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How Canadian Filmmakers Combined a Film + Game to Combat Gambling Addiction

Bianca Fortis — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 10:05:12 +0000

Documentary filmmaking is hard work. Typically, producing a documentary film requires months of background research, developing a budget, creating a production outline, making a shot list, and finding cooperative characters to tell their stories — and that’s before filming even begins.

A group of filmmakers in Canada took their project one step further — by adding an interactive game element to their project.

“Thank You For Playing,” produced by the National Film Board of Canada, is part documentary film and part web game. The game simulates how casino games that reward users with positive reinforcement can lead to gambling addiction.

In Canada, revenue from gambling is used for infrastructure, health care, social services — and even preventing and treating gambling addiction. More than 35 percent of those revenues come from individuals with a gambling problem, according to the film.

It’s a paradox that the film’s director, Andréa Cohen-Boulakia, said she found fascinating. The goal of “Thank You For Playing,” which was released in December, is to bring awareness to the public health issue of gambling addiction. The filmmakers initially intended to focus on how the casino industry targets elderly people who often have a lot of free time, money to spend and are no longer active in society.

But after spending months traveling throughout towns and provinces across Canada to do research and interview prospective characters, Cohen-Boulakia found a more compelling story: the risk of gambling addiction as a result of being in a vulnerable emotional state. She saw that, as with any vice, some individuals are more prone to addiction than others. For most gambling addicts, the addiction is the outcome — not the original source of an individual’s problems.

“People talk about this being an emotional disease,” she said. “When you’re in a place where you’re emotionally wounded, you’re much more vulnerable. That’s what this is about.”

The Interactive Game

The film opens up with a digital version of the shell game: the viewer, now the player, is presented with three icons. The icons are quickly shuffled and the film’s narrator directs the player to watch closely in order to uncover the icon that’s in the shape of a heart.

As the game continues, there are more icons are they are shuffled faster as the game becomes more challenging.

“Now you think you’re in control,” the narrator says. “But the game is programmed to let you win just often enough to condition your behavior. What is happening is called positive reinforcement.”

The viewer can then choose to watch one of three stories, each about a different subject who is recovering from a gambling addiction. Those characters, including one subject whose three-year-old daughter had been diagnosed with leukemia, explain how they saw gambling as an escape from their personal problems. The chapters of the film are interspersed between more opportunities to play the shell game, which continues to increase in difficulty.

The slot machine-like game allows the viewer, who has now become the player, to witness firsthand the adrenaline rush and excitement that come with winning a game — as well as the desire to keep playing. That’s an especially important component to include when the three subjects of the film cannot touch a machine themselves.

Andréa Cohen-Boulakia

Merging the interactive game with the documentary film scenes proved challenging and took more than one try to get right. Cohen-Boulakia described the two pieces as different “stories.”

“We wanted it to be interesting and enriching,” she said. “How can both formats, really different formats, mix together in order to give the audience a better understanding of the issue?”

Both the game and the film had the same goal — to educate. The goal was to have the game not match the experience of the characters in the film, but to create a new parallel and connecting experience. That required a team effort between the programmers and the producers, and it’s the part of the whole project that took the longest to complete, Cohen-Boulakia said.

The Film’s Impact

Cohen-Boulakia said as an educational tool, she hopes the film will bring more awareness about addiction and lead to more open discussions about what leads someone to go down that path.

Ideally, the risk and reward aspect of playing the game can offer insight into how individual might feel while gambling. Knowing early on that someone is susceptible to addiction might prevent the kind of dramatic outcomes in which people later find themselves when they are struggling with addiction. Cohen-Boulakia had even heard stories of addicts committing suicide.

She said schools can have stronger prevention programs and hopes even kids will watch the film and begin to think about the issue.

“I hope people will be able to look in and ask themselves if they are prone to be dependent or not,” she said. “I hope people will talk more about it.”

Bianca Fortis is the associate editor of MediaShift, a founding member of the Transborder Media storytelling collective and a social media consultant. Follow her on Twitter @biancafortis.

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5 Lessons For Creating Good Immersive Storytelling

Kat Duncan — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 11:04:21 +0000

A version of this post appeared on RJI Online.

Innovation in Focus is a new video series from the Innovation & Futures Lab at the Reynolds Journalism Institute. With the help of journalism students, I produce the series, which explores emerging technology and methods of storytelling for newsrooms worldwide. Below is the most recent part of the series.

The team recently spent some time creating an immersive narrative story with a 360 camera. Here are the 5 key lessons we learned:

1. The viewer sees everything.

When filming in flat video we control the frame and we direct the viewer. We shape the story by presenting a detail or an establishing shot or a portrait. In 360 video, the viewer sees everything in the frame and they control how they experience it. They can look beyond the subject or into another part of the frame, which means they might miss the action you included in that particular shot because they’re looking elsewhere.

2. You have to either be in the frame or be able to control your camera from a remote location.

In 360 video we set up the camera on a tripod and run out of the frame — or be OK with being inserted into the story. This puts us in a different position than with flat video, where we can erase our presence by being behind the camera. When Meg was filming in a bus or van, she had two choices: be in the frame as inconspicuously as possible or set up the tripod and camera and leave it alone with the source for the duration of shot. In a moving closed vehicle, it was hard to not be in the frame while also making sure the camera didn’t fall down or get jostled by the movement of the vehicle. You must plan ahead and be aware of the challenges you’ll face when using a 360 camera.

3. Give the viewer time to explore.

When editing, the pacing in a 360 video is different than the pacing in flat video. With 360 video, you want to give your viewer time to experience the immersive content. Your b-roll pieces will most likely be longer to allow the viewer to see the action and move around within the frame. This changes the pace of your story and how you would usually edit it.

4. Your camera is a person.

We talked to many 360 storytellers and they all said the same thing: set up your camera like it’s a person, thinking of the lens as a person’s eyes. The camera should be set up at the average height of a person, which will allow the viewer to experience the story as if they were standing there in real life. Putting the camera on the ground or too high up makes the 360 story harder to consume because you are skewing the perspective. Of course, this is a rule that can be broken when in a unique situation, but often this advice helps tell the story in a way that people understand.

5. Lower your expectations.

One of our greatest pet peeves about 360 cameras is the quality of the image. As journalists we’re used to crystal-clear frames of beautifully detailed video we shoot on our advanced DSLRs or video cameras. When you switch to a mobile 360 camera (unless you are investing thousands of dollars in an advanced rig), you have to adjust your expectations of video quality. For now, it will not be as clear or beautiful as flat video. With time this will change, but that’s the reality of the mobile tools right now.

