June 28, 2017

2017 SXSW Film Festival Headliner Baby Driver In Theaters Now

“There’s no way to describe it and that just says, it’s a unique, special movie. You haven’t seen something like this before,” said cast member Eiza González.

Baby Driver takes audiences on a dramatically charged ride fueled by car chases, young love, and a high octane soundtrack spanning era and genre. The film has a standout ensemble cast including: Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Jon Bernthal, Eiza González, Jon Hamm, and Jamie Foxx.

Edgar Wright is best known for co-writing and directing Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and The World’s End. Wright was previously at SXSW for Attack the Block (2011), where he served as a producer.

Baby Driver took our SXSW patrons by storm, see why this film won our Audience Award – Headliner by watching it in theaters starting today! Read our interview with Wright below, as he discusses why he made this thrilling joyride of a movie.

Q: Tell us a little about your film?

EW: It’s a car movie that is driven by music.

Q: What motivated you to tell this story?

EW: Twenty four years ago, I became obsessed with the rock song “Bellbottoms” by Jon Spencer. I dreamt up the opening scene of what was to become Baby Driver while listening to the song obsessively. Now I’ve finally made the action movie set to music that was rattling around in my head for the last two decades and I’m excited to share it with the festival.

Q: What do you want the audience to take away from this film?

EW: It was made to be seen large and played loud, so I hope the audience have as much of a blast watching it as we had creating it.

Lastly, check out coverage from the world premiere, including scenes from the red carpet and a Q&A with Wright and the cast, moderated by Austin’s own, Robert Rodriguez.

Explore More Content From SXSW 2017

Get inspired by a multitude of diverse visionaries at SXSW – browse more 2017 Keynotes, Featured Sessions, Red Carpets, and Q&A’s on our YouTube Channel.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and SXSW News for the latest SXSW coverage, recaps, late-breaking announcements, and updates.

SXSW 2017 World Premiere of Baby Driver – Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for SXSW

The post 2017 SXSW Film Festival Headliner Baby Driver In Theaters Now appeared first on SXSW.

Source: SxSW Film

June 28, 2017

WHY INTERACTIVE CONTENT BRINGS PEOPLE INTO YOUR STORY

This article originally appeared on Column Five.

There are many tools you can use to tell your brand story, and each have their own advantages. We’ve covered many of them, especially data visualization and infographics. These data storytelling formats are useful, but there is another format that is often forgotten: interactive stories. This format brings data to life in exciting and dynamic ways, which is why we love it.

If you haven’t experimented with interactive stories—or even heard of them—here’s what you should know.

WHAT ARE INTERACTIVE STORIES?

Interactive stories, infographics, or visualizations refer to a specific type of content, mostly found online. In its simplest form, interactive infographics are any web-based content that lets you interact with the information or data on screen. Technically, there are two features required to make something an interactive:

1. Human input: You should be able to control the visual representation in some way. This might be possible through mouseovers, clicks, drop-down menus, checkboxes, or other features to let you interact with the information on screen.
2. Response time: Your actions should affect the visualization in a timely manner. When you do something, you’ll see something on screen.

In short, it’s the communication of data in an interactive way. (For the most part, we’re referring to online interactive stories, but real-life interactive installations, A/R, or VR experiences also count.)

WHAT ARE INTERACTIVE STORIES USED FOR?

While there are many different formats for brand communication, interactive infographics are uniquely suited to help brands communicate in specific ways or deliver unique experiences. In general, you are most likely to see them used for data storytelling, fixed-narrative storytelling experiences, entertainment experiences, or practical tools. Depending on your goals, some applications may be better than others.

1) DATA STORYTELLING

Good data stories come from good data, but sometimes you have far more data than a single static infographic or white paper can contain. In these instances, interactive infographics are the best way to effectively present what is otherwise overwhelming information. Making that data easier to navigate helps the audience interact with and synthesize that information in a pleasant way.

