#if this is the weird people hub like tumblr markets itself as this should be an option.think about it @staff

[derpinette]

there should be a poke feature here like there used to be on facebook

[employsophiejackson]

19 Reasons Buzzfeed Should Employ Sophie Jackson (#13 is questionable)

1. I write every day of my life. Yes, even when I’m not being paid for it.

My whole life is basically just an endless series of things I become passionate about. How do I express these passions? I write about them - at great lengths, and with a lot of enthusiasm. 

2. I’m your target market.

To attract a Buzzfeed key demographic, one most think like a Buzzfeed key demographic. 

Obviously the appeal of pop culture bulletins and informative listicles is fairly universal. Your typical reader, however, is the Western millennial spending their coffee break glued to a smartphone, and I fit in there quite comfortably. 

3. There is not a meme that eludes me.

In most job applications, this wouldn’t really be the kind of quality one boasts about. Spending every spare moment browsing Reddit, Tumblr and Twitter might not be the coolest of hobbies, but it does mean the I see practically every meme that comes into existence - however short-lived, however nonsensical.

And I’m not just talking about viral memes. Those alternative memes one only discovers when browsing the dark corners of Tumblr at 3am? I see them. I know them. I know them all. If anyone’s gonna earn a job at Buzzfeed solely for their meme expertise...

4. I’m extremely flexible.

No - I’m not just talking about my enviable yoga postures. I adapt to new environments like a Victoria Secret model adapts to the latest fad diet. Whether you need me to travel, stay put, work weekends or switch between tasks - it’s all fine by me.

5. I’m as familiar with past pop culture as I am with contemporary pop culture.

From The Bell Jar to The Fault in Our Stars, from Pissaro to Koons, from Blackadder to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia - I spend as much time obsessing over past icons as I do over today’s hottest releases. Good pop culture tends to remain relevant, so for every American Idol episode I've seen, I’ve watched just as many Top of the Pops re-runs. Whether you want me to cover David Bowie or Beyonce, I’m just as happy either way.

6. I have live reporting and interviewing experience.

I’ve professionally and confidently conducted interviews with a number of high profile figures including representatives of global charities, industry leaders, social media influencers and world league professional poker players. In the past two years I’ve also gained experience reporting at live sports events watched by thousands.

7. I know a thing or two about SEO.

Just kidding, I know like twenty things about SEO. Whether it’s in relation to social media marketing campaigns or the optimization of home page navigation, this is the field I’ve known from the earliest days of my career.

I could tell you, for example, the most competitive keywords for whatever you’re promoting. I can point you to the latest Google updates and explain what they mean for content strategy and link acquisition. My SEO crush is Rand Fishkin, and I know what Matt Cutt’s dinosaur impression looks like.

8. I’m a meticulous editor and fact-checker.

Living in what is becoming known as a ‘post-truth’ society of misinformation and fake news, impartial and factual journalism is as essential as ever.  

Even if written with a light-hearted tone or for entertainment purposes, I believe there’s rarely a publication that is justified in foregoing thorough fact-checks.

As such, it has become second nature for me to cross-reference, double-check, triple-source and provide ample citations for anything I write. In short, I do not take lightly the responsibility that comes with producing content for an internationally respected brand.

9. I’m not one to shy from politics.

And in this current political climate, one doesn’t really have the luxury of staying quiet. I appreciate the importance of delivering criticism and drawing attention to issues in a respectful manner that helps create productive debate and engagement.

With an education in UK politics, US politics, modern political history and Western political theory - I write about political matters with confidence and passion. If there’s one thing Buzzfeed does well (and Buzzfeed does several things well), it’s presenting a light-hearted and accessible examination of complex issues at a time when such media is especially needed.

10. I’m totally comfortable writing in whatever style a piece of content calls for.

My experience in writing has been varied and far-spanning. I believe this to be useful, in that appropriately repurposing content for different platforms while maintaining consistency in tone is now a necessity for any online brand marketing.

