinkles Jay Cordova 2020-09-25 | Highlights of my production work with Springboard Creative in Atlanta.
CNN International - Jay Cordova Original Master; no satellite Jay Cordova 2020-08-17 | Original master cuts with full music. After I did these as finals, big boss and great guy Tom Johnson suggested I put a satellite in there beaming a signal down to the coverage patterns I have animated in there. That was an idea I should have thought of, and it made the IDs work a lot better, and it made it more clear that this animation was about satellite coverage, not just hopefully nice looking technical graphics.
CNN Newsroom 1980s Jay Cordova 2020-08-15 | This was a 3 a.m. newscast for students that could be recorded in the schools and played the next day. It was on for some years, because I did a second open some years later that itself was on for a while. Funny - I remember they had "Newsroom anchor" tryouts where anyone could try out to be one of the anchors on this show. I think this is where Bill Hemmer showed up on CNN. Not sure, fuzzy memory, but I think he was an editor or something who got the CNN Newsroom anchor gig and went on from there (now on Fox). Correct me if I'm wrong!I remember doing this in TBS Control B but none of the details. I had a bunch of video, the music cried for quick cuts, and I did this in just a few nights with no prior planning nor ideas. I just did it.I must have started this in Control B and therefore finished it there. Control A had four (better, newer) one-inch videotape machines; Control B had 3 huge quad (2") machines (beasts which required compressed air for the tape transport) and one 1" machine. Switching control rooms mid-project required transferring everything on, say, quad, down a generation to 1" to go from B to A. IOW, where I started something is where I did it.No copyright infringement intended; this is my personal work shown for educational and historical purposes. Copyright Turner Broadcasting System - WarnerMedia.
CBS Sports Saturday - Quality Enlargement Jay Cordova 2020-08-03 | This original progressive nature of this animation by Bill Feigenbaum at NYIT makes upscaling of this animation so much better. Unlike interlaced video, each of these frames is fully intact with both sets of scan lines on the same image at the same time. A full-rez SD frame enlarges much better.The subcarrier artifacts are still there if you look, because this work was originally recorded NTSC to 1" videotape - so the subcarrier was present ever since this thing hit tape. I'll bet it looked great on the work monitor, though.No copyright infringement intended. This video is for educational purposes only, as well as historical and preservative purposes. Copyright and Courtesy CBS.
Best of Championship Wrestling 1983 Jay Cordova 2020-08-01 | I put this towards the top of the playlist because WTBS wrestling was so damned popular!And I uncharacteristically enlarged this a good bit for the wrestling fans!I figure I'd want size over quality with this.Sunday night wrestling needed a fresh open and close for "Best of", and I assigned that project to myself, mostly to learn and with no deadline of any sort. That turned out well, and I learned all of my basics on just about all of the (considerable) post-production equipment. I was really nervous at first, wondering if I could do it even with no deadline.It took months and months during time I was either there working on something else (audio), and all the time I spent coming in late, plus reading all of those fat operations manuals. By the end of this project, I felt good about my decently developed skllls with most everything. I was less nervous about taking on another project, which, thank The Lord, I was able to choose for more experience and learning, and with no deadline issues.So this "Best Of" open really started it all, just doing it on my won. Sometimes I worried I'd end up with something not air-worthy! But a lot of good friends in different areas helped me with a long list of issues and problems I'd constantly run into or wonder about Thanks!No copyright infringement intended. This video and related collection is for education purposes only, as well as historic and quality preservations. This youtube account makes no money
NewsChannel 7 News Opens Jay Cordova 2020-08-01 | Three dayparted opens in a row. Music could be better quality! A version of one of our very successful syndicated packages at Television by Design. Although our totally custom packages were always the best, this was very well-liked by most everyone. Designer Melanie Goux (that's why it looks so good).
