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Video equipment is cheap, and access to eyeballs has never been easier. But getting a sustainable return on the effort and cost of creating content is one big problem that has been killing traditional publishers. So, who is making free content that people will pay for, how do you actually monetise that content, and how do you create free content that people will pay you to make? This three part article looks at these questions. Part 1 - Who is making paying content for free? Part 2 - How do you monetise free content? Part 3 - 8 things you need to know to create free content that people pay you to make! Without a story, a film is just a collection of disparate shots. And no matter how pretty, they are just some shots. But to attract a following, a channel's films must make some sort of point. So it’s worth understanding something about the nature of story itself. Here we are then, at the third and final article in this series. There is a lot of advice around to do with ma

Video equipment is cheap, and access to eyeballs has never been easier. But getting a sustainable return on the effort and cost of creating content is one big problem that has been killing traditional publishers. So, who is making free content that people will pay for, how do you actually monetise that content, and how do you create free content that people will pay you to make? This three part article looks at these questions. Part 1 - Who is making paying content for free? Part 2 - How do you monetise free content? Part 3 - 8 things you need to know to create free content that people pay you to make! Video is an engaging storytelling medium, and it’s extremely popular. But doing it well and often requires resources. But these can be expensive, particularly when making long-form content. So, how exactly do you go about acquiring the funding to continue making these films in a sustainable way? Generally speaking, channels and not individual films are what gain audience loyal

Video equipment is cheap, and access to eyeballs has never been easier. But getting a sustainable return on the effort and cost of creating content is one big problem that has been killing traditional publishers. So, who is making free content that people will pay for, how do you actually monetise that content, and how do you create free content that people will pay you to make? This three part article looks at these questions. Part 1 - Who is making paying content for free? Part 2 - How do you monetise free content? Part 3 - 8 things you need to know to create free content that people pay you to make! A while ago, video was mainly the domain of the pro. And getting seen by a wide audience was next to impossible for amateurs. But now, traditional gatekeepers are losing their grip as prices for kit plummet. So, who is making free content that actually earns cash repeatably and reliably? A new wave of documentary is being made sustainable by social funding and free dis

The simple answer is that journalism is in the same test-tube as the rest of the experiment. Emile Zola defined art as a corner of reality viewed through a temperament. That describes journalism pretty well too. After all, when you look at something, you have to look at it from somewhere. There really is no ultimately objective position from which we can view our current planetary reality; and if we’re honest, fences are too thin to sit on. So expecting any entity that is bound by space, time, matter and energy to be objective is a forlorn hope. But not all is lost in this existential subjectivity. William Cobbett Thomas Paine There are things to which journalism can aspire. Good examples of this emerged from late eighteenth century inequity. William Cobbett and Thomas Paine blogged in print about the sins of the system and those who manipulated it. Inspired by their sense of injustice, both pamphleteers lowered the water level on social issues - and suffered the consequen

Anyone with a few skills can now make a website that looks like a global corporate. I’ve seen several activities and professions confront digitalisation. When I started at the BBC, computers were expensive and required a lot of knowledge to operate. In the 1980s we used BBC micros to automate several time consuming operations to make animated computer graphics, until the IBM PC took over. This was a process of computerisation and was not very disruptive - it was not really accessible to many. Adequate knowledge and skills were quite hard to acquire. We needed the expertise of broadcast engineers And we didn’t dream in digital yet. Moore’s Law has allowed ever smaller processors to take over analogue processes. As time has gone by, the spread of computers into just about everything has forced many activities to a digital domain; now they have become digitalised. In broadcast, giant videotape machines began to get smaller, smarter and contained computers. By 1980 there were mach

Video is irrefutably one of the most compelling communication media. It works particularly well in channels, but it quickly becomes expensive in bulk. Therefore hire a part time producer to minimise costs and retain the essential skills. Here is the problem confronting a lots of organisations. Everybody knows that video is possibly the most powerful of all communication media. Testimony to this lies in the deluge of video swamping almost every aspect of life. Nobody spends much time randomly seeking out things to watch; we tend to rely on two main approaches. Consensus. If lots of people share a video then it will be more easily found. The other way is to follow channels. Channels publish content that have some consistency. The audience gets to know the sort of stuff that a broadcaster puts out and this narrows the filter. Finding something agreeable to watch on Netflix can take a lot longer, unless the recommendation system works for you. A channel requires regular and frequen

I barely watch broadcast television any more - and all too often even the news is a victory of prominence over significance. I don't know about you but making an appointment with a TV in order to be informed, educated and entertained seems like a ludicrous thing to do in this age. Netflix and other online, on-demand providers enjoy an unlimited shelf space that makes enduring works available at a time convenient to me. Why do I want to enjoy these works? For the story of course. The dual purpose of entertainment has always been to both escape and explore reality. There is a second problem, and it also applies to the film industry. Over sensitive to ratings, insipid commissioning is prone to choosing remakes over reinvention. There is a chasm of difference between the process by which great works are made and simply re-making great works. The latter is often doomed to obscurity because we just misunderstand story. We think of it as a manifestation of some creative aethereal flux,

Smartphones are increasingly being used to capture audio and video. Whilst it's true they are getting very much better, they have limitations which prevent them from achieving the best of their capabilities: they are so light it's hard to hold them still they have very small lenses which limit the amount of light reaching the sensor their built-in microphones often face a different direction from the camera and cannot get close enough for good interview sound. Much of the footage that they generate is used simply because it can be made and it's broadcast only when there is no alternative. We have become used to the footage from Egypt, Libya, Syria and the London riots. But smartphones are also computers, and very powerful ones. They can run programmes which are able to interact with sound, stills and video. Editing apps are becoming very common and they can take the footage and turn it into the same sort of packages produced by the long established equipment and pr

There are three main areas of concern over using iPhone as a tool for mobile journalism: • Video quality. Here is a side by side test of the 4S and the Canon 5D Mk II - http://vimeo.com/30606785  shows them hard to tell apart. But there are reasonable criticisms; shaky images and a tiny lens. To address these issues there is a device which holds an large accessory lens, weighs more and has many extra points of attachment for accessories and mono/tripods. The Owle Bubo now sells under another name but is still available. • Sound. There is an extremely expensive app, Lucie Live is Skype on steroids, which is currently used by broadcasters like the BBC. It can use the iPhone internal mic, which produces broadcastable sound. But, with an impedance matching cable from VeriCorder you can use unpowered or self powered XLR broadcast quality mics. The iPhone handles sound at above broadcast specs. If you need Phantom power then there are pre-amps you can get. I regularly use reporter, radio