Mark Simon at Next Media Animation in Taipei has a good way to explain the way the pioneering news animation company he works for here operates: "We are the History Channel on speed!"
For many observers in Britain and North America, Next Media Animation's videos - some of which have gone viral, including the famous Tiger Woods' car crash item - are seen as "those quirky videos from Taiwan" or labelled in the Western media simply as "those Taiwanese news videos."
Indeed, we have covered Gordon Brown freaking out in Westminster and Steve Jobs armed with a lightsabre.
But Earth to Western world: Next Media Animation (NMA) is not made by the Taiwanese government or by some race of space aliens called "Taiwanese" but is in fact a multi-national multi-ethnic news animation studio owned by a savvy Hong Kong media mogul.
That's Mr Jimmy Lai - and NMA is staffed in Taipei by animators, writers, translators and voice-over actors from over a dozen countries. So lose the "those funny Taiwanese videos" label and wake up to the fact that Taiwan is part of the same world you live in.
We don't call blogs on the New York Times website as "those cute American blogs in New York" and we don't call blogs on British newspaper "those eccentric Brits are at it again", do we?
They aren't "Taiwanese." They are the creations of NMA, just as the Guardian and the Washington Post are the creations of their specific individual owners.
The correct name of the company that creates these global videos - global, not islandwide - is Next Media Animation.
NMA has made waves since it opened shop last year, and when it put out a very funny video about Tiger Woods, the link went viral and NMA was suddenly on the world's media map.
Norm Cohen at the New York Times called it Maybe Journalism and defined it as "a best guess at the news as it might well have been, rendered as a video game and built on a bed of pure surmise".
Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing gushed: "If only this news org would offer an entire 24-hour channel of this stuff! I don't care that I can't understand the dialogue in Chinese - all I need to know is in that sweet, sweet CGI."
Now NMA videos come with English subtitles and voice-overs, and one punter put it this way: "This is, by far, the greatest act of journalism in human history. I wish they made one for the Hindenburg disaster."
To get a better handle on NMA and where it's headed, this Letter asked Mark Simon a few questions by email and he responded in, well, internet time.
When I asked him if NMA was turning a tidy profit yet, Simon replied: "We don't break out NMA since it is interwoven with all of our company since all of our company uses us. And yes, we make money on all our international animations."
Publicity for NMA has been extensive and overwhelmingly positive worldwide. When we asked Mark which was the best news story for NMA so far, he didn't hesitate for a second: "The U.S. airlines pat downs and security checks with its very controversial 'pat downs' has been a goldmine."
Who voices the English-language voice-over voice for U.S. President Barack Obama's character in the NMA videos? "We have a Los Angeles-based guy for Obama," came the reply.
According to the last count, there are about 260 people on NMA's staff in Taipei, of which four are Western expats. The rest of the people on board come from Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, China and other Asian nations, Simon said.
So there you have it, the History Channel on speed. Direct from Singapore, Beijing. Taipei and elsewhere.
News just might never be the same if Jimmy Lai gets his way.
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Wacky minds are behind Taiwan's viral videos
NMA can turn a story around in as little as 90 minutes.\
By Adrienne Mong, NBC TV News, China blog
TAIPEI, Taiwan —They are the faceless but spunky purveyors of animated media.
And for about a year we’ve been curious about who is behind the sometimes hilarious, sometimes shocking, but always edgy computer-generated “news” reports produced by Next Media Animation (NMA).
Spots like the now-infamous retelling of the Tiger Woods car accident, the rap battle on the U.S.-China currency dispute, and air passenger rage over the U.S. Transportation Security Authority’s enhanced airport checks. This week alone, NBC News got some love with two spots that poke fun at us: American tv network coverage of the U.K. royal wedding and rumors about Today show anchors.
NMA's report on rumors of Today show anchor changes.
NMA is owned by Next Media Limited, Hong Kong’s largest publicly-owned Chinese-language media company, which publishes Next Magazine and Apple Daily, a popular Hong Kong newspaper that has a separate Taiwan edition.
The animation group, however, is based in Taipei. So top of the agenda during a recent weekend trip to Taiwan was—after feasting on local fare, of course — a visit to its office and studio.
NMA came to widespread international attention in late 2009 with its report on the Woods scandal, which went viral, garnering 6 million hits and still counting.
Yet it took several more months of trial and error before NMA’s animated videos became consistent hits online. Some early hiccups included behind-the-scenes at the White House featuring a voiceover actor depicting President Barack Obama.
“They were all dialogue driven,” recalled Michael Logan, the Content and Business Development manager at Next Media Animation and a former copy editor at the Taipei Times here. “That was the format we tried early on, and we found it didn’t work.”
