Updates to this story
The Taiwanese news animation shop responsible for the animated Tiger Woods car crash video and other "news-in-motion" gems has been slowly reinventing the news wheel and there's no end in sight. Next Media Animation – a 300-person shop run by Hong Kong transplant Ben Wong and specialising in cute and quirky animations of breaking news events – is set to conquer the internet.
But wait! A local English-lanuage newspaper in Taiwan recently took the animation house to task for stretching the line between truth and fantasy.
"[Next Media Animation] has become famous -- or should that be infamous? -- across the world for its often quasi-fictional depictions of big news events," the China Post said in an unsigned
editorial.
It then slammed Asian media mogul Jimmy Lai's animated operation for following Yankee TV comedian Stephen Colbert's "truthiness" dictum that "truth is what we want to believe" and not
necessarily the truth.
"In that respect, many of [Lai's] videos are nothing more than than truthiness a la Taiwanese."
Was the China Post saying that Jimmy Lai lies?
Lai, a suspender-sporting and savvy media man, was born in communist China and raised in British-controlled Hong Kong. He now splits his time between China-controlled Hong Kong and free and colourful Taipei. Inside China proper, he is 'persona non grata' due to his political views, and he cannot even visit his old hometown to pay filial piety respect to his ancestors there. He would be stopped at the border. No free-thinkers allowed.
Lai's news-in-motion animation mantra? Filling in gaps in the news for people around the world. His modus operandi: short, quirky animated news stories using CG "art" to depict the latest headlines.
Sometimes you have to use your imagination, sometimes you don't.
.
Lai's news animation business took off when the New York Times wrote about of the infamous Tiger Woods car crash video, helping it become a viral internet sensation.
Sometimes cultural gaps come into play, according to Mark Simon at Next Media. When an animation of Sandra Bullock was commissioned by an American TV network, Bullock ended up more like Korean-American pro golfer Michelle Wie than the Hollywood star.
Artistic licence? Sure. One animation explaining a spat between Yankie late-night TV hosts began quietly, before the celebrities morph into superheroes who begin beating each other with chairs.
Simon has a good way to explain the mother ship: "We are the History Channel on speed!"
Some call this Maybe Journalism - "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", as Noam Cohen at the New York Times put it.
Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing just can't seem to get enough of this stuff, blogging in her signature gushing manner: "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."
The NMA videos now come online with English subtitles, tapped in by Western expats in Taipei.
One punter put NMA's genius this way: "This is, by far, the greatest act of journalism in human history. I wish they made one for the Hindenburg disaster."
Meanwhile, the unsigned editorial in the China Post wondered out loud "where the line between news reporting and gossipy sensationalism should be drawn." Opining that NMA's videos "frequently stray close to, if not beyond, the boundaries of good taste," the newspaper pointedly attacked Lai's team for making a 33-second AV (animated video) of notorious UK murderer Stephen Griffith that depicted his murder of a young woman "in graphic detail."
"West Yorkshire police were openly critical of Next's dubious opportunism," the China Post said of the Griffith gore, adding that a spokesman for the Yorkshire police said: "This video is in extremely poor taste, totally insensitive to the families, and we have asked that it be removed immediately."
Take that, Jimmy Lai!
*EyeSee Main picture is from the excellent send-up of Gordon Brown's allegedly violent temper.
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/taiwan-issues/2010/12/25/284972/Next-Media.htm
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/print/284972.htm
Next Media Animation — true to 'truthiness'
Saturday, December 25, 2010
The China Post ...unsigned editorial, editorial page 8
Next Media Animation (NMA) recently launched a new series of its
world-renowned video animations entitled "Modern Morality Tales." For
anyone who has watched the online broadcasting company's previous
efforts, it might be questioned if "morality" is the appropriate word
to use.
Next's films are always as visually alluring as the Grand Theft Auto
game series and usually feature X-rated scenes involving sexual
assaults, murders and robberies that can be downloaded to cell phones
through Chunghwa Telecom, but the organization's loose adherence to
the truth is often on show.
The clips might be the best practical expression yet of American
television comedian Stephen Colbert's creative concept of
"truthiness."
The coined term refers to the truth that a person claims to know
intuitively "from the gut" without regard to facts or logic.
Truthiness can be further described as something that "seems like
truth" or the "truth that we want to believe."
