It all started with a question, "What would a sweeper 'look' like?"  In my mind's eye, I saw the station logo tumbling into frame with a soundtrack that followed the motion of the moving image.  Thus, my first video close was born, for WDSY/Y108 in Pittsburgh. 

Since then, I've come up with a set of imaging, or branding, pieces for station videos where the station logo takes the place of the spoken name and position statement.  Opens, closes, logo bugs, lower thirds and animated wipes are the hits, impacts, drones and beds for a video imaging package.  I don't know why, but I always get a little miffed when I view a video on a station website that opens with a static graphic reminiscent of a 1980s wedding video or cable access show.  With programs like Sony Vegas, Apple Motion, and Adobe's After Effects & Final Cut, there are so many ways to create a more contemporary, yet simple presentation to introduce your station's video content.  

The video sweeper I referred to earlier was so simple to create in Sony Vegas and is still in service today.  It's just the Y108 logo with the Sony 3D Fly-In/Fly out transition with the "Tumble-In" preset that ads motion and specular light.  Then I used key frames to animate the scale of the logo to make room for the text that reads "Thanks for Watching" above and "www.Y108.com" below.  Since then, I've explored various ways of using transitions and key frames in Vegas to make the station logo move thru the frame and give it life.  But there were things that I wanted to accomplish visually that Vegas was not capable of doing.  So I stepped up to the world of After Effects. 

I've heard other creatives refer to AE as a "day killer" because you can get so wrapped up in the intricacies of the program, you won't realize several hours have passed.  But it's well worth it to design stunning animations that rival feature film trailers and network promos.  And there are tons of tutorials to help you learn After Effects.  Sites like CreativeCow.com, Videocopilot.net and DigitalJuice.com are full of how-to's and even downloadable templates, to adapt to make your own video branding elements.  Heck, maybe even create TV spots if your station is fortunate enough to have a marketing budget.  But budget and time are always factors.  That's why guys like me are always available to help, for a small fee ;)