Sitting through a talk on the regulation of the press and then coming home to see the Sun’s front cover for today, I couldn’t help but put the two together.
Suns warning to regulators…
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Tag Archives: Sun
How the UK Tabloids use video: The Mirror
This week I’m looking at the video efforts of the UK National Tabloids. So far I’ve been surprised by the variety of The Sun and depressed by attitude of The Star and today it’s the turn of The Mirror.
The Mirror has recently undergone a redesign which takes it more towards the in-your-face style of the Sun and Star. Lot’s of pictures and a scatter gun front page. It does feel a little more restrained than the Sun in terms of content- but not much. So is looking in the Mirror looking at the Sun?
The Platform
The front page version of the player
Video has got a good position on the front page with a clear link in the navigation bar and a bright and a sizable embedded player off the the right-hand-side. It’s nice and clear but the thumbnail strip across the top suffers from being too small and, because of the use of some generic thumbnails, means there is nothing to tell you what the story is about. The featured video appears in a reasonably sized window below. The usual overlay information reduces the impact of the picture but it isn’t as bad as some.
The player sites below an embedded video ad – thankfully with muted audio. I havn’t seen much video ad content on sites until now but the Mirror is filled with it. Sometimes the audio doesn’t mute and if you roll your mouse over the ad the audio plays – gave me a shock. I guess that’s the best you could hope for.
Click through to the video page and you are greeted with a big, bright video player. All candy blue and neon colours. It’s a standard Jukebox configuration, powered by a Roo player. The sections are clear and there is also an ‘editor recommended’ section – something that’s missing from other tabloid jukeboxes. The use of video ads continues here with an ad placed underneath the video window. This is actually pretty distracting at times.
The Mirrors video player
The Presentation
The bulk of news content on the player is provided via ITN. You do see the occasional ITN watermark but all of the content is pre-rolled with the Daily Mirrors own bumper which is nice and short. Some of the video, marked Raw Video, comes from the AP. This is generally covers international stories and the olympics. I was expected straight feed stuff but it’s actually just packaged content with the voice over removed.
When the video loads a little caption appears in a confusing New box. It’s too small and cramped and doesn’t work as a caption. I also think it looks messy in the design. As usual don’t expect any links to article pages.
The Mirror has taken a crack at embedded video but it does suffer from small player syndrome embedded halfway down an article page. Although they aren’t averse to embedding Youtube content. Whether they should do or not is another matter.
Looking for homegrown content I though the Mirror Exclusive category of the player was a good place to start. It has a mixture of styles dominated by sport content. It tends to be press conference stuff but there is some presenter led stuff. David Yates does a neat read to camera for his video horse racing tips. It’s shot against bluescreen but Yates delivers well.
Talking to camera can cause Squeaky bum for some jounos. Not these boys though
Football Spy is also worth a look. It’s is a presenter led bulletin style round-up of the football news that runs off the back of a blog. It’s usually presented by Mirror journos from the Mirror office but more recently it seems to have moved to someone’s back garden. Who says video producers cant’ work from home. It’s nice and jolly and the delivery is confident. But it’s Alan Mckinlay in the August 1st football spy who gets a special mention as he describes the football transfer window as “squeaky bum time” for managers.
I liked the feel and the fact that they also refer to readers comments. Maybe this would work better as a podcast, downloadable to a mobile.
The one thing that did annoy me was the large amount of useless graphic material around the screen. Why not animate the graphics, make it work for you. That way you could re-frame the shot and get more face in the screen. Just a it more thought and it really could work well.
Less successful is some of the opinion. Brian Reade on Graeme Souness was video of someone reading out loud. Interesting article but not as snappy as the gossipy style of Football spy.
Moving away from sport you get the odd feature that follows the same presenter led model. The film reviews by David Edwards are nicely done but need tighter framing given the size of the player. The rest is a mix of interview and video grabbed around Mirror stories. The Return of David Cameron’s bike (nice to see some original footage of the theft as well) was fun for the banter but too long and the camera was too far away. They owned the story, they should have got in there tight. A case of video behaving like a photographer.
And that photographer behavior kicks in for some of the other content with a pap like snap and grab on footballer Joey Barton Leaving prison.
Overall
The Mirror offers a more refined video experience than The Sun. The approach is less scattergun which, perhaps, makes it a little less appealing to the tabloid market. Maybe it’s the Mirror’s attempt to lift the tone a little to place it more in the mid-market tabloid. The large amount of news content, even though it’s third-party, may be driving that – if that’s what you have, that’s what you are – but I do sense a ‘kind-of’ strategy here.
The development seems to be in the area of packaging the columnists. They are in predictable but sensible sections. The content is neatly produced, although it could be a little more web friendly in presentation – tighter shots please. Im sure the Football Spy garden is nice but it’s the people I’m interested in. I can see this kind of content working well on mobile phones.
But it’s Football Spy that is really the defining bit of video for me on The Mirror website. Keyed in to the lively and active Football Spy blog, embedded using youtube. It appears on the main website because the media player can handle it but I’m sure that the majority of the blog readers get never visit.
This is the first time I’ve seen a real community supported with video in the tabloids. A niche served in the right way. The rest is standard fair. But as an example of a newspaper using video when it works for them, football spy is a real tabloid takeaway.