Kat Duncan is the senior video editor for RJI Futures Lab. She also creates and edits video projects for RJI and the Missouri School of Journalism, where she teaches photo and video journalism.

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Investigative Multimedia Unit Brings New Life to Malaysia’s ‘Star’ Newspaper

Kate Mayberry — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 11:05:12 +0000

This piece originally appeared at The Splice Newsroom.

In June 2016, the online documentary “Predator in My Phone” exposed an alarmed public to the dangers faced by Malaysia’s increasingly connected children, inspiring a campaign that captured the attention of celebrities, NGOs and politicians, and spawned a new law targeting child sex crime.

The result of a ten-month undercover investigation by R.AGE, a millennial-focussed multimedia unit at Malaysian newspaper The Star, the series has now accumulated some 4.5 million views on its Facebook page alone.

Audience engagement is an integral part of R.AGE’s work and campaigning is central to its remit, says executive producer Ian Yee, who argues that journalists can offer solutions to problems when they are confident their reporting is objective.

“I don’t see there being any kind of conflict. I think a lot of millennials don’t see that either, don’t see that there should be that line,” he says. “People can get involved in causes and issues so much more and they’re much more invested. They’re not just passive readers.”

The law to protect children against sexual exploitation was passed in April 2017, representing a major victory for investigative journalism in a country where the mainstream media often shies away from covering sensitive issues.

Declining readership, new realities

Most Malaysian media outlets are owned by politically connected powerbrokers—or by political parties themselves—including The Star, which is linked to the Malaysian Chinese Association. But the internet has upended the once-cozy media scene, spurring some to experiment with digitization and hard-hitting journalism.

“They must learn from what [the new media] do and move forward,” Yee says.

Over the past three years, circulation at nearly all of the country’s newspapers has slumped, in some cases precipitously.

Average net paid circulation at the English-language New Straits Times more than halved between the first six months of 2013 (115,570) and the last six months of 2016 (54,490), according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). At The Star, circulation fell from 289,362 to 220,972 over the same period.

Malay-language dailies also fared badly, with Harian Metro’s circulation falling from 385,554 copies in the first six months of 2013, to 142,262 in the last six months of 2016. Rival Berita Harian declined from 158,552 to 91,229 in the same period, while Utusan Malaysia dropped from 191,302 to 123,575.

The country’s three Chinese-language newspapers were not immune either, with Sin Chew Daily, Malaysia’s best-selling newspaper, reporting a drop in circulation from 385,229 to 316,564.

From newspaper to news agency

At Berita Harian – a Media Prima tabloid targeted at the country’s “discerning millennial Malay” — the focus has shifted online over the past three to four years.

“We have to face the problem that the younger generation is not reading the papers anymore,” explains Berita Harian journalist Luqman Arif, one of the paper’s digital pioneers. “They like to scroll through Facebook, so we try to cater to that niche, putting up snippets of videos, and highlighting exclusives that are coming up so they will follow the next day as well.”

There is a heavy focus on regular news updates, live reporting from breaking news events and short video features covering four key areas: celebrity gossip, sport, education and religion.

Luqman says print now plays second fiddle, and the paper’s priority is now to become what he calls “the number one news agency.” Berita Harian has 4.8 million Facebook followers and the company is stepping up efforts to turn that audience into income through advertising, sponsorship and advertorials.

The shift to online has necessitated major changes in newsroom operations. Berita Harian now operates a single news desk for all its output, a move that has necessitated engagement with staff via a change agent. “We need to cater to all those who are uncertain, have doubts or are apprehensive,” Luqman says.

Men reading newspapers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Photo by Merten Snijders / Lonely Planet Collection / Getty Images)

Change brings rewards—and awards

The Star, meanwhile, has been building up its website rather than relying on Facebook traffic, and moving into digital products with radio and internet-based TV. The Star Online is currently Malaysia’s second-best performing digital media brand after Malaysiakini, but lower revenue from advertising continues to eat away at profits.

Yee says it took nearly two years to convince a cautious management that R.AGE as a video platform (it started life in 2005 as a newspaper pull-out targeted at students) was worth the investment.

“They would say, ‘What’s your two-year plan? What’s your three-year plan, what’s your projected P&L?’” Yee recalls.

For its first project, the team had to find its own advertising sponsor but was told it could keep a percentage of any profits to buy equipment. Yee won’t reveal the unit’s budget but says it’s now increasing.

The 10-member team has won 18 awards since the site relaunch, and its latest exposé investigates a trafficking scam under which Bangladeshis travel to Malaysia expecting to be studying, only to be forced into work. Videos garner about 500,000 monthly views and Facebook followers have increased from 25,000 to 65,000.

“One thing we’ve been able to show is that content really is king,” Yee says. “If the content is good, people will watch it from start to finish. Our most successful videos have always been three to four minutes in terms of audience views, but in terms of impact the longer documentaries stay with people longer.”

Kate Mayberry has been a print and broadcast journalist in Southeast Asia for more than 20 years, and was part of the team that launched Al Jazeera English in 2006. She currently freelances for media including Mongabay, Al Jazeera, BBC Capital and Nikkei Asian Review.

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Your Guide to Cutting the Cord to Pay TV (2017 Edition)

Stephen Lovely — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 11:05:34 +0000

The rise of “cord cutting”—ditching legacy pay TV services like cable or satellite—is old news by now. There are more cord cutters year after year, and cable and satellite companies are losing ground just about every financial quarter. But maybe you haven’t quite made the jump yourself, and you’re wondering how to get started. If that’s you, read on. Below, we’ll talk devices, streaming video, and the biggest issue of all: whether or not you can actually save money by cord cutting.

Streaming and devices

From the start, cord cutting was about saving money. That’s the goal, here: ditch overpriced cable or satellite TV, and keep the cash. But we’re not all ascetics, of course, so cord cutting only really took off when it became easy to stay entertained without cable.