TBS College Scoreboard created by Jay Cordova 115% scale Jay Cordova 2020-08-01 | This is scaled up 15% using special methods, forced small on YouTube to play the original pristine broadcast quality NTSC video of the time. The highest quality appearance happens when the video is forced to be shown on YouTube close to or at its original size. That's why many of my videos are not full screen - forced to play at their original size with the original broadcast quality.A technical feat for its time, I include here technical back-story details and technical info about my method of creating for YouTube the originally half vertical 60fps "fields" broadcast, to play the original full frame quality your eyes and brain perceived when originally broadcast.This particular piece was the first thing that really got attention, after my beloved boss Pooch Johnston "turned me loose" and explicitly gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted to in the control rooms whenever they were open (mostly overnights). Being an Electrical Engineering student at Georgia Tech gave me a huge advantage learning things. Tech's a hard school, with a ton of complex math, and a lot of hard study. In short, I just studied and learned all of the video post-production gear at TBS by studying all the manuals as if it were a school course, and having everyone teach me as much as they would about their areas of expertise. TBS Productions was truly a family back then, and I had a ton of the best people in the business teaching me all I could absorb. I still love all of these people, and we stay in touch.Now I hate enlarging this originally "interlaced" NTSC material. All my testing shows me that blowing things up a lot makes the picture more fuzzy and distorted, and with NTSC you really start to see the scan lines from the originally interlaced video - YouTube plays only progressive, not interlaced material properly. Most especially, producing these videos for YouTube at their original 60 images per second restores the video's original "live" look - distinct and very noticeable from 30fps. On youtube, almost all older NTSC videos are shown at 30fps, either played with original and very obvious interlace artififats, or deinterlaced to prevent artifacts but cutting the vertical resolution in half. My method of changing each original "half frame", or field, at 60fps has no artifacts and the eye perceives, and the brain puts together two lower quality "fields" to create full original NTSC resolution as originally broadcast, with two half-resolution "fields" that alone have easily seen half quality vertical resolution.This 60fps business is especially critical. 60fps motion is twice as smooth as 30 - that's a big difference. My best analogy is that 60fps video looks absolutely "live", whereas 30fps video and especially 24fps film do not look "live" compared to 60fps.All of my youtube videos (well, most) I've been slowly restoring to their original 60 images per second. I put the original interlaced video into a 1080p60 or 720p60 video file. Since the original video has only half of the vertical scan lines each 1/60th of a second (the interlacing), those scan lines are artificially interpolated, or even just averaged from the lines above and below it. So with NTSC video, you've only got "half pictures" for each 1/60th of a second, so blowing up moving scenes look about twice as bad as they would if all the original scan lines were there (if there were no interlacing; all the frames were progressive).With this piece, l had just about conquered a constant, random videotape position shifting problem, which messed up how well things were positioned or glued together. Super Engineers David Bell and Terry Harvard gave me a thorough NTSC signal engineering lesson, which basically told me that this "color framing" business could be conquered only by pre-blacking all of my tapes with the same 2-frame color frame sequence. Once I got a grip on this, everything would line up perfectly and not shift when being played back from tape. I could "glue" things together almost perfectly.I'm still experimenting, but this piece is enlarged 15% and you don't quite see the interlace scan line artifacts yet. I'm pushing things more as I can, and how much I can blow something up depends on a few things, but mainly the interlace and amount of motion.This Scoreboard piece is one of the two I keep experimenting with to see how far I can blow things up and still have top quality. For example, this piece looks too blown up when I expand it up to 720p, although I can get it looking fairly decent! No copyright infringement intended; this is my personal work shown for educational and historical purposes. Copyright Turner Broadcasting System - WarnerMedia.
Morning Movie - Very Clean Submaster Jay Cordova 2020-07-31 | This piece is a very clean Morning Movie submaster, without the "SuperStation" logo, and posted because of its surprising high quality recording layers using only analog 1" tape.Compared to a production quality off-air, the submaster shown here is two generations cleaner, and two 8-bit video frame synchronizers cleaner, and generally twice the quality simply because of on-air broadcast limitations.Just fyi, production analog quality has got to be close to 700 horizontal, maybe greater. The digital signal was eventually defined (Digital Betacam, etc.) with 720 horizontal pixels. Compare that to about 333 horizontal pixels for broadcast! VHS is so bad because they chose only about 230 horizontal pixels, only 1/3 of the best digital signal and about the same compared to quality analog (like 1" recordings). That's AWFUL.What I'm saying is that my material here, except for a few obvious exceptions from VHS, is PRODUCTION QUALITY video, not the lesser quality on-air quality. There is a technical distinction between production quality and on-air quality, with the production quality being about twice the horizontal resolution. Side by side, there's a big difference. But at home with a good TV, you still felt like you were in good shape with a good picture!Okay so I just spotted a pretty long horizontal dropout for a field in that logo. You can't expect me to get t all!! Part of this restoration process involves a lot of tedious, almost surgical, repair to fix some things - usually tape dropouts.
