For my reflection assignment, I decided to go back to the very beginning of the semester. I chose our Adobe Photoshop project. For that project, I designed a graphic to be used on a blog, website, and even on television for our “Weather in Schools” program.
Here’s a look at the previous version…
Our class instructor Justin mentioned to me that the final submission was a little busy and didn’t pop. I agree. I decided to give this one another shot. I wanted to simplify it to make it stand out more, but still convey the same message/information.
I decided to put the hide button to good use. I got rid of the wording on the top and bottom of the image. I also deleted the blue bar at the top. With permission from my station, I pulled in a website graphic that fits with our branding a bit more and stands out better. I put “kptv.com” at the bottom of the design to point people where to go if they want to learn more or sign up. I declined to add a drop shadow to that graphic, because I think it looks better without.
I also chose to lighten the background color by changing the opacity, making it less green. I think the new background makes everything else stand out more.
This graphic is more simple now and pops better, without the clutter. I would use this on television during a weathercast. I would also put it on our weather blog or my personal blog to advertise this school program. This graphic is meant to direct teachers and parents to our website to find out more information. I think it does a much better job of that now.
People are gearing up for the holidays around the Portland metro area. The leaves are down, the Christmas lights are going up, but one thing feels off. This turned out to be one of the driest Novembers on record. I chose to do a news story on this unusual late fall weather.
I used a variety of cameras for this news story. It is really great that Adobe Premiere can handle various types of footage in the same timeline. I used my iPhone X, a Canon C100, and a Sony camera for this project.
My subject for this story is Mark Ross. He lives in the Bethany neighborhood of Washington County, just west of Portland. I wanted his take on how the great fall weather has impacted his life. Another interviewee for this story was the owner of a nearby nursery. It’s been so dry in the Portland area that plant experts are encouraging people to water their plants and lawns.
I logged all of my interview sound and then wrote my story around that. Sometimes logging video can be tedious, but it is amazing how fast you can work after that is done.
In my story, I also used a weather graphic to visualize how much rain we’ve seen this November so far, compared to recent years. I made this graphic using computers at my station. In the weather center, we use a program called Max, developed by The Weather Company. This program reminds me of some of the Adobe tools we’ve been learning this semester and it allows us to make some really awesome graphics for our weather presentations.
Audio is such an important part of telling a good news story. I wanted to make sure I had some good NAT sound in this package. I used the sound of a musical ornament, cars driving, people sledding, and my subject playing with his dog. I raised and lowered the audio in those areas with the pen tool. I also used an audio crossfade effect to make the transitions less abrupt. I recorded my track using a special iRig microphone plugged into my iPhone. I used an app called Voice Record Pro to record it.
For the video, I made sure to sprinkle in wide, medium, and tight shots throughout. I wanted to give the feeling of a warm fall that was on the edge of winter. I used a tripod or monopod for a lot of my shots, because I think it most cases a steady shot just looks better.
In editing, I referenced my script and then laid down my A roll (track and interview sound) first. Then, I laid the B roll on top of it. I tried to make sure the pacing was appropriate. I didn’t keep one shot for too long and edited my B roll to match audio from my A roll.
My classmates made some great points about the audio. I adjusted some of the levels of the interviews to make sure everything was about the same level. I also used the color correction tool in Premiere on a couple of the shots that were a little too bright or dark. Using different kinds of cameras for the same project can cause some issues with the look, so I corrected several of the shots to make them look similar.
Overall, I’m very happy with this weather story. By the way, since this story was created, it has remained very dry in Portland. A remarkable run for what is normally a very wet time of year.
People are gearing up for the holidays around the Portland metro area. The leaves are down, the Christmas lights are going up, but one thing feels off. This is one of the driest and warmest starts to November on record. I chose to do a news story on this unusual late fall weather.
I used a variety of cameras for this news story. It is really great that Adobe Premiere can handle various types of footage in the same timeline. I used my iPhone X, a Canon C100, and a Sony camera for this project.
My subject for this story is Mark Ross. He lives in the Bethany neighborhood of Washington County, just west of Portland. I wanted his take on how the great fall weather has impacted his life. Another interviewee for this story was the owner of a nearby nursery. It’s been so dry in the Portland area that plant experts are encouraging people to water their plants and lawns.
I logged all of my interview sound and then wrote my story around that. Sometimes logging video can be tedious, but it is amazing how fast you can work after that is done.
In my story, I also used a weather graphic to visualize how much rain we’ve seen this November so far, compared to recent years. I made this graphic using computers at my station. In the weather center, we use a program called Max, developed by The Weather Company. This program reminds me of some of the Adobe tools we’ve been learning this semester and it allows us to make some really awesome graphics for our weather presentations.
Audio is such an important part of telling a good news story. I wanted to make sure I had some good NAT sound in this package. I used the sound of a musical ornament, cars driving, people sledding, and my subject playing with his dog. I raised and lowered the audio in those areas with the pen tool. I also used an audio crossfade effect to make the transitions less abrupt. I recorded my track using a special iRig microphone plugged into my iPhone. I used an app called Voice Record Pro to record it.
