Slates of KBLR

• Report rights infringement
• published: 30 Jan 2008
• views: 1235

When a commercial is distributed on tape, the production company puts the reference bars and tone followed by a "slate" which contains catalog information about the commercial, including client name, title of the spot, date created, length, and so on and so forth. This is done for several reasons, but one is so that when a spot is placed on a tape with several other spots, the particular spot can be found easily while scrubbing. That way it isn't necessary to view every spot on the tape to find out which is the right one. Most people never see them, because they seldom make it on air. If you have seen a slate on the air, the operator made a mistake (it happens and it is funny). In my job, however, I've had the opportunity to see some pretty cool slates. Some of them have contained wild 3D animations, others have been plain, and others have been just weird. I've also taken pride in my own slates, and have created a few in the past. Personally, I like to have loud music accompany my slates, with lots of sound effects and lots of motion. Most of my clients don't allow me to be really wild with my creativity, so I get very wild with my slates. These are five of my favorites, in order from 1998 to 2008. 1) 1998 - One of my first editing projects on my own when I started learning Media 100. Music: Poison from The Prodigy. 2) 2000 - Not too much better, but I was really starting to learn After Effects with this slate. I had just learned how to do alpha and luma mattes. Music: Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind 3) One of my favorites, this one used the Boris Effects 3D Shatter and some real fun After Effects stuff. This was one of my more involved slates, and it took about a week off and on to create, including rendering. I liked the smoke and fire effects on the word "Productions". Music: Save Yourself by Stabbing Westward. 4) When my station became an NBC O and O, I was asked to remove the Summit Media Productions from the slate, as that was the previous owner. I was to replace it with our Telemundo logo and the NBC Universal logo. I had to do it in a couple of hours. This is not one of my best slates, but other people like it. Music: Tribute by Tenacious D. 5) My latest. I was able to spend a bit more time on this one. This finally has some new Vegas footage, and I played with it quite a bit. This was also my first slate done entirely in Final Cut Studio. Music: Sal Pa' Fuera by Puya.