To deliver these data stories, interactive infographics usually take one of two specific approaches: narrative or explorative. Not every data interactive falls clearly into each category. Some offer a blend of the two, but there are benefits to each.

1) Narrative: This approach guides readers through the data in a linear fashion, delivering a single narrative that conveys context and insight and often gives viewers a specific takeaway.

Example: The Anatomy of a Breach interactive we created for Microsoft guides readers through a data heist, crafting a specific story around the data breach to emphasize how important data security is.

This type of interactive storytelling usually requires fewer resources to create because it is a simple, contained story.

2) Explorative: This type of storytelling puts viewers in the driver’s seat, letting them browse information and extract their own relevant or interesting stories.

Example: Northwestern University Qatar conducted a massive survey on Media use in the Middle East. With so much data—an incredible 10 million cells to be exact—a static infographic would be impossible. We turned the information into a streamlined, colorful, easy-to-navigate experience.

This type of interactive is good for large or complicated data sets; however, because it usually involves large amounts of data, it requires more resources to produce.

2) FIXED-NARRATIVE STORYTELLING EXPERIENCE

Even in the absence of hard data, interactives are still a great way to deliver any sort of information or story. Narratives offer a contained environment, which gives you control over the story. Imagine a simple click-through slideshow or a narrative enhanced with interactive elements, such as animations. This type of storytelling is best used to deliver a specific message.

Example: We collaborated with Good magazine to create an interactive experience that allowed readers to learn about how a hybrid car works by interacting with different elements. 

3) ENTERTAINMENT EXPERIENCES

Viewers crave content that entertains or inspires. When you are looking to create novel experiences or give a piece of content an entertaining spin, interactivity is a fantastic way to do it. Any piece of content can be enhanced by:

• Audio
• Video
• Animation

Example: Our Beyond the Beat interactive tells the story of African-American musicians who made significant contributions to music. Copy, illustrations, and audio samplings bring their stories to life.

4) TOOLS

Interactive tools can help viewers complete a task, get a specific piece of information, or explore an interesting subject. (They can also be used to help your own company gather data.) For that reason, they provide immense value. Some common applications include:

• Quizzes
• Calculators
• Maps
• Product demonstrations

Example: We collaborated with Mashable to create a quiz that polled their readers about how they pronounce certain tech terms. (The results were later visualized, providing even more content.)

3 REASONS INTERACTIVE INFOGRAPHICS WORK FOR BRANDS

Data storytelling a fantastic storytelling tool, but interactives are particularly well-suited to help marketers communicate with their audiences. Whether you’re trying to increase brand awareness, engage your audience, inform them about a product, or help them make a decision, interactives can give you an advantage.

1) They make valuable information easily accessible: Audiences want content that is relevant, useful, and most importantly worth their time. Delivering information in an easy-to-understand way is a huge service to them.

Providing this type of useful content also shows your audience you care and are interested in helping them access the information they want and need. The same goes for interactive tools that provide utility, such as calculators or product demos.

These unique resources make your audience look more fondly on your brand.

2) They encourage personal engagement: The goal of all content marketing is to establish a relationship with your reader. With interactives, you are welcoming them into the experience and encouraging them to come along with you.

Interactives put your audience in the driver’s seat of the story. Narratives guide them through a set experience, while explorative interactives allow them to set their own pace as they discover information. But both put interaction in their hands, encouraging them to dive in.

“If you think about visualizations as a mass medium, something made for huge audiences, interaction turns them into very personal tools,” says interactive expert Dominikus Baur. “Interaction enables people to adjust a visualization to their own needs and ask it different questions.”

This is a powerful way to create an intimate experience that helps form relationships.

3) They can provide real-time storytelling: Unlike static formats, an interactive with a dynamically updated dataset allows viewers to access real-time data that is always up-to-date. Static visualizations may need to be manually updated or adjusted, but a dynamic interactive just requires uploading the new data.

This convenience helps you provide accurate information quicker, giving you a competitive edge.

