Video

Top-watched online videos in 2013: comedy, educational, and how-tos

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One in four US adult internet users has uploaded a video online, according to the Online Video 2013 report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. One in five has posted a video that they created themselves.

The top-watched categories are Comedy, Educational and How-to videos, followed by Music.

Forty one per cent of mobile users shoot video on their phone, 40 per cent watch videos on their phone, and 21 per cent use their phone to post videos online.

Over the past four years, the percent of American adult internet users who upload or post videos online has doubled from 14% in 2009 to 31% today. That includes 18% of adult internet users who post videos they have created or recorded themselves—many of whom hope their creations go viral. The share of online adults who watch or download videos has also grown from 69% of internet users in 2009 to 78% today, and mobile phones have become a key part of the video viewing and creating experience.

Find out more about the survey and download the full report on the Pew site.

Kinetic type in video journalism

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This is an old post but I’m leaving it here for the hell of it. Failed links have been updated or removed.

I enjoyed this post from Lauren Rabaino on 10,000 Words about the use of kinetic type in video storytelling and how it can be used in journalism.

There’s huge value in being able to tell a story that people will read all the way through– from start to finish– and then share with all their friends and family. Kinetic type lends itself to exactly that kind of attentiveness and shareability.

I’m not alone in watching those videos all the way through, every time. We’re of a visual era. We like seeing content in a way that engages us, a way that attracts our full attention. These videos are addicting — but not just because they’re fun. You walk away from them with a new wealth of knowledge that is easily digestible and thus easily retainable.

She provides a few examples including the well-known Did You Know videos and this one from Good magazine about the cost of war to the US.

As an aside, while I was checking into the numbers used in the video I came across costofwar.com, a running (and rather sobering) counter of the cost of the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan (based on funds allocated by Congress).

Lauren finishes her post with a how-to list. Here are the first three suggestions on her list:

1. Before you get started, fully flesh out the exact copy you want to use. It’s a pain to go back and change even one word, especially if you’re going to narrate.

2. Keep the text simple. Short sentences. Think about which words and phrases are important from the start so you can later highlight them with a different color or motion.

3. Watch a few tutorials to get a feel for how it will all come together in the end. There are kinetic type tutorials all over the web.

You can read the rest of the list and Lauren’s post here.

Mindy McAdams pointed in the comments to The Girl Effect video as another great example of storytelling.

 

Country Calendar still hits the mark

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Country Calendar must be one of the few New Zealand media institutions that truly count as ‘iconic’. The weekly programme, which casts light on NZ farming, hasn’t looked back since its launch in 1966 and the current theme tune must be one of the most readily identifiable sounds for any Kiwi.

This clip gives a glimpse of what the programme used to look, and sound, like.

It’s gone on to become one of the longest-running TV programmes anywhere in the world and still ranks in the top 10 for viewing figures each week, according to the TVNZ website, with those viewers being both urban and rural and numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

That’s no mean feat. Someone somewhere must be doing something right.

In a talk at Wintec’s Media Bites function in 2008, Frank Torley, then executive producer of Country Calendar, offered the following about the show’s success:

“I don’t know… I’d like to believe that the New Zealand public recognises quality.

“The beginning of that process is research. If anybody says ‘Why is Country Calendar successful?’ — research, research, research. Keep doing it, find the story. What is the story, what are the people like, what else can we do?

“Having diagnosed, if you like, this is a good story, then we are the spoilt brats I suppose in so far as they do give us the budget to enable us to put the time and effort into making the programme.

“From the time of ‘here’s a story idea’ to ‘let’s go and shoot it’, may take a period of two or three weeks while we really look at it and make sure it all works.

“We then don’t leave it to chance, we do have it mapped out. We write up those research notes so the producer can get a decent handle on the story and not just airy fairy ‘oh, yeah, I reckon it’ll work’. It’s got to work, and it’s got to be seen to work.

“And then comes a treatment so that you’ve got an outline. Planning, if you like. PPPPP as our production manager calls it. Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

“And then we are given the opportunity to spend the time and …we get the wonderful co-operation of getting top cameramen and sound recordists.”