First TBS SuperStation ID 1979/80 Jay Cordova 2020-07-30 | Produced by John Burns. Long story, but it took everyone well over a decade to simply go with "TBS". I thought we should have done that in 1979/80 and was fighting for it for years with only minor victories several times - one in particular.Music and V/O by TBS's legendary Bill "Troll" Tullis, who made this sound like a million bucks, yet it was really with a ton of hard work, auditioning hundred of albums, and almost always delivering the perfect music for any project. Troll and Pooch hired me to do audio on wrestling every Saturday, so I knew the systems and procedures at least for doing my own music, cutting it and laying in the perfectly times V/O with any of the GREAT announcers we go through the place, John Young (famous from radio), Bob Gillies and Troll were my favorite announcers. Of course, Troll didn't do any regular announce - it was always for the high-profile station stuff only, and it came to me perfectly mixed, cut and times, Troll used to like cutting those V/O's in the morning at home when his voice was especially low and with the right timbre. I thought he was great, especially doing only the network identity work (for TBS, CNN, CNN2, more).I worked hard to restore this, and I am absolutely not finished. I can cancel the subcarrier and therefore its artifacts in most of the pictures for most of the spot.Yes, I still have some colorwork left that I'll have to take a different approach with. The parts of the images with NTSC cancelation look reasonable clean considering they're blown from 200% to almost 290%! It's all in the slick little tricks from experience and experimentation.
First TBS Coming Up Next 1980 John Burns Jay Cordova 2020-07-28 | Restored from interlaced NTSC 1" production video, into a form where a lot of the subcarrier artifacts can be "cleaned up", effectively leaving a "component" looking picture. Looks a bit dead to me without the ever-present subcarrier chroma crawl I've gotten so used to again. You could see the crawl, artifacts, patterns when Johnny Carson wore a complex looking tie - you could see the NTSC color encoding. Well, engineering nerds like me. As a viewer, it was a good subcarrier-encoded color tv system, developed by RCA when CBS already had a "spinning color disk" non-compatible system approved. The electronic, and even compatible, version was a winner!RCA is usually considered the inventor of television, and that's a legend they perpetuated with films, printed material, and on-air TV. They said their guy, Alexander Zworkyn, made the first transmission, although his Westinghouse superiors didn't agree or see anything.I'm proud to say that I was friends with the wife of the true inventor of electronic television, Pem Farnsworth. Husband Philo Farnsworth conceived of this when he was FIFTEEN. He quizzed his chemistry professor about the system, and phosphors to illuminate the screen. Phil eventually won this GIANT lawsuit on the basics of electronic television: RCA versus little Farnsworth. But the delay from the war had Farnsworth's patents running out their 17 years. Pem was a gem, and we kept in touch by phone. She told me that Zworkyn, representing himself as potential manufacturer Westinghouse, though just starting work for RCA and David Sarnoff sent him on this sneak mission.They showed Zworkyn everything - how to blow the glass with relatively flat fronts, something previously thought impossible, and of course all the electronics, and finally the oh, so important camera. Zworkyn has people see him hold it and say "I wish I'd invented this". He took it back to RCA of course, and really put them in good business from the beginning, with a lot of ill-gained knowledge from Philo Farnsworth. Very interesting now-documented history. At least half a dozen books and other things (Ken Farnsworth's website, if he still keeps it up) tell this story of David and Goliath. David Sarnoff was truly a ruthless person when it came to money, but mainly -- owning all the patents.
TNT Turner Network Television Original IDs 1983-84 Jay Cordova 2020-07-23 | Original incarnation of TNT as Ted's Saturday sports network - NCAA and SEC college ball. These IDs were used for sports affiliate stations, often as out-cues for affiliates.We were carrying one year of NCAA Football every Saturday - another year for SEC Football. A lot of stations wanted to carry those games from us, so "Turner Network Television" came into being around 1983, as the umbrella network for (TBS's) college football.I flew in separate gold pieces over a blue-matted background, that was actually the floor tile in engineering. Much better job with the "floor tile background" on a1983 Coming Up Next for TBS - this was quickly knocked out in an evening in TBS Control B, with Quad videotape machines no less!