Cord cutting owes its existence in a large part to the rise of streaming services like Netflix. Cable subscriptions peaked around the year 2000, which is the same year that Netflix was founded. The roughest years for pay TV have come in the years since Netflix’s 2007 launch of its streaming service (as you might recall, they were about DVDs in the mail before that). Hulu debuted that same year, and the roster of on-demand streaming services has exploded since then to include big players like Amazon Prime and HBO as well as niche services, free services, and user-curated services. As it stands, here are the big on-demand services you ought to know:

Netflix is the original and still the dominant service in the marketplace. It has stepped up its original content game due to competition for streaming rights and the tactics of its major competitors, including…
Available without a cable subscription through the OTT service HBO Now, HBO is very much part of the streaming video-on-demand wars.
Amazon Prime gives subscribers access to streaming TV shows and movies, including Amazon originals and even some live broadcasts.
Hulu has some limited ads (though you can pay more to ditch them), but it also has a lot of network shows available on demand relatively soon after they air.
Crackle and Tubi TV. These are ad-supported video-on-demand services (“AVOD” in industry lingo), meaning you’ll deal with a lot of ads but can watch the content for free.

One trick with cord cutting, though, is that most of these services are unrelated. You can’t watch Hulu content on Netflix or Netflix content on Hulu, and while there is some overlap (you can add HBO to Amazon Prime, for instance, or through the skinny bundles that we’ll discuss shortly), it can be easy for cord cutting solutions to get messy.

Hence the burgeoning market for streaming devices, which includes everything from Google’s Chromecast (a $35 dongle that allows 1080p streams from other devices to be played on your TV) to Apple’s Apple TV 4K (a 4K-capable streaming box with its apps, interfaces, and content discovery features — as well as a $179 price tag).

Roku was the first on this scene back in 2008 (just a year after Netflix created the need for such a device) and still makes some of the best options, but it’s a crowded field these days. There are lots of streaming devices out there, which is good, because cord cutting’s many streaming apps form a better cable substitute when they’re organized and accessible through one device. A streaming device is a must-have accessory for a cord cutter, and it makes it easy to watch streaming video on demand – or live, as we’ll see shortly. Here are the big-time streaming devices you need to know about:

Longtime streaming box manufacturers Roku offer a lineup that runs from the Roku Ultra ($99.99) to the tiny and cheap Roku Express ($29.99). The sweet spot in the lineup is either the Ultra or the Roku Streaming Stick+ ($69.99), which are both 4K-capable. Roku’s platform is, in this blogger’s view, the best in the business.
Fire TV. Amazon’s streaming box is $69.99, a great price for a 4K-capable device. Its platform tends to surface Amazon properties, making it most popular with Amazon power users.
Apple TV 4K.The latest version of Apple’s streaming box is powerful but at $179 (32GB model) and $199 (64GB model) quite pricey. The user interface, naturally, is gorgeous.
The Chromecast ($35) and 4K-capable Chromecast Ultra ($69) don’t have on-screen user interfaces. Instead, they allow you to choose content on another device (like a mobile device or laptop) and then sling the media up onto your TV from there. That makes them super simple but arguably less ideal for families who want the content discovery process up on a screen everyone can see.
Nvidia Shield TV. This pricey ($179.99, or $199.99 with the gaming controller) streaming device is aimed at gamers. It can stream games from PCs and from the web, offers a gaming controller, and can run Android games. It’s also, of course, an Android TV and a great 4K streaming box.
Smart TVs. You don’t need a streaming box if you have a smart TV, though some of the manufacturers of these devices could learn a thing or two about user-friendliness from the streaming box folks. There are too many brands to list here, but it’s worth noting that fans of Roku’s platform will find it on smart TVs made in collaboration with TCL, Insignia, RCA, and other manufacturers.

Cord cutting and live TV

Cord cutting’s history is tied up in Netflix and other SVOD (that’s “streaming video on demand”) services, but if we’ve truly reached the cord-cutting tipping point, it’s live TV that has made the difference. The past few years have seen allegedly “DVR-proof” live events like sports experiences an advertising bubble even as cable and satellite companies reeled from cord cutting and DVR-related advertising losses. But cord cutters are watching live TV too, now, and that’s encouraging more and more of us to walk away from cable and satellite.

Modern cord cutters use a combination of some very familiar and very new tech to watch live TV. Let’s start with the old-school solution: over-the-air TV. Thanks to a vast network of local affiliate stations, the major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox) broadcast over the air in just about every region. Your local action news team has its own transmitter, which means that you can use an antenna to watch local news for free (and in high definition, as a matter of fact). while antennas are an “old” technology, there’s nothing old about the latest models and modern over-the-air transmission protocols. There’s nothing to stop you from tuning in at other hours, too, for major-network shows as well as those NFL games, World Series broadcasts, and other live events that were supposed to save cable.

(KPG_Payless/Shutterstock)

For network TV from the many channels that do not broadcast over the air, you’ll need to turn to a pay TV service — but it doesn’t have to be cable or satellite. “Skinny bundles” are the new normal on the live TV front, and they bring live TV to the streaming world while cutting down the size (and cost) of the channel packages they offer. The field is crowded with skinny bundle options these days, including some from major legacy pay TV companies, who have seen the writing on the wall. Here are the ones to know:

DirecTV Now. AT&T’s skinny bundle offers tiered channel bundles, from the small and cheap to the big and expensive.
Hulu with Live TV. Hulu, known for its on-demand service, also has this single-package skinny bundle on offer.
PlayStation Vue. Sony’s service offers tiered options and, despite the name, is available on many devices other than the PlayStation 4.
Sling TV. Dish’s skinny bundle offers a more customizable brand of bundle by allowing subscribers to choose from a wide range of small add-on packages once they’ve subscribed to one of the base packages.
YouTube TV. Google’s skinny bundle is still in the process of being rolled out, so it’s limited to certain regions and has less robust platform support than the competition.

Can cord cutting actually save you money?

At this point, it’s clear enough that you can get rid of cable and still get as much live TV as ever. But we’re in danger of losing sight of the original goal, which was to save money. A not-so-skinny skinny bundle package like DirecTV Now’s “Gotta Have It” (120+ channels) or PlayStation Vue’s “Ultra” (90+ channels) will cost you around $70 a month, which will make your bills almost as cable-like as your viewing experience. And cable companies, who have certainly noticed the trend that’s killing their business, tend to also be internet service providers, which means they can rig up unfair pricing systems that make internet-only services disproportionately expensive. In the end, is it really worth it to cut the cord?

Sure, maybe. The thing is, though, that the math is a little different for everyone. You’ll need to know how many channels you really want and need, which on-demand services you’ll use (and which of them you’ll keep regardless of whether or not you cut the cord), and what kind of over-the-air reception you get in your area. You’ll need to know how much your cable bill is right now and how much your internet-only bill would be, as well as what sort of data caps you’ll be dealing with. And then you’ll need to do some math (mercifully, there are plenty of online cord-cutting budgeting tools to help you—including one over in my little corner of the internet, Cordcutting.com).