My thorough grasp of the English language is one of many reasons I am highly qualified to undertake this task. Whether you want a blog post, informative review, promotional copy, argumentative op-ed or journalistic analysis - I can adapt my editorial style accordingly. One moment I can be writing a political take for The Hill, the next moment I’m focused on comparing Jeff Goldblum to pasta for The Reductress.

11. I’ve spent the last three years writing articles on every subject under the sun.

From beauty guides to morbid crimes to album releases to terrifying advancements of artificial intelligence - there’s not a subject I won’t or can’t write about. 

‘Research’ is my middle name. I didn’t always know a lot about Bitcoins, Bill Clinton’s diet or Niagara Falls - but when my job calls for me to research something, I’m going to be an expert by the time I put pen to paper...or fingers to keyboard.

That being said - there are some subjects on which I am especially well-versed, and therefore love writing about the most. These subjects include, but are not limited to, intersectional feminism, contemporary art, modern history, animal welfare, mental health, science fiction, alternative fashion and classic rock.

12. I’m on the lookout. 

I have an eye for interesting stories and upcoming trends. My mornings are defined by two activities in particular; 1) drinking coffee with obscene amounts of sugar, and 2) checking the BBC, The Guardian, The Verge, ThinkProgress, Buzzfeed, ATTN:, Vox, The Washington Post and a bunch of other cutting-edge news publications. Not only do I stay-up-to-date, but I know how to translate news into clickable, shareable and relatable content that gets people commenting.

13. I bake the most divine Victoria Sponge cake and would bring it into the office.

“Feast upon my creation, colleagues” is something I would not say because that is weird.

14. I’ve done a fair bit of travelling.

Globetrotting is an interest that has taken me from the coffee shops of Amsterdam and cathedrals of Rome to the forests of Sweden and beaches of California. A global perspective is important when writing for a global platform, and I believe my travel experiences will enrich what I can contribute to Buzzfeed.

15. I’m a quick learner.

There’s no doubt I’ve still got a lot to learn. Fortunately, I pick up most things quickly and have no problem putting aside extra time for studying should I lack any particular experience or know-how when it comes to my career. I would like to improve my GIF making game, Photoshop abilities and a couple of other mostly self-taught skills. Buzzfeed seems like the kind of environment to facilitate that growth and development.

16. I’m a closeted Yankophile.

Yes, I may devour crumpets and Earl Grey tea for breakfast, but deep down there’s a part of me that just wants to live my life like an American hipster in an innocuous coming-of-age comedy. I grew up on a diet of American TV and literature, so writing for an American audience comes as naturally to me as writing for British readers.

17. I pride myself on being a good colleague. 

Respect, positivity and open-mindedness - those are the principles I believe underline a healthy work environment.

I perform equally well in a team as I do independently. My management experience has taught me how to recognize and encourage my colleagues’ strongest traits, while giving them a space in which they can feel heard and supported.

18. London is one of my favourite places in the whole world.

Why does that make me an ideal candidate? Well, in a way my love for London is irrelevant - except that my excitement over living in the coolest city on earth will probably manifest itself in the form of a big smile each morning. I’d be over the moon if I could relocate to that rainy hub of art galleries, innovative music scenes, cultural merging, vintage street markets and lush city parks.

19. I aim for excellence.

If there’s a sentence you’ll never hear me say, it’s “that’s not in my job description”. I genuinely enjoy pushing myself and always aim to impress. No matter what project is at hand - I won’t stop until I’ve put my 100% into the job. If I work for you, you can rest assured you have a driven, reliable and problem-solving employee at force.

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

In this post, we’ll talk about how we create GIFs for our game Lake Ridden. This post was originally posted on our developer blog. As the person in charge of our marketing assets here at Midnight Hub I’ll walk you through our current process for creating crisp and catchy GIFs; which tools we use, as well as offer you some general tips and tricks for improving the quality of your fancy moving images! In this Gamasutra post I'm linking to our embedded tweets showing you the GIFs I'll be referring to. In other words, if you are on a tight bandwidth diet – fear not, no GIFs in this post will load unless you choose them too! Let’s go!

