via the RSA.

Time once was that video was a bit player in the online journalism experience. As traditional print publications moved online they didn’t have the human resources or technical infrastructure to create great video storytelling. Add a lack of bandwidth for viewers to actually enjoy video if it did exist and you see why the medium was slow to take hold.

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With today’s explosion of online video storytelling it’s hard to believe that reality existed until only a few years ago.

Craig Duff, Director of Multimedia at Time.com, is and has been a Web video proponent now for years. His goal is true storytelling adapted to the realities of the Web and mobile as a medium.

His strategy, he says, can be found in Pat Benatar lyrics: Hit me with your best shot.

In other words, tell us upfront what the story is about and show us what it’s really like to live with the facts and figures that underlie the news.

Craig and I spoke at Streaming Media East 2010. In the interview above he discusses Time.com’s video journalism strategy, producing content for new platforms such as the iPad and what the future of Web video journalism holds.

An archive of all interviews from that event can be found here.

Related posts:

1. Introducing the Future Journalism Project
2. The Present and Future of Cross Channel Video
3. The Future of Business Journalism

We here at ScribeHQ like our Pacman and like our videos. Combine the two and there’s a whole lot of love going out to the comedy-production group Therefore You.

In the spirit of slash porn hits like Saw and Hostel, Pacman’s now reimagined as a psychological thriller where our hero is in the clutches of evil. His task? Eat power pellets to survive.

Two thumbs up from this side of the Web. Therefore You was kind enough to submit to an interview about how all this came together. Answers below were sent back via email from Directors Patrick Brady and Allyson Schettino and two of the Producers, Victor Reyes and Andrew Hymas.

So tell us about Pacman and the genesis of this film. Did you play it a lot growing up? Where’d the lightbulb go off to satirize it?

First off, the Therefore team would like to thank you for checking out the video and our company. It really means a lot. Every child of the 80’s has played Pac-man. It is just a part of our cultural landscape. The film originated as an inside joke about Darren Aaronofsky adapting Pac-man for the big screen, Requiem for a Dream style. A deadly serious and frightening auteur’s portrayal of a drug dealer taking pills that make him hallucinate. Everyone in Therefore Productions was entertained by the truly horrendous ways studios try to adapt video games into films. It wasn’t until several years later that we realized a Saw-type story would make the funniest possible adaptation of the Pac-man game.

While retro nerd gaming does sell, our take-away was that high quality, well thought out video production gets people’s attention no matter what audience they’re in. That’s the great thing about the Internet and new media. There are so many different audiences craving high quality content, and this kind of distribution makes them accessible.

What was your shooting setup and where did you shoot?

We shot the trailer on the Sony EX3 with a steady cam rig, an on-board monitor for the directors and script supervisor, a 14-foot jib, and an Arri Fresnel 5-light kit (1900 total watts).

We also had the luxury of shooting MOS, so we were able run through the various setups quickly and play out some on-set improvs. The set itself was constructed in our Art Director’s basement.

Production Designer Cameron Romero built the maze set based on the textures of the preexisting basement walls to lend realness to the set and maximize our space. He created wall panels that could fly in and out of shots as necessary to create different maze configurations and save time on setup.

Any special effects tools or plugins in post production? Which ones did you use to achieve what effects?

We used practical effects wherever we could, but we weren’t shy about going into After Effects to refine the visuals.

We used Frischluft’s Fresh Curves plug-ins for color correction and Trapcode’s 3D Stroke and Shine to build the classic maze and give it some glow.

For the ghosts we built and shot a large cloth and styrofoam puppet hanging from a ceiling in front of a greenscreen, and we blew air at it with a reversed vacuum cleaner. We keyed out the puppet and used built-in tools in After Effects to turn that piece of footage into four different-colored ghosts.

We also used Mocha for motion tracking to place the Paccorp logo in the establishing shot of the building, and to put a pretzel decal onto the top part of the oncoming truck in the opening scenes.

The flaring lights in those scenes were also generated in After Effects and motion-tracked into the shots.

How long did it take from conception to shooting to editing? How’d you pay for it or was a labor of love with your time?

It took 2-3 months of work over a span of 18 months. The shoot took place in February ’09, but shortly thereafter much of the Therefore crew got called up to produce an indie feature.

The serious editing effort was delayed until January ’10. The whole project was a labor of love. A majority of the expenses were covered out of pocket. Members of Therefore Productions cooked for the crew on set. Editorial and special effects were done entirely in house.

