America in Primetime is our four-part series that traces the history of television through different character archetypes. Here’s the trailer:

The entire series is now available in streaming form at pbs.org, along with tons of bonus clips and material.

Angle of Attack: How Naval Aviation Changed the Face of War was released in November through American Public Television and is now available on DVD. I did some snazzy opening titles for this one that I’m pretty proud of. Check out the trailer:

And if you’re a Dish Network or DIRECTV subscriber, be sure to catch Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, airing tonight on the Documentary Channel as part of their “Best of Doc” series.

He needs a name! Best suggestion so far is “Schroedinger”.

Here’s how it looks at the moment:

Here’s the underlying vector map layer:

And even that map began life as a set of even more boring public domain vectors. Everything else is AE-generated. (And yes, the size of Hawaii and Midway are exaggerated slightly for increased visibility on your television screen. Shhhh.)

Nothing is finalized yet; the map that actually ends up in the film could be more different still.

It’s very noir-y. And there’s a scene in the film where I have pigtails…

The title graphics for this were a fun side project for me. I got to do some motion tracking and playing with type made out of lights. I’m really looking forward to seeing the finished product!

Think of your slideshow as a trailer for your presentation.

It’s not the whole movie: you don’t include every fact, every word you’re going to say, and you don’t spoil the ending. But you get across the basic plot, as well as a few of the most interesting details and little hints you can use as jumping-off points to further discussion. There should never be a point when the slide says something ages before you do or — worse — that you find yourself reading it aloud to your audience.

If you want to give people access to more detailed information to look at later, provide a printed handout or give them a link to a website or PDF.

Another thing to keep in mind:

The best graphic design is often invisible.

It’s about making sure that a viewer’s eye goes to things you want them to notice in the right order, without necessarily forcing them to do so by only revealing one element at a time. In the last couple weeks, I’ve seen Powerpoint presentations which had each word swoosh onto the screen, and others that were static pages with a ton of plain text crammed onto a single unreadable slide. Neither approach is going to do you or your audience any favors. If, when you’re paging through what you’ve made, you find yourself paying attention to the effects more than the content, it’s time to tone them down. You don’t want to come out of a meeting with potential clients saying “I can’t remember what they’re selling, but it sure did look good spinning around on that cube!”

It’s a nice look if you need to create some peeling gilded text on the base of an old statue. It’s also great for a faux antique gravestone or building ruin. And the type is still fully editable so, I dunno, evil posessed statues can come to life and write things? Some archaeologist could unearth something demonic? Okay, I admit it. I actually have utterly no idea what to use this for, but it’s pretty cool looking so I thought I’d post it anyway. And all you have to do is change the typeface and it looks like an artifact from a completely different era, so it might actually have some practical application after all.

The basic setup is a mix of BCC Reptilian, Fractal Noise, Bevel Alpha, two instances of Roughen Edges and a lot of hue-sat tweaking. There’s also a Gaussian Blur adjustment layer with a Fractal Noise solid as its luma matte. And then there’s a vignette. Because there’s always a vignette.

STEP ONE: INITIAL CONCEPT

One thing I’ve learned from working in documentary is how important it is to have all the facts BEFORE you begin, and getting everyone on the same page early on will save time, tears, and money. First, and most important rule for both sides: be honest. I used to think that the hardest clients to work for are people with absolutely no idea what they want. In fact, the most difficult clients are the ones who either claim to have no idea what they want, but secretly have something very specific in mind, or the ones who demand something with great specificity, but actually have no clue what they’re asking for and afraid to show it. If you really don’t know what you want from a designer, SAY SO. We won’t judge you! If you don’t know anything about graphic design and have never hired a pro before, SAY SO. We’re happy to walk you through the process. And if you don’t understand technical jargon we use, don’t be scared to ask what we mean. And that goes both ways — if you’re a designer and you don’t understand a brief, SAY SO. If something is far easier or harder than a client realizes, SAY SO. (And don’t be scared to mention things you think they may have left out, for that matter, or a creative alternative they might not have considered.) Ask for a fair rate and explain your charges — do you charge by the day or hour, build in rounds of changes with additional ones extra or just have a flat final figure? Get a contract.