Yeah, it’s a bit of work, but being frugal tends to mean paying a bit more attention in order to pay a bit less on your bills. In the end, it’s clear that cutting the cord can save you money. How much of that budget breathing room you want to put back into cord cutting services and devices is up to you. So if you’re ready, give it a shot: jot down the price of a Roku or a Fire TV, add in a skinny bundle, weigh the one-time cost of a decent antenna, and put it all together with your ISP’s price for internet without cable. There’s a good chance that, like so many others, you’ll see that you can save quite a bit while giving up very little. Hey, no wonder it’s a trend.

Stephen Lovely is a lifelong writer and a longtime cord cutter. He writes news articles, how-to posts, streaming guides, and more for Cordcutting.com. He lives in New York State.

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The People Want Live Video. Here’s How Reuters Responded

Joe Strupp — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 10:03:43 +0000

Reuters is taking video live-streaming to another level with a new multi-feed service it claims gives print outlets a leg up on their broadcast rivals.

Reuters Connect, launched several months ago, now boasts “real-time coverage of up to six concurrent news events for use by television broadcasters and professional video publishers,” according to an announcement.

Heather Carpenter, Reuters public relations manager and head of special projects, adds via email: “We developed the product after seeing an interesting trend among our media customers: an 88% surge in demand for live video since June last year. With the new service, broadcasters and publishers will be able to access up to six different streaming news feeds to publish across their platforms. This will also help traditional print outlets compete with broadcasters, since they’ll now be able to live-stream news events in the same way broadcasters do.”

The service taps into what is likely a growing trend, the need for multi-sourced video options for news outlets.

“As more and more publishers see live video as an essential part of their storytelling capabilities, we can now offer best-in-industry choice with up to six concurrent live streams,” Sue Brooks, Global Head of Product for Reuters News Agency, said in a statement. “Add this to our vast video and picture archives, as well as our breaking news coverage, Reuters customers now have everything they need to tell richer stories.”

So, is this the wave of the future?

Still, it’s hard to say exactly how much uptake the service will get.

Joshua Hatch, assistant managing editor, data and interactives, at the Chronicle of Higher Education, says it’s possible some publishers might bite.

“I suspect (though it’s only a guess) that it is a meaningful step toward making live video more accessible at a lower cost to more people and organizations,” he said via email. “Of course, some organizations have long had access to multiple live video streams via satellite, but that’s limited to those who can pay substantial costs.”

Reuters offers Points to let publishers spread out their use of content on Reuters Connect

But Al Tompkins, a senior faculty member for broadcasting and online at The Poynter Institute, is more skeptical.

“This, as I understand it, is largely an international news service,” Tompkins opined via email. “It comes at a time when we Americans SHOULD be more alert to international news, but seem so caught up in the daily Washington drama that it is difficult to remember the world is still revolving without us.”

He added, “I wish I believed that American news agencies would flock to this sort of thing. But short of a big international event, which probably would be an unpleasant international event, American newsrooms, strapped for money, will not pay much for access. And their audiences are not demanding increased international coverage online.

But, Tompkins said, “The one big upside to this new wire service is the trend toward greater visualization. Photos and videos will get increased play online and in social posts.”

What’s on offer

A quick look at the Reuters Connect main page Thursday morning found a menu of stories ranging from the U.S. House passing a budget plan to disruption in the Kenyan elections to the recent release of dashcam video from Tiger Woods’ DUI arrest last May.

With each menu item were links to several stories, videos, images and graphics related to the item. There is also a separate list of live video feeds that news outlets can link to automatically. The outlets can use a “points” system to spread their budget out over a quarter.

“All Reuters assets are in the same place at the same time for the first time, all of our content,” Brooks said during a phone interview Thursday from Asia, where she is promoting the service. “I’m in Kuala Lumpur and have been showing the platform to customers in Asia. The biggest story here is the King of Thailand coronation today.”

“They were able to see at the same time live coverage of the [former king’s] funeral procession,” Brooks continued. “We had photos from the crowd, we had video from the crowd, we had graphics showing the route of the procession and we had, believe it or not, archive video of the [former] king playing the saxophone. If you think of how those different elements make a beautiful story, it opens up the toolbox for storytelling. Everything is accessible at the same time. Previously you would have to get to four or five different platforms to do that.”

Dollars and cents

Brooks offered few specifics on the cost and who is buying in, but she said, “We’ve got customers all over the world. We are seeing customers who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford us. We’ve got customers in places like Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America. It means that you don’t have to be a big multimedia player to have access to this content.”

She later added, “We have had traction in the U.S.”

Asked about the fee cost structure, Brooks said only, “it depends who you are and where you are. If you are a blogger in Africa you would pay a lot less than if you were a national newspaper in the U.K. or the U.S.”

Declining to reveal exact sales figures, Brooks said, “We are well on track by the end of the year to meet the target I have set myself which is in the low one hundred (customers). There are customers migrating from existing platforms and new customers.”

When discussing potential competition, Brooks declared, “I’m not aware of any other (similar) platform. I’m aware of platforms which have a similar business model and I’m aware of platforms that are multi-media, but I am not aware of any that have combined the two to provide this massive link of connect.”

Disrupting Themselves

“We’ve said to our customers, ‘We’re not going to tell you anymore the products you need to make over you need to buy from us.’ We are saying here we have this massive vat or hopper of content, our 13.5 million assets, now you go and choose what you want to create your product. We’ve disrupted our own business model and our own product process,” Brooks said.

In the end, questions remain as to what potential customers want and if they are willing to pay Reuters extra for this apparent one-stop shopping outlet. If the cost structure is truly more affordable and local bloggers can utilize the offerings, the demand will prove worthwhile.

As Brooks points out, much of the interest appears to be international with foreign outlets taking the first step toward embracing the services, with fewer U.S.-based sites on board just yet.

The clear challenge, of course, is convincing enough would-be customers to pay up for something that they may not believe is unique to their needs.

An award-winning reporter for 29 years, Joe Strupp has worked in newspapers, magazines, television, radio, and the Internet. His experience spans nearly all beats, from the environment to sports, but with a focus during more than a decade on the media. His writing has appeared in MediaWeek, San Francisco magazine, NJ Biz, New Jersey Monthly, Salon.com and Poynter.org.

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Filmmaking & Video Journalism Grants: Fall 2017 Deadlines

Simone Kovacs — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 10:02:17 +0000

This post originally appeared on Story Hunter and is re-published with permission.

