The news. What is it and what is it for? Investigations into the Who's, What's, Where's, How's and -- most importantly -- Why's of the media have been taking place since before even the printing press was invented to help disseminate information to the masses back in the days when all that there was to report on was the sun and stars.
These days, there's of course far more to inform the populace on, and that includes the many permutations and rapid evolution of the media itself.
That's just where Next Media Animation's NMA.tv comes into play. You may have seen some of the creative machinations of the company whose mission is to create the World's Greatest Animated News Reports on such popular television programs as The Daily Show, but what are the Who's, What's, Where's, How's and -- again, most importantly -- Why's of NMA.tv itself?
iTech Post spoke with NMA's International Marketing Editor, Jamie Cheng, about just that and here's what we found out:
iTech Post: Could you please give a brief history of how NMA.tv started?
JAMIE CHENG: NMA.tv started three-and-a-half years ago on November 16, 2009. It is one of the many products produced by Next Media Animation, one of the largest full-service, digital animation studios in Asia, with more than 500 creators and artists based in Taipei, Taiwan.
iTech Post: Who were the main principals involved in the company's development?
JC: Next Media Animation itself is the brainchild of Mr. Jimmy Lai, the founder of Hong Kong's largest publicly listed Chinese print media company and publisher of Apple Daily and Next Magazine.
iTech Post: What are some of the other ventures NMA has been involved with lately?
JC: Believing that animated news is the future of news media, Next Media Animation has also recently launched TomoNews, which reports on major international news around the world. TomoNews is a next-generation news portal, combining 3D animation with live footage. We always present the news as it is, straight facts without any sugarcoating; nothing is off-limits. We sometimes add a touch of sarcasm just to spice things up a little.
iTech Post: What is the value, in your opinion, of your rather unique services?
JC: We can tell stories in a way that no other media outlets can. In traditional reporting, there is often a lack of footage or images; and even then, the graphics provided are often [granted] after the event. With animation, we are able to fill in the blanks, recreate the event and immerse our viewers in the action. At the same time, we often give a somewhat satirical angle that helps to encourage conversation and thought.
iTech Post: Why is speed such an important component of what you do?
JC: Nobody ever wants to hear about "yesterday's news." There are no other animations studios out there that can match our speed, which is why we're capable of staying on top of topical news and join in the conversation at almost real time.
iTech Post: Any other value you see to what NMA is doing?
JC: The third major value of our service is our panda. I mean, who else has an animated panda dancing around?
iTech Post: Aside from your dancing panda, it seems one truly singular aspect of NMA is the way you're able to get the animation segments out so quickly, as you've previously mentioned. How exactly are you able to do this so?
JC: Our animation production has continuously been streamlined and made more efficient. In just a few years, we've improved our process to the point that many of the animated stories -- like your hamburger story [a previous iTech Post story NMA recreated as an animated news segment] -- only requires about one-and-a-half-hours. Each story passes through a boatload of folks, from writers, artists, modelers, animators ... Even then, we are still always looking for ways to improve and expect that time to keep decreasing as our technology improves.
iTech Post: The characters or avatars in your videos appear a bit like the characters from SimCity. Is this intentional? Have you heard anything from Electronic Arts about this? Or am I just imagining things?
JC: You are definitely imagining things. Our characters and avatars appear the way they do because of our commitment to speed. In order to streamline and pump out animations as fast as possible, we've built an extensive database of the various objects in this world. So whenever a news [story] comes out, we have most of these models ready and just need to do some touch-up on customizations here and there. That is why you will find our characters not as refined as Pixar, for instance.
iTech Post: Is your service basically based on an advertising model or do you also base your financial model on assignments such as those for The Daily Show and Conan O'Brien more frequently?
JC: In addition to an advertising model, a good percentage of our business model is based on producing animated news graphics for both television broadcast and online publishers. We have an established partnership with Reuters to distribute these animations. We also do projects and client work in special partnerships for both news and non-news content creation
iTech Post: How do you choose the stories you make videos of?
