Saturday, February 1, 2014

'I'm not afraid of thunder'. Beautiful CNN International on-air promo has a cleverly-hidden secret to make it feel very personal and real.



CNN International (DStv 401) has a great new on-air promo, showing the 24-hour global TV news channel's range of international correspondents, reporters and anchors - and it's one of the very best ones from CNN International I've seen in long time.

The CNN International promo brilliantly utilizes the song "Wonder" from Emeli Sandé to great effect, given the specific lyrics of the song, with micro sound bytes from various international CNN correspondents and reporters spliced in.

"You have to follow the story the whole way," says a camera tripod carrying David McKenzie, the South Africa CNN International correspondent currently based in China.

The clips used for the promo together, cleverly creates an extremely personal feeling - as if the journalists and hard-working CNN on-screen talent are not aloof, distanced observers, but rather highly tactile, interactive, immersed friends of you - the viewer - people who are experiencing and living news events and stories on your behalf.

How is this promo doing this? Here's the secret, and if you watch it a second, third or fourth time, you'll see the cleverly-hidden, yet so obvious theme.

Watch it and focus on just hands - and you'll see how images of just the hands of CNN correspondents and other people are used to great effect. Once you watch it and you just watch for hands - you won't be able to not see it.

For after our eyes, isn't our hands how we find out about, discover, interact, take in and give back to the world.

Now go. Go tell you neighbours.