Visual Node: vision, concept and development

Vision of the proposal

The following are the core ideas of Visual Node, a solution for emerging news media, managed by
journalists, to develop the coverage, the adaptation and broadcast of news by different online video
formats. The next are current context conditions that favor this solution:
- The migration of traditional and investigative journalists to the digital ecosystem because of several
reasons: the generalized censorship in Latin America (in countries like Venezuela, Ecuador, Mexico,
El Salvador, among others); the economic collapse of the traditional mass media; the desire to
exploit the virtues offered by the digital medium; or simply adapting to new technologies.
- The video trend in Internet news can be described as a tendency in process, involving the
dissemination of information and entertainment, to an ever larger scale through video. According
with the Pew Research Center, in 2013 six of every ten adults watch online videos and 36% of
adults consume news trough online videos, a behaviour that levels with the news consumption via
Facebook and TV cable. Nine of every ten young watch online videos, and 48% of them access
news through online videos. Therefore, we are observing how the emergence and consolidation of
social networks as platforms for interaction and convergence with the systematic use of video is
transforming the content industry in general and markedly the informative one.
- In Latin America countries where financial and technological conditions are slow to set, the
incursion of a systematic and scalable experience can offer a great opportunity for differentiation
and creation of a renewed audience, and therefore, a market for emerging media. These
information services platforms could be suffering from a process of standardization and redundancy
as a consequence of journalistic practices originated from the traditional press, and not necessarily
logical in the digital environment.
- Specifically, the currency exchange rate differential in Venezuela makes it an ideal solution for
payment of production services at low cost, which helps lower the financial risk and is benevolent to
the possibilities of trial and error. Besides it can serve as an ideal platform to offer complementary
production services to other implementations of this projects in other countries inside the region.
Financial sources for the project:
Funding agencies promoting journalism globally
Resources directed by the same emerging platforms interested in developing this business area
Building partnerships to match risks, reduce them and optimize the use of resources
Sources of return and return on investment:
Marketing of audiovisual products in Latin American, American, European and Arab television
networks.
Marketing of audiovisual products through broadcast services with online payment, like Vivo Play /
Netflix platforms
International journalism cash awards
Advertising

Visual Node Concept

In regard to the above preamble, Visual Node is an alliance offering a solution for emerging
information platforms in the Latin American context, to accelerate the adaptation of digital written
journalism and journalism research to the digital audiovisual ecosystem and to take advantage of it
gradually. The core goal is providing capability to build massive audiences who interact with
information mostly by video, because the current focus of the new platforms is reading users niches
and this is a limitation for the task of providing content for larger audiences.
Visual Node is also a service for the design and execution of distribution, broadcasting and marketing
of audiovisual products in the digital environment, which means intervening in the management of
networks to create the necessary relationship with new niche audiences.
In this approach, our products are defined by the requirement of immediacy of the content or its
timelessness. That is, we offer solutions for immediate audiovisual adaptation of written material.
On the other hand, Visual Node wants to offer the possibility of making high quality adaptations for
long research, which has defined public opinion and remains current, which failed to make the
transition to digital media and lost its benefits.
Visual Node components:
- Project co-financing as well as fundraising: as promoters we are looking to build an alliance with
positioned partners, rather than rendering a service. We will develop a fundraising strategy to allocate
seed money in order to establish a partnership with them. Our purpose is to combine resources,
editorial perspectives and investigative skills to produce high quality and well designed videos.
Three scales of video production:
- Snack Videos: we will produce short 15-30 secs videos with an initial frequency of four per week, 16
per month. Under this format we will disseminate the basic piece of news, summaries of large stories,
promotion of our main research, or explaining complicated issues in a simple way. (Explore the .GIF
and meme format in this regard). These contents are made from footage services, leased from third
parties, motion graphics, photographs. They will be characterised by almost non-existing field
production on images or footage, in general.
- Short videos: short reports of 3 to 5 minutes. With this format we seek to produce original pieces, to
establish an agenda, with our own production of images and footage, integrating the -video-Internet
aesthetics. This will be an ideal place to develop a thematic line that will help shape and enrich the
brand. A production rate of four videos of this kind is expected, seeking to develop content of greater
validity that brief fleeting news videos.
- Investigative reporting Series: With the snacks videos and short videos production infrastructure, we
want to generate the capacity to produce a series of research works adapted to the 21 minutes
audiovisual format . These contents will be packaged under the concept of TV program seasons
delivery, to be disseminated through various commercial windows, fundamentally as a Internet TV
streaming service such as Vivo Play, but also including traditional TV networks. Part of the idea is that
the production, the selection of short videos topics serves as mentioned above, will contribute to the
generation of images for further development in the 21 minutes format .
Marketing and digital broadcasting:
- Each digital product or the promotion thereof requires the design of a dissemination strategy for the
Internet, which is the first level of leverage. We will create diffusion cycles for each format, we`ll
determine key social networks for each audience niche, we`ll set alliances with other regional portals,
as well as determine influential blogs, among other strategies. This involves the creation of new
partnerships.

- Marketing through traditional TV networks: It is significant to keep in perspective the possibility and
need for a market survey of potential traditional television networks in the region, which could be
interested in acquiring these programs. This will also require a marketing strategy that starts from the
determination of key individuals, interactions and creating business partnerships.
- English and Spanish subtitles: One factor that may influence drastically the project's success is the
ability to translate into English and Spanish by subtitling contents on every format, which means a
bilingual digital marketing strategy, thinking dissemination cycles, social networks, portals and
partnerships with influential blogs, twice. A major challenge indeed.
- Making a quarterly event for the presentation of the most important works of the year in research,
Ted Talks-style with journalists from our platform and others as potential allies.
Starting Plan:
To promote the concept of Visual Node we are promoting the idea in several areas and we are making
the necessary budget projection. This stage also involves discerning what will be produced in house,
what will be outsourced, which will be the final legal and administrative platform.
In this regard we are asking outsourcing services the configuration of startup working teams for
audiovisual production, digital marketing and English subtitling service. A great advantage of our
proposal is that it is not an offer burdened with maintaining a large production structure, which means
that working teams will be budgeted at attractive costs, designed to meet specific requirements.
For production and postproduction of shorts videos, we propose two (2) field production teams and a
unique post-production editing unit.
Each field production teams shall consist of:
- One investigation producer / senior journalist
- One cinematographer / cameraman
- One sound man,
- One assistant
- And one person in charge of security.
The editing and postproduction unit will require:
- graphic image and animated logo production
- One editor / post-producer
- One designer/ animator
- two junior news producers
The digital marketing team will conspist of:
- One media Manager
- One web programmer
- One socializer (metrics)
- One community manager
Services associated with the project :
- Access to footage and news photos
- music libraries
- translation

Projected budget of Visual Node implemented in three middle size country, per year:
US$
Field production (two teams)

36000

Equipment rent and logistics

20560

Edition and post production

64280

Digital Marketing

9200

Translation and subtitling

1000

Annual fundraising

6000

Annual advertising

48000

TOTAL

185040

Projection Three middle size

countries US$

555120

Projected budget of Visual Node implemented in Venezuela, per year:

Bs.

US$

Field production (two teams)

10800000

6000

Equipment rent and logistics

6168000

5140

Edition and post production

19284000

16067

Digital Marketing

2760000

2300

Translation and subtitling

300000

250

Annual fundraising

1800000

1500

Annual advertising

14400000

12000

TOTAL

55512000

46260

Visual Node
Victor Hugo Febres J.
February 2016