TBS Sports Strohs Sports Report 1984 Jay Cordova 2020-07-23 | Another piece I enjoyed doing for Sports. They were so great and gave me total freedom to come up with whatever I thought looked good. Sports was my favorite overall dept to do things for, and I was heavily involved with all the graphics, fonts, animations on projects. The high-profile things for Promotion were highest on my list of "wanting to do good".The Promotion stuff was really important to me, and the main thing was that I had to give them the absolute best that I could. They got the most experimentation out of me, I think I did well with Promotion the vast majority of the time. but I still feel a bit ashamed about some things for both Sports and Promotion.The background here is a variation on some backgrounds that Jim Sweeney taught me to do on the GV-300, with the wipes locked together and moving them manually with the joystick. I got a pattern I liked, locked 'em together, and tried to move everything up at a constant velocity. I knew I was using video boxes, posterized, and I'd have some sort of sleek, colorful footage in there as the center of attention. The actual layouts and animation happened as I was doing the production.Oh! Bill Lance, Chief Prod Engineer, had rigged me up a manual trigger for steps on the Chryon (again, my stuff is usually technically seeded), and I could program an Auto Display with pauses then pop those "STROH'S SPORTS REPORT" letters exactly to the beat of the music. Took a few tries, but being a music guy, they're all on the beat! Thanks Bill.
CNN Moneyline Focus Jay Cordova 2020-07-23 | This is one of those ad-sponsored segments where a custom animated open is in the deal. This is a tie-in with one of the Time magazines, all the same company at this point, so lots of cross-promotion.This was done entirely in After Effects with Photoshop-created as well as video elements integrated into a stable nice looking 3D scene. These are a little more challenging in After Effects that a lot of the professional production equipment I've worked with. Totally different, and almost as powerful as the $2.5M post facility we built at CNN in the early 90's. Pretty incredible and might convenient!
CNN Special Report 1980s by Jay Cordova Jay Cordova 2020-07-23 | This was in the mid-80's and ran for some years. My favorite, as I thought I couldn't do better on this rare occasion.I wanted a certain feel and look to this. This to me is an important intro; at this time they used it sparingly for important things. It could not be "fancy". It needed to look as good as possible, have attention-getting motion, but be simple and matter-of-fact. Too many awful things can come on after this, and something short, with high quality but no "blowing your own horn" - in any way.After I finished, I felt I would never do better, as this perfectly accomplished the look, feel, non-scary, matter-of-fact but alerting tone, and everything else I had been going for. And I had some strong feelings on this particular piece.I didn' just throw in those large SPECIAL REPORT text outlines in there randomly. I spent several days getting those and everything exactly the way I wanted. For some reason, and this was another favor for CNN while I was with TBS, this was an important animation to me, and I put a lot of thought, work and adjustment into all of the elements to make the "whole" meet the bill.So I was disappointed when some years later, perhaps Bob Furnad or Tom Johnson decided it was time to update this. I felt this should run 10 years; I'm serious, so that people would immediately and always know something was up when they saw and heard this short animation & music.
CNN Special Report 1990 by Jay Cordova Jay Cordova 2020-07-23 | I really hated to see my original Special Report open (with the colored text outlines) retire and be replace by this one. My heart wasn't in this, and the timing was bad.Technically, for quick things I was up to angling and layering panels into some sort of 3D "scene", and that's what I did here.MY general approach - make some nice animated textures for panels in the background. Create a 3D setup not using 3D rectangles, but something a little more creative, then take a look at all sorts of possibilities rolling all of the elements, many independently and adjustable, live from tape, and really just changing and experimenting until the best stuff pops up saying "hey, use something like me. I've got potential!"I need to mention more than what comes out of my production is usually revolving around ongoing technical challenges, especially learning and trying new things, and whichever technical challenges I'm taking on to get better normally, kind of by default, forms the basis of a lot of my animations. I am not a professional designer despite trying. I can hold my own, but my forte back then was being able to IDENTIFY something that looked especially good when I saw it on a screen. So the more I experimented and tried new things, the more new things that looked good would appear on a screen at some point. That, or aspects of something good looking that can be isolated (get rid of the crap), and used usually in a simplified manner to make something that looks NICE. Only with time did I realize that often the simpler things, tweaked, massaged and moving with the music as well as possible looked the best on the air at home. I didn't always contain myself, but I did decide that a simple superb looking animation, sometimes minimal, worked best when it came to the stuff that seemed a cut above the rest.Just a note. Beginning with the College Scoreboard open, I was really interested in generating the best resolution for all of my elements. I zoomed a lot of text around, and often it was very expanded and fuzzy. I grew to, by default, do each individual word or each individual letter of (usually) logo text. Morning Movie - the only reason those letters shine is because Melanie painted those, and I then used each letter full screen as my ADO input. Same with the College Scoreboard, esp the text on front of the scoreboard, the yardline numbers, etc.So with this, by default, I electronically painted each letter of SPECIAL REPORT individually, and each letter was an animated layer on the submaster tapes. Yeah, more noise, but it was well worth it to have sharp text. No one took the time to do text this way making it really clean. Why? Well, it's a lot of extra work! Same with the CNN - it was as big as I could get it painted filling the screen as the ADO input.