For the video, I made sure to sprinkle in wide, medium, and tight shots throughout. I wanted to give the feeling of a warm fall that was on the edge of winter. I used a tripod or monopod for a lot of my shots, because I think it most cases a steady shot just looks better.
In editing, I referenced my script and then laid down my A roll (track and interview sound) first. Then, I laid the B roll on top of it. I tried to make sure the pacing was appropriate. I didn’t keep one shot for too long and edited my B roll to match audio from my A roll.
I think this story turned out nice. I’m looking forward to hearing from my fellow classmates on how I can make it better.
Our station produces 13.5 hours of television every weekday! It’s a crazy amount of news for a local station to produce, but our amazing team does it. It takes a big staff and a lot of resources to accomplish that feat.
Every year around the holidays, our bosses graciously cancel some of our newscasts so that many of us can spend time with our families. With those newscasts gone for a couple of days, we still need to fill the time, so we create pre-recorded specials that cover various topics: investigators stories, cold cases, charity work, features, etc.
I’m in charge of producing the FOX 12 Weather Special. It’s a look back at the biggest weather stories of the year for the Pacific Northwest. I write, produce and host the special with our station’s chief meteorologist. We cover anything from floods to tornadoes to big wind storms to snow.
For this project, I wanted to create an audio piece to put out to our weather podcast audience that would promote this year’s special. I did an interview with Mark Nelsen, who is hosting with me. Also, with permission from the station, I used clips from various news stories of interviews my colleagues and I did during the year, reporter live shots, and anchor reads. I used relatively quick cuts and interspersed them throughout to give it a Radiolab feel.
This year we had some very interesting weather stories in the area. After a lackluster start to the 2018-2019 winter, February brought several rounds of snow to the Portland metro. Snow here is a big deal, because the city doesn’t have enough equipment to be everywhere at once. Schools close, people take the day off of work, and there are always accidents and cars that end up in the ditch. The big joke is that a half inch of snow can lock the city down… it’s so true! I always wanted to include a snow story about an Amtrak train that got stuck in the Cascade foothills for over a day and a half with about 180 people on board. Three tornadoes also touched down in the Portland area this year, which is rare to have happen in such populated areas.
I recorded the audio of my track and the interview using a TASCAM DR-40 with an external microphone. For the news clips, I imported .mov files to Audition. In the end, I had seven tracks with my various audio sources. After I edited the piece, I mixed it down and normalized the audio, then used a multiband compressor to give it more of a rich, filled out sound.
In my draft piece, there were some edits that weren’t as clean as they could be, so I adjusted those. I also had some nat sound of a chainsaw that my classmates thought was out of place. I replaced that with reaction to a tornado. My classmates also suggested the use of some music. I ended up using an old timey weatherman song that my good friend Scott Burns put together for my podcast years ago. I’m using it again with his permission.
I love telling stories with audio and video. Both are such powerful mediums if done right. I am happy with how this piece turned out and will post it to my podcast page as we get closer to the holidays. I hope you enjoy it too!
Our station produces 13.5 hours of television every weekday! It’s a crazy amount of news for a local station to produce, but our amazing team does it. It takes a big staff and a lot of resources to accomplish that feat.
Every year around the holidays, our bosses graciously cancel some of our newscasts so that many of us can spend time with our families. With those newscasts gone for a couple of days, we still need to fill the time, so we create pre-recorded specials that cover various topics: investigators stories, cold cases, charity work, features, etc.
I’m in charge of producing the FOX 12 Weather Special. It’s a look back at the biggest weather stories of the year for the Pacific Northwest. I write, produce and host the special with our station’s chief meteorologist. We cover anything from floods to tornadoes to big wind storms to snow.
For this project, I wanted to create an audio piece to put out to our weather podcast audience that would promote this year’s special. I did an interview with Mark Nelsen, who is hosting with me. Also, with permission from the station, I used clips from various news stories of interviews my colleagues and I did during the year, reporter live shots, and anchor reads. I used relatively quick cuts and interspersed them throughout to give it a Radio Lab feel.
This year we had some very interesting weather stories in the area. After a lackluster start to the 2018-2019 winter, February brought several rounds of snow to the Portland metro. Snow here is a big deal, because the city doesn’t have enough equipment to be everywhere at once. Schools close, people take the day off of work, and there are always accidents and cars that end up in the ditch. The big joke is that a half inch of snow can lock the city down… it’s so true! I always wanted to include a snow story about an Amtrak train that got stuck in the Cascade foothills for over a day and a half with about 180 people on board. Three tornadoes also touched down in the Portland area this year, which is rare to have happen in such populated areas.
I recorded the audio of my track and the interview using a TASCAM DR-40 with an external microphone. For the news clips, I imported .mov files to Audition. In the end, I had seven tracks with my various audio sources. After I edited the piece, I mixed it down and normalized the audio, then used a multiband compressor to give it more of a rich, filled out sound.