ARE INTERACTIVES RIGHT FOR YOUR STORY?

Before you dive into interactives, make sure you have a story that can be told through an interactive. Learn more about the 7 ways interactive infographics can tell your story and ask yourself these 5 questions to find out if you really have an interactive story.

If you’ve decided that you’re ready to hit the ground running, you might want to take a look at these 101 fantastic infographics to get a little inspiration and try these 5 tips to help your interactive infographics get the most traffic.

If you’re curious to see more of our work, head on over to our portfolio to see the many interactive infographics we’ve created for brands and publications. You can also get more tips on creating great interactives by checking out these posts.

Source: Visual News

June 27, 2017

Emmys’ Generation Gap: Digital Short-Form Series Contenders Wonder If Older Voters Even Know They Exist

Digital producers cheered last year when the Television Academy expanded its short-form programming categories. But then they saw the nominees and winners.

Most of last year’s short form contenders didn’t come from digital-first producers or platforms, but came from traditional networks and talent. Adult Swim’s “Childrens Hospital” led all nominees, followed by the History channel’s “The Crossroads of History” and AMC’s “Fear the Walking Dead: Flight 462.”

“Childrens Hospital” ultimately won the Outstanding Series category, which included just one independent contender: “Her Story,” about two transgender women living in Los Angeles. Besides “Crossroads of History” and “Flight 462,” the two other nominees were behind-the-scenes looks at popular TV shows: “Hack into Broad City” and “UnREAL The Auditions.”

In the short form nonfiction or reality series, another marketing series won, FX’s “Inside Look: The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.”

That wasn’t quite what the Academy hoped for when digital studios campaigned to expand the categories. “It’ll be great to see someone like [YouTube star] Tyler Oakley win an Emmy,” Brian Robbins then the CEO of AwesomenessTV, told Variety last year.

But with content on platforms like YouTube Red still mostly shut out, that ultimately left a bad taste in the mouth of the rapidly growing short-form digital production community. Moving to multiple categories was a big win for that world, but they have a way to go.

READ MORE: IndieWire’s Full Emmy Coverage

“I was a little bummed to see that most of the winners ended up being ancillary content from existing IP or TV shows,” said New Form CEO Kathleen Grace. “I do think we need some education and communication around what a digital short form series is.”

New Form is a studio behind 17 series found on mobile, OTT and on-demand platforms such as the YouTube Red romantic comedy “Single By 30,” starring Harry Shum Jr. (“Glee”) and Go90’s high school comedy “Mr. Student Body President.”

There’s no shortage of digital studios making waves: Judy McGrath’s Astronauts Wanted has the talk show “Tawk with Awkwafina” competing in the short form variety series category, and “H8ters” in the short-form comedy category, among others. AwesomenessTV produces the Go90 thriller “T@gged.” Rooster Teeth’s large stable of offerings includes the apocalyptic drama “Day 5.” And that’s just a brief sampling of the hundreds of eligible shorts.

“Awards are great for marketing,” said Kulap Vilaysack, whose “Bajillion Dollar Propertie$” was produced for Seeso.

Young-skewing linear networks like Freeform (“My Boyfriend is a Robot”) and The CW’s CW Seed (“I Ship It”) have also gotten into the game.

“You’re going to see linear TV brands are eventually going to have to adapt and be more digital and therefore theyre going to have variable length content and suddenly they’re going to really care about short form,” Grace said. “They need to do that to drive traffic to their OTT platforms that they’re going to need to build because this audience is not going to wake up one day and start watching television linearly. Sorry, guys.”

But right now, Grace said digital producers looking to getting noticed by Emmy voters are still hampered by the fact that the TV Academy is still mostly an older demographic.