JC: For NMA.tv it's really about the stories that have the "Wow" or "LOL" factor. Our writers and editors work together to select stories that are both being discussed a lot online and are also suitable for animation. They comb through the major stories that are happening recently and investigate on the ones that are newsworthy and would hit home with our fans.
iTech Post: What is it about animation and, indeed, "parody" or "satire" that you feel was/is lacking in news for you to try to bring it out in your videos?
JC: Well, what we didn't want was to become just like most news outlets out there, presenting the information in a watered-down version. We add a dose of parody and satire here and there because we want our viewers to both understand the news story but also have a chuckle at the same time. Through thought-provoking satire, our writers strive to drive home larger points about society, values, the government and the people who lead them.
iTech Post: Are you concerned that parodies of the news in the manner you've been discussing (or even those by other entities such as The Daily Show) could possibly be detrimental to the credibility of news itself?
JC: We don't believe that the satire and sarcasm added in our animations either helps or damages our credibility. We always give the facts straight-up but add the parody for an entertainment value. We have always been incredibly careful in both the selection of pieces as well as presenting the details from the story. In fact, we've actually even done a piece on the credibility (or lack of) for other major news outlets that had an epic fail in covering the Boston bombings.
iTech Post: How did The Daily Show and Conan O'Brien find out about you guys, anyway?
JC: There's this little thing called the Internet ... We actually animated Jon Stewart and Conan in our videos before they took notice of us. We suppose that's what caught their interest (we can only guess). We then ended up collaborating with the writers of The Daily Show to produce the Royal Wedding piece and feuding with Conan over yogurt. Go figure what a little ego stroking can do ... Kidding!
iTech Post: What would you say your most successful/popular story has been? And why would you say that might be?
JC: I would have to say that Tiger Woods was the most successful story, as it put us on the map and started this whole thing. That was the first piece that caught the attention of the international media, who thought the animation was completely unexpected, so outrageous and fun. And it was the feedback that we got from the Tiger Woods animation that encouraged us to make more. Now if you want to know which story has been most popular ... it would have to be our "Real Life Ukrainian Barbie" story. The title says it all.
iTech Post: Aldous Huxley once argued that George Orwell had it wrong in his book 1984: That in the future, there wouldn't be censorship, but rather super-saturation of information to the point where there would be so much information the public would be rendered helpless without knowing what to believe or what to understand. Do you feel we're getting to that point these days with so many news outlets, websites, and -- indeed -- parodies and different forms of news outlets such as yours, The Daily Show, etc.?
JC: I believe that the audience who enjoy different forms of news outlets such as ours or The Daily Show will always be able to differentiate what is real news and what is an exaggerated form.
iTech Post: What kinds of responses have you received? Anyone who has been unhappy with what you've been doing? The video about Angelina Jolie's mastectomy seemed pretty provocative and did seem like it was a poking a bit of fun at a pretty serious issue ...
JC: With such satirical videos, [we] have definitely received lots of "passionate" responses, both positive and negative. While some applaud our authenticity and commitment to never sugarcoat news, there are also those that don't have the same point of view. We believe there are always two sides to a story, and we sometimes deliberately choose the less popular side just to offer some perspective and thought.
iTech Post: Right now your videos are in Chinese/Mandarin or English. Do you plan on expanding the language base?
JC: The NMA.tv videos will probably just be in Chinese and English for now. However, for our new product TomoNews, we do make satirical videos for a Japanese audience. Eventually as we expand TomoNews into new markets, we'll have the funnies in several different languages.
iTech Post: Will we be seeing NMA.tv break out of the web any time soon?
JC: Love to! Anyone want to sign us up for a TV deal?
iTech Post: Anything else you would like to add?
JC: Yeah, you are very welcome to go "Like" us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Also, please feel free to vote for us on Webby Awards next year! (You can tell we're still bitter about losing this year.)
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