— Sara Casen 🏔 (@saxen8) February 15, 2017

A GIF showing the atmosphere in Lake Ridden. Here I use a static camera and let the particles and fog communicate movement, making it a nice mix between serenity and details. This GIF was posted on our social media and generated a lot of reactions.

When marketing your game photos are nice. But images and screenshots have their limitations when you’re showing off something that’s essentially a moving medium. I find that moving images and snippets of film are often better at delivering the message, compared to screenshots alone. GIFs are quick series of images displayed so that they look like video.

The “art form” has been around almost as long as the Internet itself (and usually contain a lot of cats doing funny things). A GIF can last anywhere between 1 – 30 seconds, depending on the quality, what you want to show and the platform you are sharing them on. A lot of GIFs on Reddit nowadays are really long, almost like YouTube videos, the same goes for Facebook. On Twitter and Tumblr however, people post a lot of 1-3 second long GIFs instead. And some GIFs are looped in such a smooth way it’s hard to tell how long or short the GIF really is.

I think the firelies in Lake Ridden are starting to look very nice now :O #gamedev http://pic.twitter.com/vTGvl9zJW0

— Sara Casen 🏔 (@saxen8) February 9, 2017

Keep your GIFs short. I usually aim for 3-4 seconds. This keeps the file size down and the interest up! This GIF is playing backwards, giving it a nice little twist with the fireflies in Lake Ridden

To spread the word about Lake Ridden we’ve used both images, videos, and GIFs in various combos. I’ve done this to communicate the environments, the gameplay, the color palette, the feeling or something from behind the scenes. For us a good GIF almost always gets more reactions and attraction on our social media channels, compared a simple photo or screenshot. Also, I greatly enjoy making them since it’s kinda creative! There are two main things that make a GIF great; the very content it is showing to the viewer and the tech behind the GIF itself. Not all GIFs are born equal. Let’s start with looking at the tech behind the images.

Technical Settings For Recording A Good GIF

Talking with a lot of developers posting GIFs about their games on Twitter, I noticed that almost all had their own preferred workflow, which I find interesting. Some people used programs like Fraps to capture the raw footage in-game, others used quick and small programs like GifCam, and used tools they had hacked together themselves. It seems like the method you choose is depending on a mix of factors; how much time you have, the desired picture quality and your game. If you want something fast and dirty, and don’t obsess over the quality you usually go with quick tools such as ScreenToGif. But if you want super crisp snippets with perfect color then you might invest in a more complicated workflow.

My advice here is: look at your game, does it have a lot of different colors/details in it? Or is the art style more simple? The more complicated art/colors you have (and if you want to keep them as sharp as possible in the final GIF) go with Fraps. Fraps give you really good raw material when recording your project.

You need to pay attention to the file limits on the platforms where you aim to spread your GIFs. Twitter has a limit of max 15 MB. If your file’s too big, resize it or make it shorter. I use a mix of Fraps and Photoshop to create our GIFs.

Second advice: determine how much time you want to put into making your GIFs. If you just want to capture, edit and throw it out in the wild, then go for a solution that’s quick and doesn’t offer you hundreds of post-processing options (suggestion: LiceCap). If you want to edit and tweak your GIFs extensively, consider using Photoshop + Fraps (YES you can edit video in Photoshop!!1).

A rule of thumb is to make the pixel quality of the GIF as good as possible on your computer, because a lot of platforms will compress it even further when you start spreading it, making the colors bleed or reducing the pixels. Twitter will take your GIF and secretly convert it to a .mp4 when you post. Facebook doesn’t allow for GIFs to be posted at all unless you link them trough a GIF-service like Giphy (more on that later).

  Our Technical Pipeline For GIFs

Here are the steps I’m using to capture the raw material for our GIFs and how I tweak the file size if the GIF comes out too big. I use a mix of Fraps and Photoshop.