But a quick succession of triumphs followed, including one about allegations by a hotel masseuse that former Vice-President Al Gore had groped her during a stay in 2006 and a biting look at the roll-out of the iPhone 4, with Steve Jobs as Darth Vader and a cheeky nod at the spate of suicides at Foxconn. One of our personal early favorites was an unflinching take on the late night talk show dispute involving NBC, Jay Leno, and Conan O’Brien.
The NMA team comprises some 301 people in Taipei and a handful more in New York—all of whom are responsible for producing some 210 minutes of animation every week for the Hong Kong and Taiwan editions of Apple Daily and Next Media TV, also based in Taipei.
Logan helps to helm the international team. The 8 editorial staff members in Taipei are a mix of Taiwanese who have spent time in the U.S. and, in one instance, South Africa, and Westerners such as Ron Brownlow who all have some degree of fluency in Chinese and have experience working in Taiwan. Four more work in the New York office, which also includes native Taiwanese. Most are former journalists.
In fact, when they aren’t all busy brainstorming on how to lampoon the latest tabloid celebrity—the international team functions much like a news agency such as Reuters or Associated Press by providing straightforward animation reports on hard news.
“Someone in Germany can come to our website and pull down [a 30-second package that we’ve produced] and use it for their publication,” explained Logan, an American with a multimedia background and a Columbia journalism graduate school degree.
But what they’re increasingly well-known for is their edginess.
Like its media cousin, Apple Daily (which has been banned in mainland China for years), NMA doesn’t shy away from tackling material politically sensitive to Beijing.
The team covered the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo and has been contemplating “doing something on Ai Weiwei,” a high-profile Chinese artist who hasn’t been seen or heard from since he was detained on April 3.
“With stuff like that, it’s about striking the right tone,” said Logan. “[Ai’s detention] is such an important topic that we don’t want to take it too lightly.”
Everything else, however, they do thumb their noses at—an approach that given their popularity seems to be succeeding.
“Certain themes work well on the Internet,” said Logan, outlining narratives that portray a sense of affronted justice; are celebrity-driven (“I call it celebrity plus misery”) and are not already captured on video; or employ their newest experimental format, like the rap battle.
“We’re working on one about Obama versus Gadhafi,” he continued. “We’re still trying to figure out who will voice Gadhafi.”
A rapid turnaround
A defining feature of NMA’s work is the visual humor, which is Taiwanese; much of the creative input comes from the storyboard artists, who are predominantly from Taiwan.
They’re also the production linchpin. Although the writers come up with the initial ideas, they talk through the concept with the storyboard artists. (Every script is bilingual, written first in English and then translated into Chinese.)
Adrienne Mong
NMA employs 300 staff in Taipei.
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In the meantime, the artists have only half an hour to come up with the storyboard, and everything follows on from that critical step: the animation, the modelling, the motion capture, the music and sound effects, and the final editing.
An entire production cycle takes about three hours although in a pinch they can turn a story around in 90 minutes.
Part of what enables NMA to produce their spots so quickly is a constantly growing database of models, an invaluable resource for the animation. The team also uses motion capture, which can be expensive but time-saving.
NMA has two studios used for motion capture. One is equipped with 30 4-million pixel cameras and the other with 30 16-million pixel cameras, according to Thomas Tong, the head of NMA’s motion capture department.
All of this enables NMA to churn out two to three satire pieces a day every week.
“Speed is very important, and timing is key,” said Logan, who cited the example of Casey the Punisher, a 16-year-old Australian who struck back at a school bully. Within 24 hours of the story surfacing, NMA had produced an animation that’s still getting hits.
Driving traffic to the boob tube
“It used to be that they said, if you’re not on TV, you don’t exist,” observed Logan. “For online video, if you’re not on YouTube, you don’t exist.”
NMA posts all of its satire pieces on its website as well as YouTube. Most of its audience is American; in fact, 46 percent is in the U.S., followed by Australia, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
And satire is what NMA hopes will get it a bigger profile on a more old-fashioned medium: mainstream television.
“Our online presence is what got us noticed and is what is getting us contract work,” said Logan. “Success for us is to have a permanent, lasting presence on TV as well.”
After doing contract work for the Cartoon Network and BBC’s Newsnight program, NMA has signed a deal with Spike TV, a division of MTV Networks. Early last month, it produced a 30-minute special for the cable channel called, “Charlie Sheen’s ‘Winningest’ Moments.” Consisting of 13 animated segments, the show drew 700,000 viewers—pretty respectable for cable.
“We’re excited about doing the next one,” said Logan.
In the meantime, the team continues to be hard at work, dreaming up with ways to entertain and inform.
Read more: http://www.techeye.net/internet/truthiness-a-la-taiwan-videos-called-into-question#ixzz1Jr73wxK3