"Truthiness is 'What I say is right, and (nothing) anyone else says
could possibly be true.' It's not only that I feel it to be true, but
that I feel it to be the truth. There's not only an emotional quality,
but there's a selfish quality," Colbert told The Onion's A.V. Club in
an interview in 2006.
In that respect, many of Next's films are nothing more than truthiness
a la Taiwanese.
The organization has become famous, or should that be infamous, across
the world for its often quasi-fictional depictions of big news events.
NMA, the brainchild of Hong Kong tabloid tycoon Jimmy Lai, however,
claims that CG animation is the response to the changing fortunes of
the news industry -- what should editors do when no photos are
available?
When Tiger Woods had a car accident at his Florida home last year,
there were no photographers or reporters, but NMA's CG animated
version of events managed to attract more than 3 million viewers on
YouTube. Although news came after the facts, the animation process --
featuring Mrs. Woods chasing her husband with a golf club -- aimed at
filling in the blanks for the audience.
What really happened between Mr. and Mrs. Woods that night has never
been made public, but NMA's film has become so lodged in the
collective consciousness that many now believe it to be the truth.
The films are hugely popular, but frequently stray close to, if not
beyond, the boundaries of good taste.
Earlier this week, British serial killer Stephen Griffiths was jailed
for life for hunting down and murdering at least three women in
Bradford, England. The self styled "Cannibal Killer" has never shown
remorse for his crimes, and even boasted to police following his
arrest, "I've killed loads."
Only weeks after one of Griffiths' victims met her unimaginably
terrifying end, Next had unleashed a 33-second video depicting her
murder in graphic detail. West Yorkshire Police was openly critical of
Next's dubious opportunism, with a spokesman saying, "This video is in
extremely bad taste, totally insensitive to the families and we have
asked that it is removed immediately."
NMA's cartoonish portrayal of Griffiths made him look like a modern
Jack the Ripper - another British serial killer who haunted the
streets of Victorian London, brutally mutilating and killing
vulnerable young women. The parallel would have delighted Griffiths
himself - a lonely obsessive who dreamed of achieving notoriety by
entering the morbid world of murder folklore.
Serious news organizations constantly wrestle over which issues are in
the public interest, and which are not. As Griffiths begins his prison
term, we might reflect on how much of that thought process NMA went
through when it decided to commission the film about his case.
According to NMA's Creative Director Mark Simon, these videos are
managed by a top notch editorial staff ensuring the news is the focus,
but many of its efforts make one wonder about where the line between
news reporting and gossipy sensationalism should be drawn.
In the meantime, we would humbly suggest that NMA's "Modern Morality
Tales" series is renamed "Modern Truthiness Tales."
Copyright © 2011 The China Post.
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/taiwan-issues/2010/12/25/284972/Next-Media.htm
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/print/284972.htm
Next Media Animation — true to 'truthiness'
Saturday, December 25, 2010
The China Post ...unsigned editorial, editorial page 8
Next Media Animation (NMA) recently launched a new series of its
world-renowned video animations entitled "Modern Morality Tales." For
anyone who has watched the online broadcasting company's previous
efforts, it might be questioned if "morality" is the appropriate word
to use.
Next's films are always as visually alluring as the Grand Theft Auto
game series and usually feature X-rated scenes involving sexual
assaults, murders and robberies that can be downloaded to cell phones
through Chunghwa Telecom, but the organization's loose adherence to
the truth is often on show.
The clips might be the best practical expression yet of American
television comedian Stephen Colbert's creative concept of
"truthiness."
The coined term refers to the truth that a person claims to know
intuitively "from the gut" without regard to facts or logic.
Truthiness can be further described as something that "seems like
truth" or the "truth that we want to believe."
"Truthiness is 'What I say is right, and (nothing) anyone else says
could possibly be true.' It's not only that I feel it to be true, but
that I feel it to be the truth. There's not only an emotional quality,
but there's a selfish quality," Colbert told The Onion's A.V. Club in
an interview in 2006.
In that respect, many of Next's films are nothing more than truthiness
a la Taiwanese.
The organization has become famous, or should that be infamous, across
the world for its often quasi-fictional depictions of big news events.
NMA, the brainchild of Hong Kong tabloid tycoon Jimmy Lai, however,
claims that CG animation is the response to the changing fortunes of
the news industry -- what should editors do when no photos are
available?
When Tiger Woods had a car accident at his Florida home last year,
there were no photographers or reporters, but NMA's CG animated
version of events managed to attract more than 3 million viewers on
YouTube. Although news came after the facts, the animation process --
featuring Mrs. Woods chasing her husband with a golf club -- aimed at
filling in the blanks for the audience.
