Sweeps is upon us, and that means not only are political candidates vying for your vote, but so are television stations.

November sweeps and elections go hand-in-hand. All the local TV stations try to out perform the competition by promising “the most experienced news team,” “accurate reporting,” or “trust.”

I could talk all day about my competition’s position on such issues, but why would I want to? Instead, I want to ask you: “This November, can we count on your remote?”

http://www.sethkeever.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/electionnight_30.flv

DTV: Explained

This is what our viewers are really going through

How to liven up a crowd at church

Is Jesus really Superman? I’ve never seen both of them together

Or at least that’s what Judge (of Judge’s Barbecue [link]) had to say when we used him for the latest A-List [link] campaign.

If you don’t know, the A-List is a collection of local businesses, grouped by categories, that users can rank, comment and vote for. Think, the phone book at a bar, but with more pages and less stuff scribbled inside. It’s managed by a company called CityVoter.

Part of our agreement is to push the service on Channel 6 a couple of times a year. In this case, it’s to announce that voting for the best businesses of 2008 has been opened.

My boss came to me on a Friday with the script, we looked it over and hammered out a rough idea for what we wanted. Last week, we ran out and spent the day shooting people from area businesses (if you follow me on Twitter, you know all about it).

We managed to piece a spot together, then shot some more business-folks and tada, this is the :30:

http://www.sethkeever.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/5592_alist2008voting_high_30.flv

The most fun we had was with the guys at Sakura, mainly because we had just eaten around 7 sushi rolls between the two of us. They had a fun time with their lines, and the customers seemed to enjoy it, too.

So, go online and vote for your favorite local business. It’s easy, just visit The A-List at TheIndyChannel.com

We also hacked that spot down to make a :15, :10 and a :05. The rest were all kind of guesses of what to use and how they would flow. Read on to see those 3 spots.

[Note: Silly case-sensitive server. I could have published this last night, if I wasn't suffering stupidity.]

Read the rest…

Well, sometimes you really do need a montage. They don’t always have to be the Rocky kind of montage; but those are pretty cool, most of the time. I think Forrest Gump running across the country is a montage. Do pornos have montages? Oh, and any time Santa delivers presents it’s in a montage.

Anyways…

We needed a nice montage to wrap up a presentation to a bunch of representatives and clients. The network put together a fantastic opening montage (which I cannot share here, unless I want the “Mouse” to come and smother me in my sleep).

Their piece highlights all of the popular returning shows and new series for the fall, and also reminds you how much you both love and hate Meredith Grey and her whiny attitude. “Boohoo, McDreamy doesn’t love me-Yay! He loves me again.” Get over it, he’s going to end up with the Chief at the end of the series. Just wait. You’ll see.

We needed to put together our own montage for a nice little bow on the whole pitch. The creative process was… well, odd on this one. My boss wrote a quick script, with a bunch of throw-away lines. We knew that we wanted to show the big events, but had no idea where the piece was going.

By the way, I spent hours keyframing track mattes to make the ribbons and bubbles go behind the people and objects. This is what I came up with:

http://www.sethkeever.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/rtv6_upfront_montage.flv

Every year the networks bring in big advertisers to showcase what’s coming next year and where there will be great improvements. They’re called the “Upfronts,” and each network holds their own. There’s a lot of bull that gets tossed around usually, but you can get a great idea of the new shows coming in the fall.

Locally, affiliates invite their big clients in to watch a closed circuit feed of the “Upfronts,” which take place in New York. At most stations a special video is then produced to hand out to advertisers, to show them what’s coming this fall.

We receive a lot of content from network for this presentation, but sometimes logos have to be covered up or changed. And sometimes you need elements that don’t exist. Here’s just a sampling of some projects from today:

Network Upfront ID
Since sometimes our clients are national, we needed a transition device that would cover a big jump cut and remind people where we are.
http://www.sethkeever.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/network_upfront_id.flv

Network Upfront Endtag
ABC’s “Black Pearl” is pretty, but we wanted to use our ABC/RTV6 logo at the end. This took a while to fake…
http://www.sethkeever.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/network_upfront_entag.flv

That’s where we’re at right now. I’ll be updating this post as I finish more elements, including a pretty awesome daily program lineup, if all goes as planned.

If you’re in Indiana, then you know about the severe weather that passed through last Friday night and again today.

I personally thought we did a great job with our coverage. We’re very aware that you’re actually watching us to see programming, not sitting at home praying we’re going to interrupt your cerebral numbing with weather happening 100 miles away from you. To that end, we do our best to not cover programming. We wait until ABC goes to a break, we cut in, then get you back in time for our local break and back into the show.

During last Friday’s storms, we did our best, and did it pretty well. We didn’t cover any of the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee, which let Hoosiers see an Indiana boy take the prize. We did blow off 20/20, but at that point the storms were extremely severe on Indianapolis’ east-side.

We spent the entire weekend covering the severe weather, so on Monday I was asked to put together a P.O.P. (Proof of Performance) spot. Here’s what we put together in just a few hours, with very little determined going in to the project (really, the music was the only thing we knew would make it into the spot).

http://www.sethkeever.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/5567_weatherpop15.flv http://www.sethkeever.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/5566_weatherpop30.flv

So, that was our fun Monday at RTV6. Be expecting these spots to change on Wednesday, as we get more video in from the TWO tornadoes Tuesday evening (does that make it a two-fer Tuesday?).

Fair use is an interesting topic within copyright law. During media law classes in college, it was always a conversation starter.

Copyright law protects our property and creations. Movies, books, poems, blog posts, music, blueprints, videos and everything else you can think of are covered.

But there’s a great loophole that lets others use part of your work (and not technically as a derivative work). Fair use. It lets news programs and people poking fun of your work use your work. Keep in mind that satire and parody are two very different things, and I can’t remember which one is protected speech when I’m this many beers deep already.

Anywho, here’s a very helpful (and fun) explanation of fair use using fair use.

Genius. Simply genius.

“On*Star, how can I take your money?”

Okay, so that’s not what they really say when you push the blue button, but I’ve always thought of them as a scam. What are the chances that I’m going to crash in the middle of nowhere with no one there to see me? (Granted I do travel on many country back roads where sickle-wielding caped men try to kill young people just for being young). I just don’t see the purpose in paying an ungodly amount of money every year to have someone call 911 for me, that’s why I have a cell phone with GPS. Oddly enough though, I don’t see a problem with paying nearly $100 a year for RADIO (you know, that thing can come through the air for free?).

So, I’ll never use the blue button. Have no desire to. Have no need to. I won’t even push the phone button next to it, again, that’s why I have a cell phone. But I must say, that the e-mail I received the other day could make my free year of On*Star completely awesome.

My car e-mailed me.

Seriously.

I thought it was pretty cool to get a “Diagnostic Report” from my car. Now I know this isn’t supposed to surprise me because I’m a “geek,” but c’mon, how can you not be intrigued by this? I just hope the car doesn’t figure out my cell phone number, I’d hate to start getting texts like these at 3:00 in the morning:

R U redy 2 go outz?

Meetin up wit a hot Bonneville 2nite!!

I had so much ethanol I blew a gasket. It was awesome!

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On a completely unrelated note, I finally finished the Helio spot I’ve been complaining discussing on Twitter this week. Take a look… (I’m still not a fan of the disco ball, but at least it’s on the air)

http://www.sethkeever.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/5553_heliodance15_hi.flv