How IBTimes UK is improving its video output with animated templates

Video editing software such as as Final Cut Pro X, Avid and Premiere Pro can be intimidating to those unfamiliar with it, but it offers journalists the ability to create engaging, eye-grabbing content which can be used to accompany text online, share on social media or stand alone on video sharing platforms.

International Business Times UK is currently experimenting with Adobe After Effects, an editing software popular for enabling users to produce their own motion graphics and visual effects, and has found it to refresh its video output while improving the journalists' skills in the process.

Alice de la Chapelle, video producer, IBTimes UK, explained to Journalism.co.uk that she attended a week-long course on how to use After Effects, which then enabled her to teach her colleagues how to improve their work.

"I was able to transmit information I had learned on the course to the rest of the team, so now all seven of us can work on projects together," she said.

Rather than simply relaying a week's worth of information to her colleagues, she created a template animation which they could easily use in their videos.

"By holding a meeting to show them what they needed to do with the template, the team knew how to use it, what the interface looked like, how to link it with a Premiere Pro project and how to do the basics like add text," she said.

"The system of creating a template for everyone to use has been very effective because everyone is using it without asking me how – they have been encouraged to start creating more video content."

The team at IBTimes UK hopes that by using their templates, their videos will be of a consistently high standard, while being recognisable to their publication.

De la Chapelle explained that they will be developing new templates to use across the range of topics that the news outlet covers, from breaking news to entertainment, and they are keen to work on templates for bigger stories, where IBTimes aims to cover subjects in depth, such as the upcoming US election.

"As video producers, we all have our individual shooting and editing style, so we are careful not to take that creative freedom away with the templates," she said.

"Saying that, this has shown us how well we can work as a team – during the Rio Olympics, we used one big file that everyone had to give to another person every morning and it worked well."

De la Chapelle explained that publishers looking to use After Effects should consider tuition first rather than delving straight into the software without knowing how to use it properly.

"Learning software on the computer is just like learning another language or another way to write, so it can be frustrating at first, but by practising and picking up skills as you go, you can create amazing videos," she said.

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