Our night sky now features a moon! 😍Wanna try Lake Ridden at GDC or Game Connection? Drop me an email to: contact@midnighthub.com! 🌙 http://pic.twitter.com/l5rPGoWluK

— Sara Casen 🏔 (@saxen8) February 16, 2017

Remember that a lot of people will probably view your masterpiece in a social media feed. I've noticed it's generally a good thing to tweak the lights and color in Photoshop when you edit the source materials. Small GIFs tend to get overly dark otherwise, especially if they depict a dark scene like this one showing the night sky and its stars.

I make sure to run our game with the maximum graphics settings on my computer. The game should look as good as possible. No lag, no frame rate dips or weird loading/LODs. All hiccups or similar will be extra obvious in the final GIF.

To capture the raw footage I use Fraps. This software has been around for ages and is a faithful workhorse. Consider chipping in a few dollars to get the premium version (I also used Fraps to record our alpha teaser trailer in-game, it’s awesome for capturing anything moving on a screen).

I make sure all the video snippets I record go into the same folder on my desktop. This will make it so much easier when sorting your raw footage and deciding what to cut into a GIF. I have different folders for all GIFs.

When I have decided which of the raw footage I want to make into a catchy GIF I open it up in Photoshop. Photoshop is really simple and straightforward to use for smaller video editing. You don’t have to invest in After Effects or that other advanced stuff unless you want to.

In Photoshop I edit the video, cropping, dragging and adjusting colors, then export it. Go to File->Export->Save For Web and a dialog window should pop up (I use PC).

There are a few things to consider in this window. At first, be aware of the technical limitations of the platform where you’ll be posting your GIF. If you’re aiming for Twitter, make sure the GIF is a maximum of 15 MB. If the GIF file size is too big, resize the image by tweaking image size at the right. The second option is to check or uncheck the box named “Transparency”. Sometimes this reduces the file size but does not affect the quality of the image (?). If the GIF’s still too large, go back into Photoshop and trim down the GIFs length in seconds. This will cut down the size of the file. When you’re happy with all the settings in “Save For Web” make sure to click “Forever” in “Looping Options” if you want your masterpiece to loop into infinity. Then press “Save”. Done!

  Our Artsy Pipeline For GIFs

Let’s move on to the fun part! Creating a good GIF is more than perfect picture quality. What you’re showing (or not showing) in your snippet is even more important. Here’s my process when shooting materials for our Lake Ridden GIFs.

After recording raw material in-game I use Photoshop to edit the clip, tweak brightness, add a small water stamp (so people can find the game if the GIF goes off into the wild and people get curious about where it came from). In this stage, I crop the video material to focus on the most important thing in the GIF. It needs to be readable in a thumbnail size (compare to the final results below).

Our demo of Lake Ridden is done!! Can't wait to show it at GDC next week! Wanna try it? Let me know! #gamedev http://pic.twitter.com/XnIoUkxJsR

— Sara Casen 🏔 (@saxen8) February 23, 2017

The final GIF showing an important, creepy location found in the game.

Make sure the game runs as smoothly as possible on the computer you’re using to shoot the raw footage. Again, all artifacts, lag or loading will show even more in a 5 second GIF.

Decide what you want to show and why. A good rule of thumb is to stick to one main thing with each GIF. Decide if you wanna show off a cool animation, or perhaps a battle effect or the mood of the game. What will be the star of your GIF?

Record a lot of small snippets in-game, just a few seconds long. I usually have like 15 small videos when I’m done, showing the same thing in different angles, using the camera in different ways, zooming or not zooming etc.

I sort trough the raw material and open my best clips in Photoshop, cut them up and minimize them to really small windows. This way you can decide if the GIF will look good when it’s displayed on a small screen (aka smartphones). In other words; is the image readable? The GIF needs to look good as a really small image since a lot of people browse these things in their Twitter or Facebook feeds. They should be able to tell instantly if they are looking at a face or a dog or a house. If not, people tend to get confused and you missed your chance to evoke their curiosity and eventually reaction to your game/project.