TRUE STORY: The single most horrifying phrase I have ever heard came four months into a freelance animation project, less than a week before final broadcast delivery date: “…can we do this in 3D?” I nearly fell over. And no one was happy with the final results on either side.

That said, where do you start? Get the technical details out of the way. A designer needs to know the scale of the project immediately — are we talking posters, a website, animation, just a logo? All of the above? Does the client need various design elements to use later on their own, or will they come back to you anytime they need anything else? Is it for print? If so, are you printing in full color, black and white, spot color? It’s okay to ask what your options are — and there may be alternatives that will give you everything you need faster and/or for less money. How big is the biggest thing you’re making? It’s fine if you grab your program’s inch-high headshots off of facebook, but if you want posters with photos on them, you’d better be able to get your source materials in high resolution. If it’s an animated project, what are your delivery specs? Are you working in 1080p HD but want to ensure your lower thirds are still readable on YouTube? Will your broadcast graphics need to be able to be converted into DVD covers and labels? And one last very important and often-overlooked question: do you have the rights to all the materials you want to use?

Next, what’s the turnaround time? How does that fit into the designer’s schedule? Is there a hard or flexible deadline? Is it possible to finish by then? For Kevin’s opera, there’s no chance of making posters becoming The Neverending Project — they have to be done and printed before the performance date. But talking out the design requirements led to us both realizing that it wasn’t just posters — there are programs and feedback forms to design, and the logo has to work everywhere from facebook to the cover of the score, so I need to give him a few extra variations on it (for instance, a solid black version that will photocopy well). And those logo designs have to happen sooner, so he can begin his publicity campaign as quickly as possible.

Once you have that settled, you can talk style. Piles of adjectives are good, as are references to existing designs you think have a similar look and feel to what you’re going for. Think color, tone, texture. How much text is there? Once I’ve talked through this stuff, I actually like to condense the conversation into a little summary to make sure we’re on the same page. Here’s what I said to Kevin:

You need to create a visual “look” to go with this performance. On a broad level, you want it to convey that this is a creative new approach to looking at a classical piece, and that it’s serious work but accessible and fun. And you want to look like *you’re* for serious as well, and that the music is central to the production. Finding the balance between all those elements is the biggest challenge.

Visually, you’re thinking things that suggest “nighttime” and “forest” would be a good place to start. Flexibility is also key — you need something that works in both B&W and color, so strong simple shapes are probably smart — you want to be able to make readable photocopies, if need be, and going the vector route will give you scalability. You also definitely need a logo delivered separately so you can use it in other places. If you want to create a consistent look for everything, you probably also want a few related elements that you can repurpose on their own (if, for instance, the poster was trees on a night sky, you’d also want the trees separately so you could make a B&W version that doesn’t use your entire ink cartridge), as well as a couple color swatches and a typeface or two to use for all non-logo text.

After we concluded we were on the same page, we decided I should start by sketching out a range of possible logo designs. His homework was to figure out the rough copy for the poster.

Stay tuned for part 2!

Here’s a still from the raw footage (DVCPROHD 1080i60):

And here’s the after shot, with only four very basic After Effects filters applied (click to embiggen):

I used Leave Color to keep just the blues and desaturate the rest of the image, then boosted the saturation a bit to make the remaining color really pop. After that it was just your basic Levels and a high-contrast instance of Curves.

Oh, and one extra layer on top as a vignette — a black solid with a rounded rectangle mask (double-click the mask tool to get one that fills the layer) set to subtract and heavily feathered. That’s all!

Leave Color has simple parameters but dramatic results, and is especially good as a quick trick if you need to draw a viewer’s eye to a key element of a scene. All you have to do is decide which color you want to keep. For example, say you have a shot of a bunch of people at a party, with one woman in a bright red dress. Choose that red with the eyedropper, then slide “Amount to Decolor” to 100%. Only the color of the dress will remain, and she instantly becomes the center of attention.

Sin City and Pleasantville (interesting combination of titles when you think about it…) are both good examples of how visually arresting color highlights can be on a black and white scene.