As of this question it’s been watched a couple hundred thousand times. What were your expectations when you released it and what’s your reaction now?

We knew that of any video project we had produced, this one had better production value, pop culture appeal and broader humor than our previous more random humor films. We thought there was the potential that more people might enjoy it. Beyond that, we had no real expectations and were thrilled at the very immediate response to the trailer. The most surprising reaction is the number of people calling for a feature-length film based on the premise.

We never saw that coming.

After seeing the reaction, does retro nerd gaming sell?

Our focus has always been on making comedy we find funny.

Cinematical.com said of Pacman. “…don’t let the production value of this trailer fool you: this is most definitely a parody.”

We’ve seen that sentiment on many other sites, and that was a big deal because high production value was so crucial to us for the joke. We think that’s what sold a lot of people on Pacman: The Movie Trailer.

Fortunately, the content had a broader appeal which could be the result of retro nerd gaming but may have more to do with nostalgia for Pacman and frustration with modern horror movies like the Saw franchise. We’ve seen Pacman posted on film, video game, horror and comedy sites. Namco even put it on their Pacman Facebook page. So while retro nerd gaming does sell, our take-away was that high quality, well thought out video production gets people’s attention no matter what audience they’re in.

That’s the great thing about the Internet and new media. There are so many different audiences craving high quality content, and this kind of distribution makes them accessible.

Did you have a “purpose” for making this? Ie, create something to bulk up your reel as a production house? Create something that you can bring to brands as a concept?

About Therefore Productions

Visit Therefore Productions to learn more about them. They also have a blog/community site at ThereforeYou.com.

Originally, we didn’t write the trailer with any of that in mind. As the project developed, our producers realized it would be worth our while to make Pacman a big production; pull out all the stops to do the joke justice. In the past year, we’ve done a lot of groundwork to position ourselves as a commercial video production company, and we saw this shoot as an opportunity to create a higher production value project to demonstrate our skill sets and bulk up our reel.

What next for Therefore Productions? What do you want to be doing and where do you see a market for what you want to do? Ie, working with agencies, creating original theatrical work, etc.

We are currently in post-production on another spoof piece, entitled The Multiproduct Commercial. The fake commercial takes cross promotion to the extreme and pairs unlikely products together in ironic and disastrous ways.

Alongside Pacman, this video will serve as a major promo piece for us, emphasizing both our writing and high-end production capabilities.

This year, we have three main goals: 1) work with small to mid-sized companies and agencies, creating smart, comedic video content that will increase their brand awareness; 2) continue to create, promote and perfect our in-house comedic content; and 3) entertain and expand our fan community.

It’s a three-pronged approach that will hopefully lead us to becoming a fully-fledged production company with the flexibility to choose its projects, whether they are theatrical, art-house or commercial.

About

Pacman as Torture Porn Psycho Thriller originally appeared on ScribeMedia.org.

Please visit the original to rant, rave or otherwise discuss.

SebaKito via Creative Commons/Flickr.

Why is HTML5 Important

Pete Spande, Federated Media.

With preorders for Apple’s iPad rolling into the company’s coffers the future of HTML5 and its native support of video is just about here.

Apple famously does not support Adobe’s Flash video technology on the iPhone or Touch, and will continue to ignore the Web’s most popular video delivery mechanism when people get their hands on the iPad in April.

The background for all this is long and colorful. It includes barbs traded between Apple and Adobe with Steve Jobs first calling Flash software “buggy” and later going on to say that Adobe itself is simply lazy.

Adobe, of course, quickly shot back with Flash marketing manager Adrian Ludwig writing on the company’s blog, “It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers… without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of web content, including over 70% of games and 75% of video on the web.”

This sniping occurred during the iPad launch and soon developers and technologists were sparring over — and dissecting — which side is right. There are some delicious ironies of course. Notably that Apple, which is famous for creating hyper-closed, proprietary systems, is pushing for the open platform that HTML5 promises: a platform where no one needs plugins or other proprietary technologies in order to view or interact with content.

HTML What?

For a somewhat technical grasp of the what HTML5 is, try this page from Dive Into HTML5, a book in progress by Mark Pilgrim.

While HTML5 is about much more than video, the native browser support it promises for Web video will have tremendous repercussions for publishers and consumers in the immediate future. Think VHS versus Betamax, BluRay versus HD DVD. Among others, Dailymotion and Vimeo have released HTML5 players and support. So too has YouTube, the site most responsible for turning Flash into the defacto Web video delivery platform in the first place.

