WLWT’s Murder Story Promo Is Editor’s Dream

Listen and watch closely to this promo from WLWT, the NBC affiliate in Cincinnati owned by Hearst.

The promo is for a news story about a cold case murder of a policeman. This version of the promo aired on WLWT.

This version of the same promo ran on WLWT’s Facebook page.

There are at least three changes in the music, each supporting a change in mood.

The announcer’s read, from welcoming to threatening then to hopeful, is seamlessly woven throughout.

Christina Rule, the writer, producer and editor of the spot, said she had the mood swings in mind when she wrote and then sat down to edit the spot.

“I wanted to do something different,” said Rule.

She asked the announcer, Steve Stone, to record the VO track several times just so she could get that change in inflection and attitude she was looking for.

I love the way the spot humanizes the victim in the first few seconds, then turns dark.

The spot seems like a mini-movie, with the net effect making me want to know what happened in this cold case of a policeman murdered on a lonely road in the middle of the night.

Pete Salkowski, WLWT’s creative services director, says it’s not uncommon for his staff to go out with a reporter in the field to shoot their own promo footage.

Rule says the drone footage was shot by another producer in the department.

Here’s the story.

NOTE: People sometimes say how glamorous working in TV must be. And it does have its moments.

But mostly, for creative services writer/producers, it’s about sitting in a darkened, mood-lit edit room, alone, with a script, and all the pieces of media you need to make it come to life — music, announcer track, sound effects, nat sound and sound bites, footage and B-roll and whatever else you can conjure up to make it work.

Once non-linear editing came into play, I can remember sitting down to edit a promo and relishing the process of taking that script on a piece of paper into a finished video.

Got an editing story you want to share?