If you’re trying to fund a documentary or video journalism project, you’ll want to watch out for these approaching deadlines. From fellowships to grants, these funds are a great way to begin or produce a non-fiction film whether you’re a freelancer or news organization.

Rapid Story Deployment — Climate Change and Health: September 11
This grant, part of the the Fledgling Fund’s Special Fund for Rapid Story Development, is for documentary filmmakers working on projects that examine the link between climate change and health. The grant will award between $5,000 to $10,000 and international applicants are welcomed, as long as they have a U.S. based fiscal sponsor.

Diversity Development Fund: September 15
This fund from the Independent Television Service is for projects in pre-production for up to $15,000 in research and development. U.S. citizens or residents that identify as a person of color are eligible to apply.

IF/Then Short Documentary Program: September 15
This fund from the Tribeca Film Institute supports filmmakers living and working in and telling documentary stories about the American Midwest. Winners will receive up to $20,000 in production support and ongoing mentorship from the TFI.

Film selected for the 2017 IF/Then Short Documentary Program.

Knight Visiting Nieman Fellowships: September 29
The Nieman Lab Foundation offers these fellowships for U.S. and international journalists, who have at least five years of full-time media experience. Fellows receive a stipend, housing, and more as they work on their personal journalism projects, attend workshops and seminars, and take courses at the university.

Roy W. Dean Film Grants: September 30
The grant for $3,500 plus discounted film services supports unique independent feature films, documentaries, web series, and short films that will make a contribution to society. International filmmakers are eligible and applications are accepted three times a year.

Mother Jones Ben Bagdikian Fellowship Program: October 1
The fellowship from Mother Jones offers a course in investigative journalism, supporting both emerging journalists and media professionals.They do not provide work visas for journalists applying from outside the U.S.

Film Independent Documentary Lab 2018: October 2
The Documentary Lab is a five-week intensive program to help filmmakers currently in post-production on feature-length documentary films.

EFILM | Company 3 Feature Film Grant: October 2
This grant from Film Independent offers filmmakers up to $50,000 in color correction and digital intermediate services for their feature documentary film. Only Film Independent Fellows, alumni of the LA Film Festival, and Film Independent Spirit Awards Nominees are eligible to apply.

Fulbright–National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship: October 6
U.S. citizens — from any field — can apply for this Fulbright Programs fellowship to spend nine months traveling in up to three countries while exploring and developing a narrative on a global issue. Fellows will be trained, received travel and living stipends, and provide digital storytelling material to be published in the National Geographic.

American Documentary Film Fund: October 14
Independent filmmakers may apply to this fund to begin or complete their film. International filmmakers are eligible and the grant offers up to $50,000 in funding.

Film selected for the American Documentary Film Fund.

Carmignac Gestion Photojournalism Award: October 15
This grant for freelance photojournalists offers €50,000 to enable the winner to produce an in-depth photo essay from in the field.

Frameline Completion Fund: October 31
This fund for up to $5,000 is awarded to filmmakers trying to finish films that represent and reflect on LGBTQ life. International productions and filmmakers are eligible for the grant.

California Documentary Project: November 1
The CDP offers grants of up to $10,000 for research and development or of $50,000 for production of documentary projects exploring California’s cultures, peoples, and history. Filmmakers are not required to be a California resident to apply, but projects must have matching funds with the grant.

Tribeca Film Institute Funds: November 6
Tribeca All Access, TFI Latin America Fund, and AT&T Presents are varying grants for documentary filmmakers. The All Access fund supports storytellers from underrepresented communities while the Latin America Fund supports those living and working in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central, and South America. The AT&T Presents grant awards funding of up to $1 million for filmmakers to create their film, which will be distributed on DIRECTV NOW.

Hot Docs Ted Rogers Fund: November 15
This grant is for Canadian documentary filmmakers with projects already in production. Three to four applicants will be awarded grants of up to $20,000.

Miller / Packan Film Fund: November 15
This grant supports documentaries in production or post-production that explore issues on education, environment, or civics. Filmmakers will be awarded between $5,000 to $25,000.

McGraw Fellowship for Business Journalism: November 30
This fellowship is for journalists with at least five years of experience who want to produce a story or series of stories on issues to do with the economy or business. International and freelance journalists are eligible to apply and winners will be granted up to $15,000.

This post originally appeared on Story Hunter and is re-published with permission.

Simone Kovacs covers media innovation and video production for The Video Strategist and In the Field as a writer for Storyhunter, the world’s largest network of professional journalists and filmmakers. Simone was a staff writer for The Crimson and an editor at Tuesday Magazine, a literary publication. Storyhunter, founded in May 2012 by a group of journalists, filmmakers and web developers, is a talent marketplace and network for video professionals worldwide.

The post Filmmaking & Video Journalism Grants: Fall 2017 Deadlines appeared first on MediaShift.

InVID Wants to Help Journalists Debunk Fake Videos

Bianca Fortis — Wed, 26 Jul 2017 10:05:41 +0000

Since the panic over fake news erupted after the U.S. election and spread into Europe, a number of fact-checking and content verification tools went into development. But there are still few tools dedicated to video verification. InVID, a three-year collaborative project based in Europe, aims to change that.

Denis Teyssou

The goal of InVID, which launched in January 2016, is to help journalists discover and verify newsworthy content on social networks, says Innovation Manager Denis Teyssou, who is also the editorial manager for Agence France-Presse’s Medialab. The team’s first project is a video verification browser plugin for Chrome and Firefox. The plugin is designed to be like “a Swiss Army knife,” in the way that it combines several tools in a single unit, he said.

It’s being funded through Horizon 2020, a European program that provides funding to innovative projects. Several groups are involved: the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Modul Technology, the Universitat de Lleida, Exo Makina, WebLyzard Technology, Condat AG, APA-IT Informations Technologie, Agence France-Presse and Deutsche Welle.

How did the idea for InVID’s verification tool come about?

InVID had been involved in the First Draft News CrossCheck initiative, a collaborative project that brought together newsrooms in Europe to fight fake news ahead of the French presidential election. The plugin was born of that effort; Teyssou said that the InVID team wants to share the tool with the larger journalistic community in order to get feedback and improve it, especially now that the issue of fake news has increased, especially in the United States and Europe.

What are the problems the project aims to solve?

“We applied design thinking methodology to understand the journalistic verification workflows and processes and to ideate new solutions or ways to improve existing solutions,” Teyssou said.

