Digital publishing news for August 27, 2013
Video and film have become a hot digital publishing trend this summer.
The New York Times is reporting that Time is dipping its toe into the documentary film industry. Christine Haughney reports, “ Time has decided to venture into documentary films and recently started a new unit called Red Border Films, named after the magazine’s red border. The division will produce one 10-minute film a month and two longer, more ambitious projects each year. While some of these projects will tie in to articles in the magazine, other videos will stand alone.”
Haughney writes, “Time plans to release its first documentary on Wednesday, tied to the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech, which is later this month, Aug. 28.” Some films may tie-in with magazine articles while others will stand alone. Seems like a good fit for the visual storytellers. Now that Netflix and Amazon have started making their own movies and TV shows, why not?
Here are a couple more publishers investing in video. These video series are one of the hottest new digital publishing trends.
The Atlantic Launches Three New Video Series
Mashable reports on The Atlantic‘s new aggressive push into video with their launch of three new original video series. The Atlantic is using its writers as personalities for the video series. This a cost-effective method since the talent is already a part of the team.
Lauren Indvik reports, ”Traditional print and web-native organizations are finding ways to produce and distribute high-quality video with far less resources than the TV guys. The Atlantic’s video department has only four full-time employees who handle all of the production and editing and most of the shooting as well.”
Indvik adds, “For now, distribution is limited to TheAtlantic.com, The Atlantic‘s iOS app and The Atlantic‘s YouTube and Vimeo channels, which launched earlier on Monday. A video channel on The Atlantic‘s iOS app is on the way, a spokesperson for the publication said.”
Brands are Taking Advantage of Instagram Video
Mashable business reporter Seth Fiegerman has a new article on how brands are using Instagram’s new video functionality. First, it’s important to know that the latest update to the Instagram app gives users the ability to upload video from their phones. This is huge news for publishers with archives of video. Your video teams can now re-cut footage to fit Instagram video specs and upload professional-looking video as promotions. Figerman talks to Rachel Tipograph, director of global digital and social media for Gap, ”Brands can now be more playful by producing Instagram video content designed for the network, but also in service of business needs.”
Instagram videos have a max length of 15 seconds so publishers need to get creative. With around 65 million monthly active US users there is lots of potential to establish connections with your brand.
WSJ Launches First Person Videos
The Wall Street Journal has started to produce new first-person interactive videos, reports Journalism.co.uk. The first interactive video to be released details the “changes to the US healthcare system under the Affordable Care Act”. Author Sarah Marshall reports, ”Told from a first-person perspective with a headcam providing a point-of-view (POV) shot, the video allows users to click and explore different aspects of the story, such as related graphics, articles and videos.”
Neale Mann, multimedia innovations editor at the WSJ talks about their approach with this style of video story telling:
“One of the reasons we approached this in the way we did was the traditional news format doesn’t suit all the types of stories we have now, particularly when we have the internet at our disposal. And that’s something we are going to continue to pursue to try to tell stories in a different and engaging way and ultimately to get the viewer to the end of a video and have them understand everything they’ve just seen.”
Mann also adds how they’re looking closely at how they design videos, saying, “We are now working out how we can take videos, redesign them and get people to engage with them, share them, be able to watch them and get the most out of them on every different platform, no matter the size of the screen they are looking at.”
Video storytelling with interactivity isn’t new, but if anyone can effectively take it mainstream to enhance traditional publishing, it’s WSJ.
