Graphics Are Hard Work Too!
Whoever said being a graphics producer is the easiest of all three producer positions at ATVN was just plain wrong, in my humble opinion.
At first glance it seems easy enough. The graphics producer is in charge of supervising the graphics artists (that’s right…I don’t actually make any of the graphics). You assign a graphics number, choose what it’s going to say and come up with an image for the graphic. There are even nice, self-explanatory worksheets to make the process even simpler. Soon enough I learned it’s a little more difficult than it sounds.
Graphics require you to be really creative…on a deadline. First you have to create a two-word headline for every story. For someone who’s not on-the-spot witty like me, that can be hard. I love writing stories where I can creatively play on words, but that gets exponentially harder when there are only two words to work with. You also have to find a way to illustrate all stories. On some copy stories there is no video for a reason- it would be boring video, so it’s not worth the effort. These stories still need an over the shoulder graphic.
While this may seem like a job that can be completed earlier in the day, there are a lot of last minute changes. Reporter packages can be especially unpredictable and a cutline and image assigned earlier in the day isn’t always appropriate later in the day.
As stressful as lead producing is, I think I’d rather lead produce than graphics produce any day.