The plugin is designed to solve several workflow challenges by combining several existing tools, such as Twitter search functionality. It also aims to automate cumbersome tasks, such as taking screenshots and uploading them to a reverse image search engine. The InVID tool automatically retrieves thumbnails or keyframes from social media platforms. And it provides the available contextual information about a video all in one place.

How does the verification tool work?

The plugin allows the user to paste a URL to a YouTube or Facebook video. The tool then provides an analysis of the video’s origins, including when it was uploaded, the locations featured and thumbnails retrieved from different search engines.

The user can also switch to a number of tabs:

Keyframes will extract keyframes from the video so that a reverse image search can be done.
Thumbnails finds thumbnails from YouTube and reverse image searches for them through Google and the Russian search engine Yandex.
Twitter Advanced Search is updated to the minute and can help journalists verify events in a breaking news situation.
Magnifier lets the user zoom in on an image to more easily inspect it, and is designed for users who don’t have photo software like Photoshop.
Metadata is a metadata reader that uses open source libraries.
Forensic offers filters to help discover any alterations that may have been made to an image.

What were some of the challenges in developing the tool?

There were three main challenges the InVID team faced, Teyssou said. First, fake news spreads quickly from platform to platform. And while some platforms have open APIs and allow advanced search, others are closed, which makes verification more difficult. Finally, most social networks erase the original metadata of multimedia content.

What are the future plans for InVID’s plugin?

The plugin is distributed as open source, and it’s available for Google Chrome and Firefox browsers so far, and the team plans to maintain it at least until the end of 2018, Teyssou said.

“So far we got some nice and encouraging comments from verification experts on social networks, and we hope to get valuable feedback from the community to develop more tools and improve the existing ones,” he said.

The team is also developing two other projects: a platform which helps users discover newsworthy videos, and a web application that helps verify those videos.

Bianca Fortis is the associate editor at MediaShift, a founding member of the Transborder Media storytelling collective and a social media consultant. Follow her on Twitter @biancafortis.

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How to Add Social Videos To Your Broadcast Classroom

Keren Henderson — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 10:02:00 +0000

Last semester, convinced that social videos can be journalism rather than promotion or entertainment, I did what a PhD such as myself would think to do: I turned my students at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School into guinea pigs.

The broadcast and digital journalism capstone at Newhouse is designed to mimic a local TV newsroom: students come to their weekly lab at 9:30 for a story meeting before spending the day producing two 30-minute late-afternoon television newscasts.

For the last year, one student in my class each week held the title of digital producer: the person responsible for creating a social video.

Broadcast news organizations want to hire people who know how to produce social news videos because viewers want to watch them. Promotions and digital departments are already adopting this storytelling medium to increase web clicks which, of course, helps pay the bills. Journalism skills can be used to tell stories on this platform as well.

Here is what a year of social video journalism taught me:

Make production decisions in advance

Treat this project as a day-turn package like any other. When the class meets at 9:30 to distribute reporters and photographers to various stories, digital producers are part of the conversation.

In order to get started, the digital producer must answer this question: which of the day’s TV stories could be told differently, maybe even better, as a social video? The student answers this question by identifying which elements will likely go into the television piece and where the digital producer can enhance the story with additional facts, graphics, or sounds that didn’t, or couldn’t, make the cut for TV.

Step two involves coordinating with the television reporters and photographers. Our news team uses Slack to communicate with one another. The digital producer follows the Slackchat and uses the app to confirm with reporters that there is going to be footage, such as b-roll and interviews, when they return to the station. In our classroom, reporters upload footage to a folder accessible to the whole newsroom. The digital producer accesses this folder to find the b-roll and SOTs that they anticipated from their Slackchats.

If the story falls through for the television reporter, the digital producer must decide whether he or she will move forward with photos and data visualization alone. We have a subscription to AP images and my students have found Canva useful for creating free maps and charts. Even if video is available from the field, the digital producer may still choose to supplement with these photos and graphics depending on the news peg.

Here is a data-heavy example from our first semester. Notice that the wallpaper video worked to the student’s advantage. Sometimes the elements considered “boring” for television work well for social videos as a backdrop for data.

A professor’s helping hand

Script approval turned out to be necessary for these projects. It gives the professor a chance to point out spelling and factual errors before publication.

Following approval, the digital producer creates the text overlay (also known as “open captioning”) for the story in their video editing software. We use Adobe Premiere’s title tool for our social videos since we are already editing on that software for the television newscast.

Remind students to transcribe everything, including SOTs. As a consumer of social video, it is frustrating to invest twenty seconds into a story full of interesting information, only to have the SOT come up with no verbatim. As with television news, the student must also include a graphic with a name and title for the speaker.

Be copyright conservative

Ideally, your students are shooting their own videos and stills, but sometimes they need more than what’s available in-house. Similarly, while some students will choose to record traditional reporter tracks for their social videos, they may want to include music as well.

You have two options when it comes to including content produced by people other than your students: pay for a license or use free content licensed under “Creative Commons.” What you do not want to do is tell the students, or yourself for that matter, that this is for educational purposes and, therefore, exempt from any real legal consequences.

The Creative Commons website does a good job of explaining this complicated publishing issue and offers a list of websites from which to get music.

Your school may also subscribe to music services – it’s worth investigating your options. I discovered that our film program had purchased a music license for student movie soundtracks through OMNImusic. We are now using this site for social videos as well. We also have a subscription to AP images through our university library. As with the SOT verbatims, students use the title tool to place attribution for this content directly onto the video.

Unless your school has money to spare for lawsuits, remember the adage: “When in doubt, leave it out.”

Pay attention to font

Make a font policy for your classroom’s social videos or you will find out who the “inspired artists” are on your roster.

My students keep the font sans serif and large enough for everyone to read. They are also restricted to three colors: white, black and the shade of red in our logo. As you may have noticed, this color policy only appeared partway through my experiment. It is a good one. Similarly, I ask that students be conservative about their music selection.

We did break both our “goofy font” and “goofy music” rules last semester when the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile came to campus. But it’s a hot dog…on wheels.

Classroom critiques

On lecture day, we critique our social videos along with our newscasts.

In these review sessions, students are frequently impressed by what their classmates produce. Occasionally they catch spelling or factual errors that escaped script approval. In those cases, I advise the digital producer to re-edit the content. If there is a noticeable legal issue, such as a clear copyright violation, I advise the student to put the YouTube video into private mode and correct the mistake before reposting.