Blip.tv is also working on an HTML5 solution.

“We have an HTML5 player in development that should be out soon,” says Justin Day, Blip Co-Founder and CTO. “Right now it’s more of an experiment than anything else. Because we don’t have integrations for advertising or for analytics it’s not all that useful. It does work pretty well with the iPhone/iPad though.”

The inability to serve ads in a world where publishers need cash flow immediately is, of course, a major impediment for adoption.

This May we’re doing a deep dive on HTML5 at Streaming Media East. Join us if you can.

“The biggest reason ad serving would be difficult would be the cross-domain restrictions that exist on the browser,” Day explains. “Flash can make calls on remote ad servers more easily than Javascript can. Not to say that it’s not possible, just more difficult.”

Another reason for slow adoption is the nature of video itself. When preparing video for Web delivery, producers need to decide which codec to compress them with. Leading varieties include h.264 (often used with Blip, Brightcove and YouTube among others), VP8 which was created by recent Google acquisition On2 Technologies, and Ogg Theora, a freely distributed (as in no licensing fees) video compression format.

That’s all well, good and bit confusing in and of itself. The rub though is that our leading HTML5 browsers don’t all support the same codecs. For example, Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari support and can therefore play back h.264. Opera, Chrome and Firefox — true to its open source ethos — support Ogg Theora.

So HTML5 video producers need to decide which codec to use in order to target different browsers and platforms. This isn’t necessarily an easy task and some providers are keeping mum about how they’ll handle it.

“Support for HTML5 is just a TestTube experiment and a starting point,” YouTube spokesperson Chris Dale vaguely explains. “We can’t comment specifically on what codecs we intend to support, but we’re open to supporting more of them over time.”

Meanwhile, everyone is waiting to see what Microsoft’s Internet Explorer might support. Since it controls much of the browser market, the company’s decision could be a game changer.

“Microsoft has not yet officially announced how they will support the video tag,” says Michael Dale, Senior Developer at Kaltura, the open source video platform. “But their support is likely and they have been participating in the HTML5 working group.”

Interesting Thoughts

John Gruber of Daring Fireball recently wrote, “I’ve been writing about this saga for two years. My fascination with the subject is fueled by the fact that it’s so polarizing, and that it encompasses both technical and political issues.”

Morgan Adams, an interactive Flash developer, thinks the whole debate is besides the point because Flash interface metaphors don’t make sense on touch screen devices anyway.

Dale believes HTML5 makes it easier to integrate web technologies with video and the company has been rolling out interesting HTML5 solutions through its work with Wikipedia. An example, he explains, is “using HTML text in subtitles so people can add links to Wikipedia articles when using closed captions in Wikipedia.”

Beyond that, the company is making an HTML5 Video library available for Web developers. Part of the solution is to push forward with HTML5 support while gracefully falling back to Flash when users without the proper browser hit a page set for video delivery.

“This lets you take advantage of HTML5 video today with existing browsers,” says Dale, “without having to worry about how playback is supported across the underlining platform or browser.”

Confused yet? There’s no reason you shouldn’t be.

With the release of the iPad and various articles asking whether the device will be publishing’s savior, much depends on the future of video delivery. Video, after all, has become the Web’s most lucrative ad delivery format and publishers are increasingly trying to create more of it for their audiences.

“While HTML5’s video tag offers promise that there might be a single unified standard for video playback, early signs point to more, not less, complexity in the years ahead,” says Dave Wegman, CTO and Co-Founder of Twistage, a white-label video delivery network. “The straightforward nature of the video tag itself belies the fact that it is implemented and supported differently in each of the major browsers.”

As demand for HTML5-based services grow, he says, publishers and consumers shouldn’t have to concern themselves with which browsers support which codecs.

“Put simply, he says, “the video tag is an implementation detail.”

If only, for publishers and consumers, it were so easy.

About What Does HTML5 Mean to Video Publishers?

This article originally appeared on ScribeMedia.org.

Please visit the original to rant, rave or otherwise discuss.

Related posts:

1. All Video All The Time
2. Content Delivery Network Pricing: The Going Rate for Video Delivery
3. Online Video vs ISPs: How Much is Too Much?

Matrix, meet Lego. Stop motion recreation of Neo dodging bullets.