The new hotness in online journalism: Animated gifs

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The new hotness in online journalism: Animated gifs

Actually, they like to call them “cinemagraphs”, which is just a fancy word for fancy, upscale animated gifs, as opposed to I guess, the shit that we put up at the top of the sidebar every day. The animated gif above comes from a story about the making of strawberry beer, which you can read here, full of cinemagraphic goodness.

Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg, the duo behind those beautiful cinematic gifs, just sent word about their latest project. It’s the first journalistic cinemagraph story ever told and it’s about the process of hand making a strawberry beer with Dogfish owner and brewmaster Sam Calagione. Sure, at first glance it looks like a fancy advertisement but with those gorgeous gifs and thorough explanations, you can’t help but get pulled into the story.

“The step-by-step process is brought to life through our cinemagraph process and we hope it takes you there with us, witnessing each moment happening,” says Beck. “We are so proud of this story and hope to share it around the world, if not for the story and imagery than for the love of good BEER.” […]

“Extracting the juice was exhausting but cool. It took us a few hours to work through all of the fruit, and the juice was a vibrant blood red as it ran through the slats. Because the press worked in repetitive increments, the juice pulsed out in surges. Before we cleaned up, the area looked like an epic crime scene minus the chalked body outlines. “Are wild strawberries really wild? Will they scratch an adult, will they snap at a child?” — Shel Silverstein.”

It makes sense, and it’s about time. It’s the 21st century, and static photos are so last century. Well done, as in the case of the strawberry beer gifs, it’s a great medium between a static photo and a video that really brings a story to life. When this shit starts showing up on CNN and NBC, you can say that IHC was on the cutting edge of animated gif journalism. If that’s what you can call what we do here.

Via