- Hi, welcome!
I'm Jen Hadley,
and I work for PBS Wisconsin,
and I'm a motion graphics designer.
And today, I'd like to show you
my station where I create live graphics
for our studio productions.
The equipment that I use is:
I use a Macintosh computer for a lot of prep work,
doing Photoshop and Illustrator,
After Effects for motion.
And here,
this is a character generator.
That's a fancy word for the thing
that puts people's names down at the bottom of the screen.
And, in particular, today,
I'm using it for our news program,
Here & Now with Frederica Freyberg.
My job is often to take complex concepts
and use visuals to make them more understandable
and make that information more valuable to you.
So, when I'm working in graphic design,
I'm in service.
I'm in service to the people of Wisconsin,
and that's a really rewarding way to work.
During a production day,
there's certain language that the director
will be using through the headsets
to tell the rest of the team what to do.
And for graphics, it's often requesting "sups."
"Sup" is short for superimpose.
It's a really old term
for when graphics literally were
a piece of film with a transparency
that you could superimpose over the video.
So, in my headphones, I'll hear from the director,
"Ready sup, take sup."
That refers to the graphics.
We did a documentary about the Pro Arte Quartet,
which is a strings ensemble that was originally from Europe.
It's now based in Wisconsin.
We had some French subtitles at times.
And I took French in high school so I know a little French.
And we got it out the door.
We aired it.
And everything was great.
And then, we got a message from a viewer
saying that we had misspelled--
I had misspelled some of the French subtitles.
So, we went back and looked, and I said, "No, I did not.
"This is right.
This is correct."
And they said, "Well...
"it's spelled correct for modern French,
"but in the 16th century,
"which is the French that this is referring to,
it would have been spelled like this."
And...
we changed it
because we care that much about accuracy.
And I've got to say,
I don't think anybody else has viewers--
What other station could possibly have viewers
that would be knowledgeable
about how they would have spelled this word
in French in the 16th century
and then cared enough to call us up to set us to right?
And what other station
would have listened and done it?
So, just remember,
next time you're watching election results
or a football game or an awards ceremony,
and you see somebody's name on the screen,
that's somebody like me.
They may be working in a studio.
They may be working in a production truck.
They may even be working from home
from their basement on a laptop.
But, that is a graphic designer creating live graphics
for your viewing pleasure.