DNEVNIK VIDEO
In 2016 Velislava Popova, the editor in chief of Dnevnik.bg – one of the leading liberal news portals in Bulgaria – came to us for advice. She wanted to hire a “video producer” – she wasn’t exactly sure of the job description, but it was to be a person who would manage the production of video content by print journalists armed with tablets and phones and train them to do live streaming and video commentary. She felt she needed a person, what we felt she needed was a strategy – how to maximise the existing resources, use the skills of the print journalists in the most efficient possible way, equip them to write video, and, last but not least, discover what would be the most appropriate and effective video formats to start with on an exclusively print portal. The result was a three month collaboration, in which we embedded ourselves in the newsroom.
After observing and learning about the Dnevnik workflow, we developed and proposed several simple and effective formats – with the main focus on animated explainer videos, complemented with an interview format and several options for interesting branded video projects and native ads, organic to the publication’s topics and themes and the interests of its readers. We trained the Dnevnik journalists in writing for video, working with data analysis and visualization, scripting, and hired a fantastic animator for the hands on editing and motion graphics part of the storytelling. Here are some of our favourites (unfortunately, in Bulgarian only) – on topics such as Bulgarian Black Sea tourism through the years, Venezuaela’s economic plunge or the Russian doping scandal.