WGNX Atlanta Hawks Open Jay Cordova 2020-07-21 | About 1984. A quick job. I was learning color palette cycling on the Aurora, so of course that's what I used. Ted owned the Hawks, and it was in our interest to do what we could when WGNX, then WVEU took over the coverage.
NewsChannel 7 News Opens Jay Cordova 2020-07-21 | Opens for NewsChannel 7 in Spartanburg, South Carolina. This is a permutation of our "Balls and Walls" package, I think, at TVbD. We did so many stations and packages, I can't remember the specifics of all of them. We did some mighty good work for a lot of happy client stations across the country.
WBAL News Opens 1990s (no talent versions) Jay Cordova 2020-07-21 | Melanie designed and did a lot of this top-notch 3D animation. We also had Randy Frency as our Wavefront 3D animation specialist, but all three of us - me, Melanie, and Randy - were pretty expert on the Wavefront. Mel was meticulously perfect with gorgous output. Randy was fast still gorgeous output from Melanie's design and perhaps Wavefront prep work. So while I was in charge on animation, we had a full team of Wavefront experts on the case!There are some opens with the talent I'll find and post, too. Borrowed music from John Roberts works good with this video. WBAL is a big station and was a big client for a good while.
NBC In Living Color - Nailed HD Recreation! Jay Cordova 2020-07-21 | Thanks to youtube user "Ito" for this incredibly spot on recreation of the NBC “In Living Color” film animation that ran before ever color show for well over a decade – a logo with household recognition. Great work. I think you nailed it, with the absolutely meticulous detail. No copyright infringement intended; this is my personal work shown for educational and historical purposes. Copyright NBC.
CNN Larry King Live - Original Broadcast size to maintain original high quality Jay Cordova 2020-07-20 | A favorite and special oldie from CNN. Original size to preserve original high quality - no distortion from scaling it up for YouTube.A pet project I did on my own. I loved Larry's radio show for years, and his 9-10p open greatly needed an upgrade - I had upgraded all of CNN's prime time opens except for Larry's, and chose to do his open in my spare time with no deadline, with producer's agreement of no deadline. I learned Wavefront 3D software specifically to produce this open for Larry's team at CNN.I gave Larry's long-time (and radio) producer, Tammy Haddad, a 1-minute pitch when she visited me in the control room - close-up on the mic with big gold letters wrapped around, using my hands for the simple animation. She loved the idea, kept in touch but never pressed me on time, and I enjoyed getting to know her, she's quite a fun character.This was the last project project I left with CNN with just before I left to produce graphics packages for stations across the country. Months passed and it didn't air. What could be the problem, Tammy would have called? Before I could ask, LKL's new producer called and introduced himself. What was this great open? They didn't know it existed. They wanted to use it asap, could I possibly do a new background with shots of Larry in it? Of course, and I'm happy to do it on my own time, it's special to me and let's get it on the air soon!It didn't end there; they became a new freelance client for the next five or six years, calling every so often asking me if I could do opens for each of the LKL Specials, "Larry King's 40th Anniversary" being one of them. That open (including Ted Turner's introduction) on this youtube channel and produced from a great design idea from CNN's Dan Brown.
