Earl Green - Freelance Television Writer / Producer

Though it started life as another item “borrowed” from the Hearst idea pool, this is a case where the story evolved. Despite the promo, which plays things fairly neutral, and the prior Hearst stations’ positive reports, the report that wound up airing was fairly meaty (something which is, sadly, increasingly rare in lawsuit-fearing local news operations), and some real dirt was dug up about the author of the book in question and his credentials.

Yes another case of mining the vaults, this is a slightly more advanced version of the “Cyber Cop” promo I did sometime in 2000 or 2001. What a difference some up-to-date gear makes: whereas “Cyber Cop” was an all-nighter, “Text Messaging Troubles” was much, much easier to do, and I was able to do some things that simply couldn’t have been done with “Cyber Cop,” including animating the entire frame while the text was also animating. I was also able to get close enough to an authentically “LCD-ish” look that I was really happy with it.

I don’t know if it’s lack of inspiration, or just sheer desperation due to the time crunch involved, but this month became The Month Of Revisiting Old Ideas. This promo, another Hearst pre-packaged piece about a DVD player that skips over scenes of sex and violence, gave me a chance to revisit the “moving film” gag I used about a year or so ago on a story about Hollywood studios using northwest Arkansas as a location. This time, however, I played up some other elements too, right down the the green-backgrounded “The following preview…” screen and some on-screen text meant to evoke the hyperbolic movie trailers of the 1950s. (The screen shot above that shows “Shocking” is a relic of the first “draft” of this promo.) The end of the promo spoofs everything from the MPAA rating system to that ultra-thin, how-in-the-world-could-anyone-be-expected-to-read-that font that that credits are always shown in.

A week of daily segments in our morning show focused on all things sleep-related, from disorders to dreams to putting the baby down. Since this was going to be more than a one-off, I created some unique elements that would be common from spot to spot, including a “frame” for the video which used an image of bedsheets as its background. (Maybe I should’ve saved that idea for the Valentine’s Day spots. Anyway.) The generic spot covering the entire week was very much as you can see it below, though our morning show producer suggested opening with an alarm clock sound, something that I hadn’t thought of. With that firmly in place, I tried to open as many of the daily topicals for Sleep Week as I could with some kind of nat sound from the package – giggling kids, snoring, that sort of thing. It was a neat little project to work on.

Well…I really don’t have a lot of commentary on this one, because I’m not sure I can think of much positive to say about it. Except for the following: this was a “corporate piece,” meaning that the story and the interview material was originated by another station under the Hearst Argyle umbrella. The story was included on a national feed shared among the Hearst stations in case they need some filler material during sweeps periods. (Only we ran it, due to being short-handed in the reporter department at the time, as a full-on sweeps story instead of a funny filler.) And before you ask, I specifically requested permission to send the material up a little bit – it’s just so weird, and the public is naturally going to be skeptical. I was told instead to play it dead serious. This spot is the result. The “virus” background that runs through the whole thing is actually a re-tinted loop of a tiny segment of an ABC News 3-D graphic representing – of all things – breast cancer. I looped it, added a morph transition so the “virus” would keep growing back, altered the hues in the video to change the colors, and added a subtle “expanding” effect so that the virus would, in fact, get fatter. (I also used that expanding effect on the rotating wireframe human bodies in the spot, so they’d get fatter too.) The “video window” concept you’ll probably recognize from last year’s “Shopping For Germs” promo.

My one editorial opinion on this story: it isn’t a great moment for journalistic credibility, but our station didn’t come up with the idea. I think I’m going to call in sick tomorrow with the fat virus now.