Admittedly, this part of the process can be frustrating for the students.

Thanks to these critique session, we determined that using our logo as a bump on both the back and the front of the video buys the viewer a moment to prepare to read the subtitles. Luckily, one of the students in the first semester had learned how to animate bumps that we adopted by semester two.

NPPA workshop faculty member and local TV MMJ, Joe Little, advised Newhouse students on some best practices for social videos last semester. His best suggestion was to remember that all of the text on the screen shares space with the other elements. In other words, don’t confuse your viewer by cluttering up the screen or by asking people to look at more than one place at one time. This year, I plan to push the students to experiment with animating their titles, so we will be revisiting Joe’s advice to be sure.

Here is the last story we produced during this year-long experiment:

Moving Forward

We have agreed as a class that the journalistic principles of traditional local television news production still work here but with a digital twist.

The students are satisfied by stories clearly featuring their Syracuse footage. Occasionally, they create social videos about local matters that are also presented by national organizations such as Buzzfeed. The students can see how the national story has to be produced in a more generic way.

Social videos also let students flex their research muscles. Digital platforms have shown themselves to be a good home for data-heavy stories.

What we haven’t checked yet is how these efforts have impacted our audiences. Last year, in keeping with the mantra that we “think mobile,” I asked the students to consume their content on their phones and write an analysis of their work. This semester, I will add another component to that assignment: using Google Analytics to see whether and how people are receiving their messages.

And though adding a social video component to an already loaded class is a lot of work for everyone, there are clear benefits when it comes to student employment.

Last semester, a student told me that her job interview included specific questions about her digital producing knowledge. In the same semester, a regional news manager of a large broadcast company told me that his stations prefer applicants with this specific skillset.

The fact is, my students like making social videos and news directors want to hire them because they have these skills.

Keren Henderson, Ph.D., is a former local television news producer and assistant professor at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School. Her research on storytelling in local broadcast journalism focuses on the relationship between the business of making news and the art of making news.

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Here’s What Honolulu Civil Beat Is Learning from Facebook Live

Jennifer Nelson — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 10:05:50 +0000

This piece was originally published by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism as part of a new RJI series. It is used here with permission.

RJI recently asked newsrooms and ad agencies what they are doing today that they weren’t doing a year ago. Turns out quite a lot! This new RJI series will highlight some of the innovations and experiments we discovered and share what leaders are learning along the way.

This Q&A has been edited for space and clarity.

Anthony Quintano and Landess Kearns, Honolulu Civil Beat Office Hours.

The Honolulu Civil Beat’s weekly Facebook Live broadcast is an ongoing experiment for the two-person team behind it as they try out new technology, locations and formats.

During Office Hours, which streams every Friday, Engagement Editor Anthony Quintano and Audience Development Editor Landess Kearns talk about the latest news, ask the audience for feedback and answer viewers’ questions. But they’ve also used the broadcast to raise money for their nonprofit news site, and share internal news.

One lesson has stood out: Greeting folks and reacting to their inquiries on air leads to more interest from viewers, says Quintano.

The duo’s also learned that they get more viewers when they leave the newsroom and take their show outside, whether at the beach or the state capitol.

Typically, Office Hours brings in between 2,000 and 4,000 views but a 42-minute broadcast at the beach resulted in 113 shares and more than 24,000 views. Quintano attributes the higher numbers not just to the scenery, but also people’s interest in seeing the “higher than normal” recent king tides.

Quintano and Kearns recently experimented with 360 video during one broadcast in the newsroom and attracted more than 7,000 views.

RJI Senior Information Specialist Jennifer Nelson visited with Quintano and Kearns to learn more about Office Hours and Civil Beat’s other uses for Facebook Live.

What is Office Hours and what prompted you to launch it?

Kearns: It’s basically an effort to have full transparency with our readers. We have pretty loyal readers so they’re pretty engaged on our Facebook page. But we really just wanted to open a conversation with them so they could give us direct feedback.

Quintano: I came up with the idea last year when I started but I never really pursued it myself. But when Landess came on board with us in January, I felt like it would be better to have someone to banter with.

I come from a real social background. I worked at NBC News for five years and did a lot of livestreaming stuff back then. The biggest way to be successful with livestreams is through engagement and talking to the people who are watching. We streamed a lot of things like press conferences but we didn’t do a lot to directly engage with our readers. We really wanted to have a platform that we could talk directly to folks.

What kinds of resources — extra money, equipment or staff — did it require to launch Office Hours?

Quintano: We didn’t want something that took up a lot of resources or inconvenienced anybody because everybody here is very busy. It’s been the two of us for the most part but we have had some special guests.

Kearns: In terms of equipment it’s as complicated as we want it to be. The first couple of times we streamed, we just used an iPhone — no mics or anything — and a tripod. We’ve also used a camcorder and two microphones, so we’re kind of experimenting with equipment as we go and seeing what works best.

Quintano: Office Hours has given us the opportunity to experiment with the tools we have so we know how to best use them for our other livestreams.

How has your audience responded to Office Hours so far?

Kearns: A lot of people just pop in and say “hello” and say where they’re watching from. That’s been one of the coolest things. Some people are watching from Scotland. It can get really cool to see what kind of reach we’re having. Other times it’s slow.

Quintano: We’ve seen ups and downs in viewing habits but have learned that viewers love when we go on location. We’ve streamed on beaches and on an Air Force base. We’ve seen that viewers love acknowledgement. When we verbally respond to their comments and questions, it keeps them sticking around longer. We also did an Office Hours live in 360 and people got a kick out of the experience. Our last Office Hours we used the donate button on our broadcast and asked folks to support Civil Beat and received donations from five people totaling $200 in a window of 30 minutes.

Now that you have several episodes under your belt, what would you do differently if you were launching Office Hours for the first time?

Kearns: I don’t think I would do anything differently. It’s been such a growing experience. I kind of feel like we begin new each week. We’re just constantly trying to find ways to improve. It’s fun to see the progression.

Quintano: We’ve definitely become more comfortable on camera. If anyone is going to start doing this, it’s really helpful to be on camera regularly to get comfortable. Even if you’re doing it on the web cam on the computer in your office, it’s still a little nerve racking. The hour before we start we always get a little nervous.

Is there any topic you talk about that seems to make your audience engage with you more?

Quintano: The most engagement we’ve seen has been when we respond directly to the viewers and answer their questions in real-time. There hasn’t been any one particular topic that has stood out among the others.

How else are you using Facebook Live?