What really happened between Mr. and Mrs. Woods that night has never
been made public, but NMA's film has become so lodged in the
collective consciousness that many now believe it to be the truth.
The films are hugely popular, but frequently stray close to, if not
beyond, the boundaries of good taste.
Earlier this week, British serial killer Stephen Griffiths was jailed
for life for hunting down and murdering at least three women in
Bradford, England. The self styled "Cannibal Killer" has never shown
remorse for his crimes, and even boasted to police following his
arrest, "I've killed loads."
Only weeks after one of Griffiths' victims met her unimaginably
terrifying end, Next had unleashed a 33-second video depicting her
murder in graphic detail. West Yorkshire Police was openly critical of
Next's dubious opportunism, with a spokesman saying, "This video is in
extremely bad taste, totally insensitive to the families and we have
asked that it is removed immediately."
NMA's cartoonish portrayal of Griffiths made him look like a modern
Jack the Ripper - another British serial killer who haunted the
streets of Victorian London, brutally mutilating and killing
vulnerable young women. The parallel would have delighted Griffiths
himself - a lonely obsessive who dreamed of achieving notoriety by
entering the morbid world of murder folklore.
Serious news organizations constantly wrestle over which issues are in
the public interest, and which are not. As Griffiths begins his prison
term, we might reflect on how much of that thought process NMA went
through when it decided to commission the film about his case.
According to NMA's Creative Director Mark Simon, these videos are
managed by a top notch editorial staff ensuring the news is the focus,
but many of its efforts make one wonder about where the line between
news reporting and gossipy sensationalism should be drawn.
In the meantime, we would humbly suggest that NMA's "Modern Morality
Tales" series is renamed "Modern Truthiness Tales."
Copyright © 2011 The China Post.
They deserve to succeed just for using the comic brilliance of that line :)
Nextinmtoion videos?
Nextinmation videos?
News in Motion Vidoes?
Apple videos?
Apple Daily videos?
Next Media Animation videos
NMA videos
animated news videos from Next Media in Taipei?
any ideas
says a friend in UK .. "Maybe it's the distance from America or UK that lets animators somehow highlight how silly the news pieces are."
Jim Romenesko says on Jan 21 ......The IFC show, which debuts tonight, has “a little of Fox TV’s burnished aggression, a little of CNN’s high-gloss dispassion and HLN’s high-speed news buffet, even a nod to MSNBC’s ubiquitous prison documentaries...." maybe NEXT MEDIA could debut an worldwide TV anime news channel soon?
Nigeria Sun
Friday 21st January, 2011
(Source: TechEye)
*Taiwanese animators* WTF? spoofing American leaders who are shown bowing and kowtowing to Chinese visitors.
From wired pandas to red-carpet pandering, about the only thing that could further ratchet up this international send-up of this week's White House State Dinner is a little gate-crashing. Wait-wait, who's waltzing right this way? Yes, the reference-happy animators do not disappoint: It's the Salahis.
With a roster ranging from Rahm to Obama to Steve Ballmer, Taiwan's *Next Media Animation* -- yes the media name is correcet, FINALLY -- unfurls a swell take on President Hu Jintao's Washington swing. Honestly, can anyone pirouette from amusing all-night benders to bruising human-right politics with quick, drawn-comic aplomb quite like NMA.tv? Each week, it seems, the writing gets a little sharper, pithier, wittier.
Besides, *Taiwan's animated humor* -- TAIWAN"S HUMOR.? the media firm is staffed by people from 1100 antions MR Cavana -- reminds us: To get to a more civil discourse, we could all use a little more satirical discourse.
"Jokie" Chan, indeed.
Here 'tis, a tale of two Prez Dispensers:
Yesh, the commenet above here are correct, if NMA comes up with a better moniker for themselves, the western press will have something better to refer to them by, .....they need to think about that.....some short easy to write term for who they are, like BBC or CNN or NYT......maybe NMA? .....but you're also right in that "Taiwanese videos" reveals the racism we have over here in the West toward "All of them over there".
I've noticed that whenever foreign events are covered, the non-white people are shown as a jibbering mass; when we're represented, we white superioer people, we get some talking head expert individual."
Revealing.
The answer is YES.
