The Credit Card Experiment
This is going to be a very unusual entry for this section - something I haven’t done before. This spot was changed rather significantly from the version that I finished and turned in, and while I agree with some of the changes (replacing one of the sound bites, for example), there was one big one I didn’t buy into. This story dealt with a serious issue - i.e. whether or not cashiers even bother to glance at your credit cards and your ID to make sure they match - but was written in a humorous, attention-grabbing way. I originally put some lively and maybe just a little bit silly music on the spot to reinforce the fun angle, but when it aired it had a far more serious music bed that seemed to strain against everything that the spot was trying to do visually and in the script. So for this spot, I created an extra copy of the sequence in the Avid and put the original music bed back on the spot - and I still think it fits better. Therefore, this, if you like, is the “producer’s cut.” Is it too silly? You decide. Another bane of my existence cropped up here, as the credit card, and the signage identifying the stores into which we sent our “undercover reporters,” all had to be blurred. Since we weren’t dealing with station talent, we weren’t dealing with people who understood that things needed to be held still to facilitate that blurring.
Oh, and let’s not forget that for every one of these stories where footage has to be blurred or otherwise altered for the promo, everything in the story itself has to receive a similar treatment. I’ll give you one guess who gets to do that task.
It sure beats the wax out of ear candling though.