Tomorrow it’s The Express
How the UK Tabloids use video: The Sun
Last week I looked at how the UK broadsheets where using video. It was partly an effort to see whether there were any broad guidelines that I could take away and also as a shock tactic to get me back in to more regular blogging.
Keeping the theme (and the shock tactic) going I’m looking at the UK tabloids. Starting with The Sun.
The Sun's video player
The Platform.
The Sun flags its video as the first menu item on its front page. Actually, the design of the navigation squashes it up at the top. And the homepage has a very visible player on right-hand-side. When you click the link you are taken to a dedicated page with the ubiquitous jukebox style player.
In common with The Times, another Murdoch title, the video on the Sun is served via the Kit (Roo) player. Each section is also extended below the player in the Sun’s chunky design. (the Thumbnail images are too small) and the shear size of the design causes problems. To see the ‘pick of the video’ you need to scroll down a fair way so the player is not in view. Clicking one of these links opens it in the player but the page doesn’t scroll back. It’s a bit of click and then scroll as fast as you can to get back and watch the video.
The player does offer a brief description of what’s playing, but not enough of one. There is no link through to an article. If your watching the video channel then you not going to be reading anything!
Video embedding in article pages is common and stories with video are highlighted with an icon. The player is usually embedded after the first couple of paragraphs and suffers from too much overlay information on too small a player. Although the Sun doesn’t rely on the video thumbnail as an image I still think this is an opportunity missed.
The embedded player suffers from too much overlay information
One feature that is worth a mention is The Vault. This is The Sun’s ‘interactive’ timeline of archive multimedia content. You can scroll through the years and see the “sensational” audio and video that “stunned” readers. The content aside, this is a nice feature. But the links open a new window and some need checking as they don’t always work. The lack of proper captions and context is also a problem here.
The Vault - The Sun's visual archive.
The presentation
The video content, like the website, is a real mix. The news content is almost all Sky news content with world news covered through the Reuters feed. But there is also a sizable amount of Sun ‘exclusive’ video. The Sun exclusive section of the video player gives a good flavour of this. There is CCTV, re-distributed third part video, like the Red Bull air race and the Tomb Raider Trailer and stuff that wouldn’t be out of place on youtube. in fact your tube stuff features heavily here.
But there is also large and some self produced packaged stuff mixed in.
The packaged stuff varies from straight talking head interviews to more structured stuff. The UK’s fattest teen piece is essentially a face-to-face video interview with some b-roll over the top is a pretty standard example of the Sun approach where the interviewer has a presence. Sometimes this is more obvious that others. The Alex Zanardi piece was interesting but the intro was too long and really missed the opportunity to add context that an embedded video can offer. Perhaps this is there attempt to encourage you that ‘your sun’ is really there. It often makes you wish they weren’t.
It isn’t all sport and voyeur TV though. Exclusive video from North Korea has the Sun bravely does a piece to camera without a tripod and a sizable amount of undercover Sun stuff like getting past airport security.
Never let the contributor hold the mic!
Production values are good when the subject matter allows although the audio is obviously something that they struggle with. The Uk’s biggest teen interview sound was very poor considering it was a set up. Compare that to the sound on Martin Phillips interview with Diver Tom Daley, which is shot in a swimming pool, a difficult shoot, which is okay. It’s a bit of a lottery. In fact the sports section offers a lot of the exclusive interview stuff and highlights a lot of the areas where production could be tightened up. The interview with Basketball player Luol Deng shows why you should never let the contributor hold the mic – buy a clip-on mic you tightwads. Credit where credit is due though, it is a nice example of how overlapping audio can help sell a reverse.
Visual quality is universally poor although I’m more inclined to blame the player compression than the production itself. Although some poor white balance and over-exposure on the shots doesn’t help.
Away from the news – the dynamic daily content- you also get a large amount of themed stuff. The most obvious of this is, at the moment, Big Brother coverage. But the recognisable Sun stalwarts are there. Page three has its own Page Three TV and Deidre’s video Case Book is a comic book style video retelling of the papers Agony Aunt section. It’s like watching a cut-price Hollyoaks (if such a thing were possible) but you can see where they are aiming this stuff.
Overall
It’s great to see that hidden in the mix is a lot of self produced stuff. When they do make the content it’s lacking in a coherent approach to presentation. A lot of the exclusive video seems to be grabbed at the same time a ‘celeb’ comes to visit the newsroom – a lot of b-roll was of people being photographed at the Sun. They could do worse than set up a corner of the newsroom with some static cams be ready to roll. At the moment they seem to be on a grab a camera and grab what you can approach. This just highlights the mixed style. Out of the office they need to go straight for interview content backed with good b-roll. Drop the reporter in vis. But if they are going to keep them in they need to be pacey, close-ups (the size of their video player will kill anything else) that show the Sun talking to me not at me.
If the broadsheets approach to video represented a high quality department store, nicely divided products in a posh building, the Sun is an outdoor market. The ‘in-your-face’ design is matched by a baudy range of babes, you-tube, voyeurism and saucy knock-offs. If you are a Sun reader then this mix of content is exactly the kind of stuff that will appeal.
The site is a poster child for the idea of being a filter for your reader rather than the sole provider of content.
Tomorrow The Daily Star.
