Workflow: The Social First News Service Daily Aus

The Daily Aus, one of Australia’s leading social first news services, is completing daily news stories for Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and various podcast channels using Blackmagic Design cameras, switchers and DaVinci Resolve.

The Daily Aus is one of the world’s first news services producing stories only for social media channels. The independent service embraces traditional journalism practices and creates daily video based news stories formatted for social media that are available to everyone, free of charge.

The service has quickly become one of Australia’s most popular and trusted news sources, reaching almost 1.3 million Instagram accounts per month and hundreds of thousands of subscribers across its platforms.

To produce the constant video content, The Daily Aus head of video, Joe Kiely, uses Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2 digital cinema cameras, ATEM Mini Extreme ISO live production switchers and DaVinci Resolve editing, grading, visual effects (VFX) and audio post production software.

“The Pocket cameras are fantastic as they are small and compact, but pack a punch in terms of image quality. I’ve taken them into Parliament House to interview the Treasurer after Budget Night, as well as numerous other MPs and Senators – all of whom you don’t get much set up time with, (if any). The cameras can perfectly fit into a backpack with all of our accessories – so we can be light on our feet,” Kiely explained.

To keep subscribers up to date on the latest news anywhere in Australia, The Daily Aus employs 5 journalists and has built a dedicated studio and video podcast recording space in their Sydney offices.

The studio is built around several Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2s along with the ATEM Mini Extreme ISO. The cameras are used to capture pieces to camera in front of either a green screen or their signature Daily Aus colors.

Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2’s are also used for remote news gathering. Kiely explained: “We’ve taken the cameras deep into the Daintree rainforest, out onto the Great Barrier Reef, and underneath Sydney’s suburbs into the sewer network. Due to the camera’s small form factor,  we’ve been able to move quickly while capturing these news stories in a cinematic way.”

“With the ATEM Mini Extreme ISO, we have been able to eliminate the plugging in and moving around of many SD cards and hard drives, as well as control and adjust the visual look across 3 cameras from our main studio computer, and even use the 2nd HDMI out on the ATEM to give our presenter a feed on a monitor to check ‘last looks’ before rolling. We can then record our video podcast promos and longer form sit down interviews in isolated files from our cameras directly into the ATEM – and even switch on the fly.
It makes multi-cam editing a breeze.”

Collaborating with his team for different social media formats means Kiely needs a consistent video workflow to allow editorial staff to provide feedback and approve edits before publishing.

“We’ve got a good system in place now, and most recently we incorporated TikTok videos into the equation. Our multimedia journalist was producing the video content strictly on her phone and getting quite frustrated with the workflow, particularly actioning feedback, replacing shots and sharing work-in-progress edits. I trained her up to edit her TikTok videos on Davinci Resolve and it’s been a game changer. We can now collaborate and turn the videos around much quicker, share edits for approval and have other editors working remotely on the same projects if the workload is piling up.’

Shooting with the Blackmagic RAW codec has also been an important part of creating a flexible workflow.

“We have been using Blackmagic Raw for filming in unpredictable lighting situations, or when recording on green screen in order to capture the highest resolution possible for keying. We have had huge success with traditionally difficult images such as hair or fine edges. We recently filmed underground where the lighting constantly changed from very low to mixed sources.  We captured in B.Raw to give us flexibility in post production to achieve a consistent look for all the environments we were in,” he finished.