The website OneMinuteNews.com launched last week. It offers, obviously, a one minute video wrap up of news (mostly AP footage, as far as I can tell) and claims: “You might notice news is different here. We give it to you straight up.”
They don’t seem to have quite got their footing yet but the idea of a minute of video news has been tested. Successes, for example, include the BBC’s One-Minute of World News and its “60 Seconds” on BBC3.
Obviously, as an ex-BBC reporter/producer I’m partial to my roots but here’s the thing: to get people to believe everything they see in 1 minute, I think you need to have established cred. I’m curious to see if OneMinuteNews will be able to establish itself as anything than just another news aggregator that recuts wire service video. Am I soooo Generation X? Here’s Fast Company’s take on the new venture. Short and interesting read if you are a news nerd.
I’m MC’ing mediabistro.com’s 2nd EBook Summit on Wednesday. We got awesome feedback last year but this year the event has exploded. Inside scoop: publishing houses have been calling and wondering if there is room for them on the agenda. Sorry! The schedule is packed with goodies…NYU author and thinker Doug Rushkoff opens it up, The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta closes it out. If you are a writer, publisher, editor, or anyone creating content in the digital age, come on over to The New Yorker hotel on Wednesday. As a video person, I’m also particularly interested to hear from Jacqueline Bosnjak and Mark Beukes, founders of Ideologue, the award-winning digital studio…check out their website, they do some crazy stuff. Oh, and free drinks on mediabistro are on the agenda too.
Looking out at the future of publishing from the podium of the eBook Summit.
Happy 2010- may it be busy and lucrative for all of us. So let’s talk new ventures…
I hosted mediabistro’s eBook Summit a few weeks ago and was intrigued by the presentation made by Open Road, a supposedly new kind of publishing company.
Founded by former HarperCollins head honcho Jane Friedman and Oscar-winning film producer Jeffrey Sharp, Open Road claims to be a new kind of publishing company that will brand authors and multimedia market them. That means, Friedman and Sharp said, a lot of video content too, not just the written word.
Their purpose, they say, is to change the relationship of the author & consumer. For example, they are aggregating all the material out there about William Styron (ie. working with Duke to digitize his papers, posting old audio clips, creating “premium” content like a documentary with the help of his daughters, etc.), all to bring Styron’s work to a new audience.
But can they seriously make money? How many eyeballs can a well-crafted (and expensive) doc that is posted online really attract? There’s already been a fair amount of controversy over the company, before it even really gets content out there. Read this NYT op-ed and this article about the possible legal nastiness in publishing.
P.S. at eBook I also interviewed my old friend, the BBC’s Katty Kay (see the picture above)…she mentioned a crazy stat: her husband’s book was launched in the UK on Oct. 1- one of 800(!) titles that were released that same day. Yikes. Between the pay, the market, and the competition, getting a book out just doesn’t hold the same cache for journalists that it used to.
Check out this news piece done by my Reuters colleagues in LA about a video player that gets inserted into magazine pages.
Those of us who buy Entertainment Weekly in LA or NY will get a chance to be the first “readers” to experience this video-based advertising. It’s basically a mini LCD screen that costs $12-$30 per magazine! Worth the price of the publication, I guess, if you’re into that sort of thing…and if you end up watching more CBS and drinking more Pepsi. Those are the advertisers shelling out for this cool new technology.
Last week I taught a 1-day intensive on-camera workshop at mediabistro. (Click here for a course description and my welcome video).
This morning I got the most lovely e-mail from one of my clients, Andreas Fuchs. He’s a cinema exhibition consultant and analyst who is starting to do video for an online magazine. Andreas also wants to include a welcome video on his website (so many uses for video online!).
As an instructor, it’s incredibly useful to have someone outline exactly what they took away from the class.
Here are Andreas’ Top 6 Takeway Points:
1) The introductions of fellow attendees set the tone and provided an excellent overview about the many different ways to use video. (It helped that we had such a diverse and interesting group of people who would have made how to use a pencil fascinating.)
2) The “Tips for Compelling Video” emailed prior to class were great. (Coming a tad earlier would’ve been even better.)
3) Your coaching during the taping process: Calm, cool and collectedly, with a smile and honesty.
Encouraging me to act as if I was in front of a group of people (which I feel more comfortable with).
4) Editing the speech with an outsider’s perspective, yet respectful of what I was trying to say.
I do not recall if you actually encouraged this. I found it crucial to go over the text again after you were done and making sure it still worked for me. It turned out after the edit something flowed better in a different place than originally.
5) Changing “everything there is to know about movie theatres..” to “all there is…,” turning a statement that could’ve potentially come across as arrogant into a matter-of-fact. Just brilliant!
6) Teleprompter is the way to go.
There were many more, but those are my tops.
In fact, I am so inspired that I want to conduct my first video interview this week, on-site at a theatre opening. It’ll be with the little webcam on my netbook and I still have to convince the subjects… but, thanks to you and the class, I will definitely have a go at it.
Thank you and kind regards, Andreas.
I must point out that I don’t agree with 6) “Telemprompter is the way to go”. I try to encourage my clients to learn how to prepare well so they don’t need teleprompter and can feel comfortable in any situation (including live). Regardless, I’m beaming. Thanks, Andreas!
Check out my previous posts for more media tips and my top 5 especially for guys.
