Nightline Graphics Design

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ABC Nightline Graphics

For the current season of ABC Nightline I focused on creating a graphics package featuring the people of New York City. Other late night shows use beauty shots of the city but they are mostly void of humans and feature only iconic locations.

I use my iPhone while walking the city at night to capture scenes that brand the show and give it energy. iPhones still create grainy video of very dark scenes so I look for brightly lit and colorful backgrounds that silhouette people passing by. Wintertime rush hour crowds walk with urgency to get home, often rushing to cross the street or racing down subway steps. Using the time-lapse feature on the iPhone gives the hurried pace a hyper reality.

I use Adobe After Effects to adjust the color and video speed. Slowing or speeding the footage creates an interesting motion blur of people and traffic. Enhancing the video color saturation and blurring commercial signs helps clean up the scene before placing the Nightline logo.

I experimented with Nightline logo texture giving it an internal glow. In the past years the glow effect extended beyond the logo type but this year I put the glow inside the type. One day while sitting in a restaurant near the sunny window I notice the water glass shadow dancing on the white tablecloth. I captured the glowing shadow on my phone. I slowed the video speed and used it as a shimmering gold texture to fill the logo.

The final pieces are about 15 seconds long and are used to brand the show after commercial breaks. These bumpers capture the viewer’s visual attention and represent the excitement and verve of late-night life in the city.

Roger White

Art Director Nightline