“They don’t know the stuff,” she said. “They don’t know that these series stand on their own and they’re not just add-ons and they’re not just derivative. The majority of voting members are not in the demo that consumes a bunch of Snapchat, or not in a demo that is embracing YouTube Red or Go90 as viewing platforms. They are not necessarily in the demo that is watching a ton of content on their phone.”

go90

Grace is part of a new digital committee set up to build education and awareness about digital producers and series.

“As someone who has been in the world of digital for a very long time I do sometimes get impatient that I’m still explaining to people that the internet exists and people are watching content on it,” she said. “But at the same time, the world changes so fast and slow and I’m willing to ride that wave because ultimately this is where the audience is.”

Grace said she hasn’t seen much campaigning by digital producers this year, and that could be because they may have been discouraged by last year’s results.

“I think they’re sitting back this year and seeing what’s going to happen,” she said. “It felt challenging given the resources we have in digital to fight against ‘The Walking Dead.’”

But it’s also a financial concern: “It costs just as much to put an hour-long pilot on the Emmy For Your Consideration website as it does to put up 10 minutes,” she said. “The 10-minute show certainly didn’t have the same budget that an hour-long drama did.”

That may be why reaction appears to be mixed with producers regarding the Emmys. While many say they’re submitting, College Humor’s Spencer Griffin is less bowled over.

“We have a giant comical prop trash can in our office that’s called the awards trash can, where we put a lot of our awards,” he said. “Because we’ve been a website since 1999 and there are so many awards you can get. With the Streamys and the Webbys and the [he jokes] Awardees. I can’t imagine any one is in it for the awards.”

READ MORE: TV Academy Adds Music Supervisor, Reality Casting Emmy Categories; Restructures Interactive Awards

Separately, the TV Academy this year added more interactive categories, expanding to Outstanding Interactive Program; Outstanding Original Interactive Program; Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media Within a Scripted Program; and Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media Within an Unscripted Program. Most entrants are digital extensions of TV shows, although Turner’s Super Deluxe will compete with its series “Live Telenovela.”

“This project we’re pushing and the stuff we’re doing in general, I’m not surprised the categories are different because the type of work we’re doing didn’t exist a year ago,” said Super Deluxe executive producer Cyrus Ghahremani. “It’s reassuring to see that [the Emmys] are evolving in the same way that we and the medium is.”

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Source: IndieWire Digital TV

June 27, 2017

Less, But Better: 4 Practical Ways To Create Enough Engaging Content

This article originally appeared on Marketo.

“Brands need to be pushing out new content all the time.”

That’s what marketers have been hearing for the past few years—and many of us have bought into this thinking.

In response to this, and to fill the need of an “always on” content operation, there’s been a push for content teams to function as publishers. That push for more content is so intense that some brands are using the 24-hour newsroom approach to create more and more content in an attempt to be relevant.

This is understandable, but it’s not always the most efficient approach. Maintaining high-quality production without a break is hard. And, if the quality of your content starts slipping to the point where it’s not engaging, it’s not worth it. Weaker content brings down the quality of your overall content efforts. According to a 2016 Content Marketing Institute report, 60% of marketers say “creating enough engaging content” is their biggest challenge.

More Content Is Not the Answer

It seems, for some, that “creating enough engaging content” has been wrongly interpreted as “creating tons of content.” This is the core problem: many marketers are overly focused on the word “enough.” Instead, marketers should put a greater emphasis on the word “engaging.”

Good content means creating better and more engaging content. Simply put: Quality > Quantity.

Here are four ways to focus on creating engaging content and not just pumping out content to fill your editorial calendar:

1. Put More of Your Eggs in Fewer Baskets

This may sound counter-intuitive, but I’ve learned over the years that putting more of your eggs in fewer baskets often makes the most sense—at least for our team. Why is that, you may ask?

Well, say you had a plan to produce and buy media for 12 three-minute videos over the course of the year. That’s a lot of videos, and it will be hard to maintain momentum and quality. And this route may not make the most sense.