I cut the canvas. Focus on what’s important in the image. Again, it should be readable.

I tweak the brightness/colors and saturation. A lot of the times it’s better to make the image a little bit brighter since I’ve noticed it tends to get even darker when posting to a feed.

For Twitter, I like to keep the GIFs to 3-5 seconds and always go for looping. For Facebook, I go a bit bigger, like 5 – 8 secs. People have very short attention spans and a GIF should be very straight to the point. When in doubt – make the GIF shorter.

  Posting GIFs for Twitter and Facebook

If you want to post your GIF to Facebook then you have two options. You can’t post a file in the GIF-format straight to Facebook (this is 2017 like what why?!). You can either use a third party service like Giphy (beware the quality will suffer) and post the link, OR you can be much more elegant and save your GIF in .mp4 format and post it straight to FB. Facebook accepts videos in the format of .avi and .mp4 to be posted straight to your page/wall. This is what we did when we posted our teaser trailer on Facebook.

The water is staring to look really good. Super excited having people try it on GDC! :) http://pic.twitter.com/vHGFdVEPOI

— Johan Bernhardsson (@jbernhardsson) February 13, 2017

This GIF post by our code lead Johan focuses on the water in Lake Ridden. This was made to showcase one specific item in the game: the water effect. Try to limit your GIF to showing one thing, otherwise things tend to get confusing and messy. Decide on one component and make it your "star of the show". This could be a funny bug/a new animation or the day/night cycle in the project.

We did not post a link to Youtube but the trailer in .mp4 format on my own personal Facebook page (as an experiment to track the number of views ‘a la Facebook). To post in .mp4 you can use a tool to convert your Photoshop-made GIF to .mp4, or if you’re using a more advanced video editing software like After Effects you can save the video as .mp4. Simply converting your GIFs to .mp4 using GIF-2MP4, a free online tool that does the trick according to my experience!

Get Creative!

Use what you got! I use the player’s default camera in Lake Ridden when recording our GIFs. I tilt the camera, I use the crouch, I walk backward, I stand still shooting moving objects etc. I highly recommend you use different ways of movement/vantage points if possible. This offers variety to the people watching your GIFs and you’re able to do more with less. Try to convince your programmers to implement a special camera for shooting videos and taking screenshots if possible, since that will help out a lot in the long run!

Lake Ridden is starting to have a nice contrast between night and day. This week we're also working on puzzle design and story. :) http://pic.twitter.com/THKUGmYPlt

— Johan Bernhardsson (@jbernhardsson) April 6, 2017

Often you need to find new, interesting ways to show the same content but with a twist. In this GIF I made the camera go out of the scene (compare it to the next GIF below).

Quick GIF showing the lights and colors of a sunset in Lake Ridden. Still needs some tweaking : ) #gamdev http://pic.twitter.com/8eHDmjgaYi

— Sara Casen 🏔 (@saxen8) April 6, 2017

Here the camera does a drive by of the scenery instead, which creates a different feeling. Get creative and play around with the tools you have ingame! Just make sure not to post too similar content back to back on your channels or people will find it dull.

A lot of the time I’m working on stuff in the game that I can’t show, so I have to think of new, exciting ways of showing things that I might have posted before. It’s not only about how you’re showing something, it’s also about what you’re showing. A lot of developers also post fun bugs or glitches from behind the scenes or inside the game engine. Think about your audience and ask yourself what they might enjoy. Reddit/gaming usually enjoy insane bugs or humor, while other developers like to see a nice tooltip. Players perhaps want to get a tease on the mood inside your game or your main character in a cool animation. If you have some questions regarding GIFs or know of a better way of doing some of these steps, please let me know in the comments!

Sign up for the Midnight Hub Newsletter or follow Facebook for more news and screenshots. Follow us on Twitter where we GIFs and behind the scenes stuff! Until next time!

Cheers, Sara & The Team