nicholas.a wrote:Am I right in saying that in at least one session of General Conference in the past five years, there has been a superimposed graphics package (with golden/tannish borders?) during Lloyd D. Newell's opening spot?
April 2009, Saturday afternoon session.
The opening for a general conference session lasts about 60 seconds. This gives Lloyd Newell time to introduce the conference, give the Bonneville disclaimers, and announce who will conduct the session. The choir has a set of favorite hymn verses that last the appropriate length of time if sung at the proper speed.
Normally, as with this past conference, the introductory one minute of video begins with the pretty flora and fauna of Temple Square, and the camera pans and lifts and finds a familiar landmark, most often the Temple, sometimes the Tabernacle or Church Office Building, the north gate of Temple Square, and lately many times the Conference Center. After about 40 seconds of outside coverage, the scene fades to a wide interior shot of the Conference Center, zooms in a little, and then cuts to the podium as the person who is conducting begins to speak.
This is the format that is used today, and that was used for general conference sessions through 2008.
In April of 2009, the top and bottom gold bars appeared during the opening. The Saturday afternoon session is the only complete one at lds.org and I do not remember if the other sessions included the bars. (Since you thought this was a "cool graphics package" I will not say what I thought it was, especially since the word is hard to spell and I would have to look it up.) I saw all of the sessions but, trying to forget, I have succeeded in not remembering if they were all formatted the same. Age does wonders in this regard.
At the October 2009 conference and at the April and October 2010 conference sessions, the opening was more in the line of what you see on Music and the Spoken Word, with various conference shots of speakers, sustaining votes, the choir and conductor, and fancy split screen shots of the Conference Center. They used a montage for the afternoon sessions that was different than the one they used for the morning sessions, but I always thought it odd that the morning montage included a shot of the First Presidency passing by the Twelve, shaking hands, as they were
leaving the conference center. Oh, well.
The creativity came to a halt after 2010, and the 2011 and later sessions have returned to the more familiar Temple Square scenes we were used to seeing.
But as far as I can tell, the Saturday afternoon session of April 2009 conference is the only complete one left at the lds.org conference site, and it does show the gold bars at the top and bottom that you mentioned. The other sessions only have the individual talks listed at the website.
And they have never done anything fancy at all for the priesthood session. Well, except the one time they broadcast it in the open on television for all the world to see. No "cool graphics package" though.