Good News Open Live Feb 19 1984 Jay Cordova 2020-07-19 | Well damn, I deleted my stories and things about this video as I revised it. This open was both a good thing and a very bad thing personally. Other things to note were who the producers were - Bonnie & Terry Turner. This was an adventure with long term effects, with writing that meaning I'll get a certain amount personal, because my grades at Tech were horrible this quarter, and I had no business on a project like Good News.But ... Liz (Wickersham) is one of the sweetest people that were "talent" at TBS. Ted met her on an airline flight, and she was a Playboy Bunny of the Month (maybe the current Bunny when Ted met her).So that is how Liz came aboard with TBS to do the show "Good News".Unfortunately, it turned out that people didn't want good news, they wanted the network fare: BAD NEWS, death, blood, plane crashes ("if it bleeds, it leads").I integrated Liz into each weekly open, which was unusual at the time. She is there at the beginning and end of the open, and that animation is put in live.
Polaroid Playhouse Special Movie Open Jay Cordova 2020-07-19 | Don't you hate it when the sales guys sell the client a custom movie open, usually to air only once or a few times, as part of an ad package.Well, that was the case here, and this baby was literally unfinished. I just ran out of time, had to move on to other things, and it had a next day air deadline, I think.There were to be three black and white video boxes, but you see there are only two. The boxes were to be tweaked so as not to cover the "PLAYHOUSE" part of the logo. And the ending page was to be straight and full screen (it's angled a bit and less than 90% the size it should be).But the damned thing wasn't airing much more than once, and perhaps only once. So this is what I got done in one night. I didn't like it, but some of my friends at TBS did like it, maybe because it was different. I think that director of directors Bud Wendling was a fan; I noticed that he put this in the Turner 40th Anniversary video.And that's some of the good news for my work. Even when I thought something was sub-par, plenty of other people thought it was nice and good to go on the air!
Agenda Earth - Missy Barrett Jay Cordova Jay Cordova 2020-07-18 | This won Missy and me a BDA Gold Award. That's first place in whatever the category was, and it's all due to Missy's design, not me. I enjoyed the ride, though!This was a "Ted" project, about the ill-state of our planet. That is all that I remember. Missy had her gorgeous elements ready, and I just did my usual polishing and animation perfection (haha), which wasn't much for this.I did the music here, on my Korg T1, just as a stand-in, because I don't have nor do I remember the original music. I always hated it when they wanted to put in the music afterward!At TBS, I almost always had the (often custom) music to do the video with - an oh so critical factor, as I'm a big music buff and want every pixel on that screen matching up with something in the music. With a lower budget for CNN in those days, it was almost always (inexpensive, non-custom) "needle-drop" music, that anyone and everyone who wants it has access to. :(Congratulations on the BDA, Missy, and thank you for adding to my small collection of them. :)
TBS Theater Late Night by John Burns Jay Cordova 2020-07-18 | Created by John Burns and Melanie Goux in about 1979. I think there was a shorter version, one without the second shot that I liked better (unless I'm wrong about that!).The video is from one of John's 1" tapes, but the audio I had to get from the internet, just fyi.As a teenage viewer before I ever thought about working at TBS, I absolutely loved this late night open. Even today, the music and look of this thing remind me of a late night movie.This was all camera work (the movement) using beautiful artwork created by Melanie Goux. That girl has so much talent; this was hand-painted, airbrushed, drawn. and whichever other methods and tricks she used. BE-U-TEE-FUL.This theater really exists. It's at the corner of Ponce and Highland in Atlanta. Only Melanie made it look better! And John obviously knew what he wanted and put it together beautifully with the music.Funny, but I still see John's ADO hanging out throughout half of this open, ready to expand into TBS Theater Late Night. If you look at the point from which that zooms to its normal size on-screen, you'll see that spec! He didn't quite have that old Quantel DVE set to zero size as the first keyframe.The "TBS Theater Late Night" text at the end is ragged. That's not an interlace on my end with the processing; that's how less superior was the Quantel DPE-5000 ("the Quantel") than ADO (Ampex Digital Optics) with sizing quality. That was one of more than several things bad about that box (it wouldn't match sizing with its source, whereas the ADO was a perfect match, indistinguishable).
TBS Turner Studios 40th Anniversary Video - SD size/clean Jay Cordova 2020-07-16 | Test 1. Video nested at SD size. Clean - no background in the 1080 shell.
