The above image is a screenshot taken from a video by Isabelle Muge Niu, a producer in New York with Fusion. Fusion is a digital news service and cable channel based in Miami that is jointly backed by Disney and Univision. The video, a quick look at the European refugee crisis, proved to be one of Niu’s most successful: Since it was posted on September 3, it has been viewed more than half a million times and has been shared more than 11,000 times.
Niu, a Chinese native who landed the job at Fusion after graduating from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism this past May (she is also a personal friend), creates one- to two-minute video pieces for the media outlet — usually on a very, very tight deadline.
She was kind enough to answer a few questions about the what and how of video-making at Fusion, while also expanding on the role social media plays for gauging audience engagement. (Answers have been edited for length and clarity.)
Q. How do you decide on a topic that will work for video?
Niu: It’s nothing new, but generally visual topics work best for a video clip. In my case since the turnaround is very short, I need to also consider how easy it will be to find material and get copyright clearance for them. The Syrian refugee crisis is a perfect example. Nonprofit organizations and the UN have a lot of good footage and it is public. I tend to stay away from explainers and talking-head stories because to make them visually interesting, you need to add animation. Those are harder to do within a short period of time.
Q. Do you try to incorporate other elements in your clips besides video footage? How do you decide what will work?
Video is the best but sometimes I also have to use stills and gifs to make a point. Text on screen is the language of short web videos (in my opinion) so I use text rather than narration. The visual materials must serve content so a good rule to keep in mind is to never include anything that would contradict the text or make it confusing. Gifs are great but I tend to run into trouble with our legal department for using them.
Q. How big a part does social media play?
Social media is essential. For instance, when the Ahmed and clock story broke, I made a slide stream video using pictures I sourced from social media (of course you ask the owner for the right to use them through social media as well) and also included tweets of people’s reactions to the incident. And then, in the end, these short web videos are meant to live and distribute on social media. So I’d say it’s a very big part.
Q. How do you know when a video has worked well?
We have a social analytics team that tracks engagement metrics, so they look at views, how long people watched the videos, whether they turned on sound and HD, and of course the number of comments and shares.
I asked Joss Fong, a senior video producer at Vox, these same questions and she echoed a lot of what Niu said about measuring audience engagement. The only difference here is that Fong’s videos are longer (four to five minutes) and are focused on explaining an issue or topic in the news rather than being a strictly news product that reports an issue or event.
However, the same journalistic principles apply in both — though Fong has more time to add animation and motion graphics by using After Effects.
Q. How do you know when a video has worked well?
We keep an eye on the analytics for all our videos but they can be quite arbitrary. Mostly we’ll see a lot of views if another media outlet embeds our video. The most gratifying feedback is shares, comments and other engagement along those lines.
Q. What have you learned about journalism and more precisely about making news videos at Vox?
I think what I’ve learned about news videos is that the possibilities are endless. The only limit is our own creativity. Any legacy norms about tone, style, and format are of zero use anymore. The YouTube world has its own norms — usually a geeky white dude with glasses explaining something on camera. And we just want to break away from all of that. Accuracy and research are the foundation, and from there you can deliver the story in any beautiful, weird, silly, moving way you want.
This is one of Fong’s favorite videos, a look into the speedcubing community — people who compete to solve the Rubik’s Cube in the shortest time possible. “It was just really fun to dive into that world and sort-of demystify it a bit,” she told me. “It was kind of like revealing how magicians do their tricks.”