I’ve always enjoyed editing audio and video and I’m looking forward to feedback from my peers about how to make this promotional piece better.
This is the finished logo for my Illustrator project in COM 561. Let’s talk about how we got here.
In the business of television news, we are always looking for new and innovative ways to disseminate our content and promote our brand. A few years ago, I came up with the idea to create a podcast that focuses on weather in the Pacific Northwest. The podcast format would give us a more casual setting and more time to talk about local weather phenomena, interview weather experts, and give a behind the scenes glimpse at what it is like to work in the news business. After taking a break from the podcast, we are going to revive it in the coming months and I wanted to give it a new logo.
It was important to incorporate weather and audio elements into the design, but I did not want it to be too busy. I sketched out some ideas and found that with many of my ideas, there was too much going on. I tried incorporating the words into the logo and then using a microphone cord to draw the cloud. I experimented with clouds, sun, and lightning. Here are a couple of my initial drawings (as you can tell, I’m not an artist).
I decided to simplify. For the cloud, I used the elliptical tool and created four circles of different sizes. To fill in the gaps at the bottom, I used a rectangle and then used the pathfinder tool to make it one piece. I filled it with blue and added a small darker outline to give it a little more pop.
The sun was made using the elliptical tool. I added a gradient to the yellow and orange colors to give it a more interesting look.
I really struggled trying to figure out how to incorporate the microphone. Did I want to make it small or big? Should it be in the foreground or the background? I went looking for some logo ideas that involved microphones. I considered using a handheld mic or a studio standup mic for the design. I liked the look of the studio mic better. I found this tutorial on how to draw a microphone. I followed those instructions, which included making a rectangle and bringing in the edges so they were rounded. Then making another larger one and deleting some of the points using the direct selection tool for the curved part of the stand. The rest of the stand was made with the line tool. I also added my own twist by including the white line just below center and the white dots on the top half. I arranged the dots to make a “W” for “weather.” It’s a small detail that others might not notice, but I liked it.
I picked the font Copperplate for this project. I put that at the bottom instead of incorporating it into the drawings. The separation looks better. I added some width to the letters in the word “podcast” to give it a little more emphasis. The first draft ended up looking like this.
Not bad, but the logo had a few issues. My peers pointed out that the gradient on the sun and stroke on the cloud were unnecessary. The sun also only needed one circle, not two different colors. After stepping away and coming back to it, I noticed there were some balance issues with the logo as well. Was I making things too complicated? Looks like it.
First, I got rid of the stroke on the cloud and made the sun a solid yellow/orange color. I decided to use the reflect tool on the cloud so the shorter side was on the right. That’s where I put the sun to balance it out. Finally, I stretched out the word “podcast” a bit more to give it more emphasis. I also increased the stroke of the lines a bit on the microphone so the base looked better when the logo was smaller.
I’m happy with how the final logo turned out. It looks good small or large, has a nice balance to it, and it’s a good representation of what a podcast is and what ours is about.
In the business of television news, we are always looking for new and innovative ways to disseminate our content and promote our brand. A few years ago, I came up with the idea to create a podcast that focuses on weather in the Pacific Northwest. The podcast format would give us a more casual setting and more time to talk about local weather phenomena, interview weather experts, and give a behind the scenes glimpse at what it is like to work in the news business. After taking a break from the podcast, we are going to revive it in the coming months and I wanted to give it a new logo.
It was important to incorporate weather and audio elements into the design, but I did not want it to be too busy. I sketched out some ideas and found that with many of my ideas, there was too much going on. I am more familiar with Photoshop projects, like posters, which can include a bunch of information and elements. Initially, a more simplified look was harder to wrap my head around, but I was able to come up with a design that works nicely.
For the cloud, I used the elliptical tool and created four circles of different sizes. To fill in the gaps at the bottom, I used a rectangle and then used the pathfinder tool to make it one piece. I filled it with blue and added a small darker outline to give it a little more pop.
The sun was made using the elliptical tool. I added a gradient to the yellow and orange colors to give it a more interesting look.
I really struggled trying to figure out how to incorporate the microphone. Did I want to make it small or big? Should it be in the foreground or the background? I went looking for some logo ideas that involved microphones. I considered using a handheld mic or a studio standup mic for the design. I liked the look of the studio mic better. I found this tutorial on how to draw a microphone. I followed those instructions, which included making a rectangle and bringing in the edges so they were rounded. Then I made another larger one and deleted some of the points using the direct selection tool for the curved part of the stand. The rest of the stand was made with the line tool. I also added my own twist by including the white line just below center and the white dots on the top half. I arranged the dots to make a “W” for “weather.” It’s a small detail that others might not notice, but I liked it.
I picked the font Copperplate for this project. I put that at the bottom instead of incorporating it into the drawings. The separation looks better. I added some width to the letters in the word “podcast” to give it a little more emphasis.
This is a challenging, but powerful program. I’m looking forward to hearing some feedback so I can improve this design!
Brian MacMillan's Blog 