Instead, consider doing four videos throughout the year—and making each one the best possible video you can produce. Better yet, make each one you put out better than the one before. And then, after the release of each video, make sure that it makes sense to keep producing videos. If it does, then keep making them, and keep making them better. If it doesn’t, then consider stopping or reducing the volume of work you’re planning. Most brands have limited time and resources, and it’s better to allocate these things where they make the most sense.

Also, consider this: people will remember one beautiful video that you spent a lot of time fine-tuning and perfecting. People won’t remember a bunch of video pieces you rushed through production because the editorial calendar ruled supreme, and if they do remember them, it’ll likely be for the wrong reasons.

If, however, producing a lot of video content is a non-negotiable priority for your marketing team, consider the idea of scaling up gradually over time. It’s smarter to increase your investment gradually, and to develop momentum over time, than it is to come out of the gates at a pace that’s difficult to sustain.

Content marketing is a marathon not a sprint. And, there’s no finish line. That can sound daunting, but I personally prefer to be realistic so that I can plan accordingly.

2. Constantly Sanity Check Why You’re Creating the Content You Planned

Are you creating content because you have reason to believe that it will work (based on previous successes)? Or are you creating something simply because you decided to do so months ago?

Content strategy is iterative (everyone’s figuring it out as they go), and you need to make sure that you are always making room for changes in plans that are based on what’s working and not working.

How do you determine whether your content is working? You measure it, regularly. One of the ways that we sanity check our content plan is to talk about it, a lot. We have bi-weekly brainstorms to come up with new ideas and kill ideas that we don’t love (if we can’t make them better). Search plays a big role in our marketing efforts, so we do a comprehensive KPI check-in on a monthly basis. This enables us, on a rolling basis, to determine what type of content works and what doesn’t. This intel then shapes our brainstorming sessions and helps us to determine what to create in the future.

Then, at the end of each quarter, we do a debrief and we discuss a) what worked, b) what didn’t work, and c) what could work if we did things better/differently. This helps us ensure that we’re not spinning our wheels and just creating content because it sounded like a good idea months ago and we have the people and time to do it.

3. Slow Down and Iterate Until You Get Things “Just Right”

There’s a saying that I love: “Doing something right is better than doing something fast.”

Obviously, you don’t want to procrastinate so much that you never actually get anything done. On the contrary, the first draft or version of most things usually needs to be polished. Also, doing things right tends to take more time than you initially thought… this is just the nature of the beast; so, whenever possible, set more conservative timelines for the work that your team produces.

In an ideal scenario, this means giving yourself the time and space to create something great every time you set out to create a piece of content. Not doing this is counter-productive. Why kill yourself to hit a deadline, if what you ultimately put out is not something you’re proud of? You’re going to hate it, and it’ll dilute your brand.

While this can be difficult when you are on a limited timeline, it gets easier when you really pursue a quality over quantity approach with your content, whereby you’ve got more of your eggs in one basket, and you are constantly sanity checking what you’re working on.

4. Do You; Don’t Focus on the Competition

It’s good to be aware of what your competitors are doing, but you can’t let your marketing efforts devolve into a competition with other brands.

IMO, the best brands are the ones that know who they are, what they stand for, and stay true to this. Conversely, weaker brands follow the crowd, constantly looking for the next novel thing to tinker around with.

While it can sometimes be difficult, and it always takes a lot of dedication, you need to do what is right for you and your audience. They are ultimately the most important consideration when it comes to what you’re doing with your content efforts. Also, it’s important that you stay true to your brand because, chances are, people (read: customers) were drawn into it and don’t want it to change.

The best way to know if what you’re doing is working for the people you’re trying to reach? Ask them. Conduct surveys. Email your customers. Take them out to dinner. Whatever feedback mechanism works best for your business, do that.

Focus on the Right Thing

If you remember one thing from this post, I hope that it’s that people don’t care about how often you post, they care about what you post; they crave content that is useful, relevant, and valuable. Keeping this in mind is key to developing a content approach that prioritizes quality over quantity.

Source: Visual News