NEXT is not the only boy on the block. There is a tiny Israeli operation with a much more challenging and 'serious' model for animated news that cannot be brushed off as entertainment:
Check out Chelm-on-the-Med Productions demo for television - at http://www.chelm-on-the-med.com (and peruse the website itself while you're at it - a traditional news outlet that balances conflict-driven news from Israel with 'something else'. Under 'Animated News on the website, one can find guidelines that are very different from NEXT Media's...that can serve as a model for any station contemplating producing 'animated news'. (I'm the founder and CEO of this endeavor.)
Yo Dude,
[My calling Next Media Animation from Taiwan as " those Taiwanese animators" was] Not a mistake. This is how Next Media Animation SELF-identified itself when I contacted them directly. Their wording, not mine.
(And yes, my r[won]elatives in the Philippines, for instance, indeed do call the New York Times "an American newspaper.")
Many thanks for your time and interest.
Best regards,
Michael
Michael, Michael, thanks for note,......and i agree with you......99 percent, but need to chat a bit more. OKAY
I just spoke with someone at NMA and he told me you are right, well, sort of, he said
====================
"[YES]...it's an all-Taiwan animation team so I guess that is how Western media see it in terms of crowds..........We promote the term "Next Media Animation" as there are many NMA's out there [on the internet as corporate initialisms so we prefer to be ID's as Next Media Animation...".
Hope all is well.
Sent via CSL BlackBerry''
================================
So Michael Cavna , you are right....my beef, is this: white western people usually lump all non-white foreign people at THEM compared to us,,,,,,,,,so Western media are called Wash Post, NY Times, BBC and CNN, etc, but asian or African media are called
"Thoser Japanese movies" --- "those Taiwanese animators" -- "those Filipino horror flicks",....but it is not FAIR OR JUST to
label non - white people like that...it is NOT Racism but is is lazy journalism and copyediting.........I suggest
the YOU and BoingBoiing etc etc ect called the Taiwanese news in motion videos by their corporate name next time, such as
"those quirky Next Media Animation videos..." what would it hurt to spell out the three words????,,,,,and maybe add ''from Taiwan'',,,,just to make
sure readers get it?
Good post but a few notes from the ''universal copy desk'' - :
re: your use of the term "Taiwanese animators spoofing American leaders who are shown bowing and kowtowing to Chinese visitors."
The media outlet that does these vids is callled Next Media Animation, which you do note later on in your post, but you should take care not to label this pioneering news media outlet as "Taiwanese animators" as the creative director of a Chinese man from Hong Kong, who is not Taiwanese" and as you know, not all Asians are the same or look alike. In fact, your cute joke at end about Jokie Chan is funny, yes, but Jacky Chan is not Taiwanese, either. He is from Hong Kong and he supports communist China and does not accept Taiwan as a soverign nation, which it is. So please label Mr Chan for what he is: Chinese, not Taiwanese. They are two different countries, as you know. And yes, true, Mr Chan has married a Taiwanese woman, an actress, long ago, yes. So he married into Taiwan, but he is not Taiwanese and he does not respect what Taiwan has become.
This was good and proper: "Taiwan's Next Media Animation unfurls a swell take on President Hu Jintao's Washington swing."
Your kudos to NMA re good too, re: "Each week, it seems, the writing [from NMA]gets a little sharper, pithier, wittier."
Note: many of those "writers" are Western expats living in Taiwan. As are the voice-over actors who speak in English. So NMA is really an international outfit, owned and operated of course by Hong Kong's Jimmy Lai -- who also has a home and office in Taipei -- and based in Taiwan.
Again, Michael, re "Besides, Taiwan's animated humor reminds us.." - See above. This humor is not "Taiwan's animated humor" per se. It is the animated humor of a media outlet called Next Media Animnation just like the BBC and CNN and the Washington Post have proper corporate names, don't foreign non-white media firms also deserve proper naming forms?
Re: last punchline: "Jokie" Chan, indeed.
Good! But again, Jacky Chan has nothing to do with Taiwan, other than he is married to a Taiwanese woman and their kids are half-Taiwanese, half-Chinese.
http://nie.mn/f8rqeR
It appears that one can pay NMA to create customized videos for your firm, to use as PR, as it seems Cheezburger did....Cheez Inc, which runs the site dedicated to lolcats, this week won US$30 million in venture capital funding from the Foundry Group. Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh, who has incurred the wrath of many netizens for his alleged hijacking of memes, plans to use the cash to build the largest humor network in the world.
Guest starring Shika Card as The Flamer.
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.