Mediabistro.com (whom I adore and for whom I host conferences and teach) has had some quality events recently. It has a policy, though, of asking guest speakers to sign a release, which says mb basically owns their appearance. (see speaker Heather Gold‘s comment in my post below regarding her online video panel).
GaryVee, natch, got away with having his own camera at the Career Circus event a couple weeks back. If you just don’t get social media, really, his keynote speech is worth watching. I guess his content really does want to be free. Even if you DO get social media, watch it anyway to fire up your blogging synapses.
It’s not often that dorky media panels get rated but now with Mediaite’s Panel Nerds, we media dorks WILL BE JUDGED (harshly but fairly, I’m sure).
And I’m so pleased to say that mediabistro’s online entertainment content panel the other night got a big thumbs up! Read the full review here. Etan and Danny subbed the panel down nicely. And I’m particularly happy with their asessment of me. Guys, you make it all worthwhile.
“Manoush Zomorodi did a great job of two things. The first is handling a panel this large. She began by dividing them in two groups, but that boundary quickly disintegrated. The second is offering quick background and explanations for people, sites or programs mentioned. In fact, she set the tone for the panelists to begin explaining things themselves. She was a real audience advocate.”
Dina Kaplan is the COO of blip.tv, the online video distribution site. There’s a great profile of her in this week’s Observer. She went from local tv reporter to COO of a company that hosts and distrubtes 48,000 original web shows.
In the article she describes her ah-ha moment, when she finally decided to jump ship:
“Later that September, an interview she had with Andrew Heyward, then the CBS News chief, made up her mind.
“We had a pretty formal interview,” Ms. Kaplan recalled. “At the very end he said, ‘What else do you do? What are you interested in?’ And I said, you know, ‘On Wednesday nights, I get together with some really smart friends of mine and we are starting a company, which is a platform for people creating Web shows on the Internet.’ And—I will never forget this—he pulled his chair back and looked at me in a whole new light. That sort of glaze of interviewing yet another reporter, only the seventy-five thousandth of his life, ended and he snapped out of it. He looked at me directly as a person rather than another local TV reporter, and he said, ‘Do that. That is the future. Forget this TV reporting thing.’”
Dina goes on to explain how she secured venture capital and turned herself into an online video powerhouse. She spoke on Wednesday night at mediabistro’s panel on Producing Online Video Content (I hosted it- see the top tips gleened from the event here). She brought a male co-worker with here- and in the article, she explains why she feels the need to travel with a male escort. It’s pretty depressing- otherwise people don’t take her seriously.
Anyway, the story will inspire TV reporters wondering what their next move should be and get budding online video content producers to start shooting. Tell Dina what you think at the blip blog.
I hosted a truly fascinating (if I do say so myself) panel discussion last night on producing content, specifically entertainment video, for the web. Mediabistro, of course (props to Kirsten), put together the awesome lineup: Adam Eland of Bright Red Pixels, Heather Gold, Colin Moore of IFC.com, Diane de Cordova of NextNewNetworks, Paul Kontonis of For Your Imagination, & Dina Kaplan of Blip.tv.
Their top 6 tips for creating & distributing your video online?
1. Speak to the brand that you are producing for. In other words, if it’s something for IFC, for example, make sure you are staying true to the IFC brand and being authentic. (this was from Colin Moore, the one proponent of scripted content rather than nonfiction)
2. Maintain intimacy with your audience. (Adam Elend) That’s what viewing on your computer/phone is all about, right? Adam works closely with CBS.com….interesting to hear what the big networks are thinking about all this.
3. What works on the web is fun & real. (from the very fun and real Heather Gold who was determined to prove during the discussion that making what you love will triumph over making what you think will sell)
4. It’s just gotta be good. (Paul Kontonis- he says a video is deemed a success if 50% of the audience make it through 75% of the video. yikes)
5. Keep it fresh, like sushi. (Diane de Kordova- in other words, originality is KEY)
6. Develop the brand, ie, keep the packaging/color scheme/graphics etc. consistent. (Dina Kaplan- and she should know! She says Blip is sending checks from $25 to tens of thousands of dollars to their content providers…48k shows on Blip right now.)
As for the Vampire Mom, Dina also says that if you’re thinking of producing a show, think which “vertical” your product will fit in…moms? political junkies? gamers? Bikers? The more specific your niche, sometimes the better. We decided moms and vampires are big right now so we should do a show on vampire moms. Then I started thinking- I’m a mother and work in the media….so I guess I actually am a vampire mom. Although I sometimes feel it’s my child sucking the life out of me…vampire toddler.
I just finished up a great all-day intensive on-camera workshop at mediabistro. Clients included a priest, interior designer, and toy curator. Much of the discussion focused on how to USE video not just MAKE it. We shot website welcome videos, a PSA, a show pitch, fitness tips…and discussed the various different audiences that these videos need to appeal to: potential clients, casting agents, journalists, etc.. Many of the students have multiple jobs (a fact-checker AND an actress)…so should they separate websites for their different careers? NO. Because these days you are the whole package. I, for example, am a better media trainer because I’m also a working journalist. My work informs my other work, and so on. So the key is to come across in any on-camera work you do as presentable, quotable, instructive, and likable. In other words, look good, speak concisely, don’t talk crap, and exude warmth. Personally, and I think I drove this home, I believeall that requires very thorough preparation. Winging it on camera doesn’t work for 99% of us. P.S. Thank you to Justine of GreenScoutReport for sharing her secret tip- before an interview, use a paper toilet seat covers from a public restroom to blot the shine/sweat.
