Troy Poling, a creative services producer for WXYZ Detroit had to edit a promo that had little interesting footage. He decided to “go just a little bit more experimental with it.”
Local TV news marketers are expected to be creative, resourceful and hit strict deadlines.
Sometimes, they’re tasked with creating a promo about a news story where there is little to no footage and b-roll. The news report is good but it’s about a subject that doesn’t lend itself to exciting visuals.
Situations like that make creative services producers anxious or exciting, or both. Such was the case for Troy Poling, a creative services producer for WXYZ, the Scripps ABC affiliate in Detroit.
Poling says he was tasked to edit a promo for a news story that had little interesting footage.
“People were kicking around ideas, and I was like ‘We should go just a little bit more experimental with it’.”
He had a script written by Kathleen Chupailo, WXYZ’s creative manager.
“The message from the script Kathleen Chupailo wrote was fantastic,” Poling says.
Poling says sometimes producers forget to be creative when meeting deadlines and other people’s expectations.
“When you actually are able to be creative, have fun and be wild, be experimental, show it,” he says. “Take that opportunity, believe in yourself and just really go forward and showcase what you can do.”
Creative services producers often want to be wildly creative and experiment with different techniques.
And while the marketing bosses want creativity from their producers, they get nervous if it’s too over the top.
Poling says it took some convincing to get Phil Wrobel, WXYZ’s creative services director, on board.
Poling says he couldn’t really explain what he had in mind to Wrobel, other than it was going to be “super eye-catching.”
Poling says he asked Wrobel to trust him, promising that the story would not be lost in the promo.
Wrobel gave him the nod to go ahead.
“When I created it and I showed him, he goes ‘Oh man, that’s awesome,’” Poling says. “He sends it to everybody, to our GM, to the creative services team. He wanted everybody to see this. I was elated.”
Poling edited the promo in about 7 hours and beat the deadline for its airing.
NOTE: If you have a story about a challenge you’ve faced and overcame with creativity and resourcefulness, share it. Contact me at [email protected] or 817-578-6324.
Here’s my story. WDSU in New Orleans in early 1990s was doing a special report about alligators. All they had was a title and 4-seconds of alligator farm B-roll. Before nonlinear editing, all effects were created through the control room, several passes at times. Thanks to the director at the time, Steve Griggs.
Here are some more promos done by Troy Poling along with Poling’s explanation.
We had a collaboration with the Detroit Tigers Marketing Department and they allowed us to have access with our talent in the stadium and onto the field. We wanted to be able to show the fun and personality of our talent while also encouraging people to watch our coverage for Opening Day.
Detroit Tigers Opening Day 2023
TSR regarding the high cost of candy on Halloween. Wanted to take a different and fun approach to a simple story that impacted our entire community. Was inspired by classic monster/horror movie trailers.
One of the first promos I did for WXYZ. Phil Wrobel wanted to push our news being a leader in the community from highlighting traditional and breaking news, community events, our talent and special investigations. Wanted to make it big and bold as well since we didn’t have VO for this.
This started off with a simple script full of alliteration and a fun message to promote our viewers to the app. A big push to say you can “Be in the know now!” with the 7 WXYZ app.
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