Quintano: We cover a lot of press conferences and town hall meetings, especially when nobody else is streaming them, to make sure we can bring that information to people who can’t be there.

We also stream our events to make sure those who can’t attend in person can still view or participate from home or on the mainland. For our last event we coordinated watch parties at multiple libraries across the neighboring islands to view a discussion on news literacy.

Interested in trying Facebook Live in your newsroom? Send an email to Anthony Quintano at aquintano@civilbeat.com or Landess Kearns at lkearns@civilbeat.com for more information.

Jennifer Nelson is the senior information specialist at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Previously, she was the news editor of the Osceola (Iowa) Sentinel-Tribune.

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This Is How Top Instagram Publishers Use Video vs. Photos

Gabriele Boland — Thu, 29 Jun 2017 10:03:43 +0000

This article was originally published on the NewsWhip blog

With Instagram offering a wealth of opportunities for publishers and brands alike, here’s how top publishers are strategizing around video vs. photos on the platform.

Instagram has gone through a mountain of changes last year, adding features like Instagram Stories, live-streaming and carousel photo albums. These features are delivering too — more than 250 million users create Instagram Stories everyday, according to a recent report.

With so many new features, how are publishers dividing their content and how do engagements for different formats stack up?

Let’s look again at the top publishers of both original photo and video on Instagram, using NewsWhip Analytics. We’ll add our news and interest publishers from last week’s analysis in as well, so that we’re looking at 30 successful media brands on Instagram and their strategies. These are the top ten publishers we surveyed in this analysis.

With NewsWhip Analytics, it’s easy to drill down into specific Instagram handles and examine their strategies, winning formats and posts. We can start by looking at the output of photo vs. video for these top publishers in May 2017.

Almost 67 percent of posts from these 30 engaging publishers were photo posts, while 33 percent were videos. Only eight of the 30 publishers posted more video content than photo content in May. Bleacher Report posted 479 videos to 201 photos, with the next biggest differences coming from Barstool Sports (216 to 20) and BBC News (154 to 12).

Has video output changed since last year? In NewsWhip Analytics, we can set our timeframe back to May 2016 to check. If we look at the top producers of original video content in May 2017 vs. May 2016, there are some stark differences.

Sports Illustrated, People Magazine and TIME have seen almost 90 to 100 percent increases in their video output from May 2016 to May 2017. When Instagram first launched video, there was a 15 second time limit. Now, Instagram videos can be as long as 60 seconds, giving publishers more time to make an impact.

Video vs. Photo: Engagements

So we’ve looked at output around video, but how do the engagements stack up for video vs. photo? We used NewsWhip Analytics to dig into the average engagements of video and photo posts from our top Instagram publishers.

Among the top media publishers on Instagram, we can see that the average engagements for photos are higher than they are for video. But we can also see how these averages have grown between now and last May.

While the average engagements for photos have increased by 46.4 percent, the average engagements for video posts have increased by 53 percent, showing that engagement growth for video is outpacing photos.

What if we went into likes and comments? Does one format work better lend itself better to driving likes or comments?

While photos tended to drive more likes per post for the top publishers, videos drove more comments on average.

This could be because with video, users are pausing and taking the time to view it. This creates a larger window of opportunity for engagements, rather than when users scroll through their feed and double-tap photos just to like them.

Video Output vs. Engagement

Have publishers’ efforts to produce more video content pay off in terms of engagements? We took a look at the top engaging creators of Instagram video from our analysis to find out.

Total video engagements weren’t necessarily dependent on output. National Geographic only produced 51 videos, yet had the third biggest total of Instagram likes and comments on its videos. BuzzFeed Tasty and Vogue also posted under 50 videos, but made it onto this list.

BBC News was the biggest news-focused producer of video, with 154 Instagram videos in May. However, the publisher came in 18th for video engagements.

What about average engagements? Did these publishers see their video engagements come from one key hit or were their videos equally successful?

There was overlap with eight of the publishers who had the most total engagements and those who had the highest amount of average engagements per video. These publishers have honed their video strategy to be effective across each video.

The Top Videos vs. Photos

What were the top videos and photos for our 30 publishers? What trends can we discern from their strategy?

Since National Geographic unsurprisingly dominated the charts for both photo and video, we instead looked at the top photo and video from each of the top ten publishers for each format.

These were the top video posts of the most engaging Instagram video publishers that we analyzed. Since Instagram is so visual, we can look at what those videos’ looked like in their preview for a better idea of what’s working on the platform.

These videos are full of people; in many of them we can see close-up looks at the emotions playing across their faces. The ones from National Geographic and Tasty offer a visual feast for the eyes. Sports videos also work well — the action-packed antics translate well to digestible video snippets.

Meanwhile these were the top photos of the most engaging Instagram photo publishers that we analyzed.

Again, to get a better idea of what the visual trends are behind these top photos, we can look at the top photos themselves. People again feature predominantly, primarily celebrities. But even the two animal-focused posts are close-up, showcasing the human-like emotions on their faces.

What were the differences between the top photo and the top video posts for these publishers? The top video tended to let users relive thrilling moments, especially for sports, or get an inside look into something they wouldn’t typically see, such as the behind-the-scenes video from Vogue at the Met Gala, or The Dodo’s video of a cute pig.

For photos, some trends stayed the same. National Geographic still showed something out of the ordinary to its followers, and E! News, Vogue, and People Magazine’s top photos came from close shots with favorite celebrities.

Creating a collective experience works well. Bleacher Report did a shoutout to an athlete’s achievement, which others could join in on the congratulations. Both People Magazine and Bleacher Report Football appealed to followers’ emotions.

It’s also interesting to note that crossposting other publishers, brands, or users’ content is acceptable on Instagram, and can even add a boost to engagements.

What to Know

As Instagram continues to roll out new features, it’s worth experimenting with what works with your followers. Some publishers have seen measured success come from mixing their strategy up between video and photo.

Try NewsWhip Analytics to explore the leading Instagram trends from any publisher, blog, or brand. Or, try NewsWhip Spike to see the Instagram photos and videos going viral right now. By keeping a pulse on what’s trending on social, you can make sure you’re reaching the right audience, with the right format and the right story, at the right time.

Gabriele Boland is an analyst/content producer at NewsWhip. Endlessly fascinated by the evolving digital space, she writes about the latest trends in marketing and social media. Her writing has been featured on Huffington Post, the Boston Globe, and Miami Herald.

The post This Is How Top Instagram Publishers Use Video vs. Photos appeared first on MediaShift.