How is a webumentary different from a documumentary?
1. Expand beyond linear narratives. The linear, time-born form of the documentary arose in the age of movie theaters and evolved to fit the scheduling demands of broadcast television. A single linear narrative is NOT essential to the Web – now we can create multiple narratives offering different points of access into a complex topic. Different audiences have different interests and information needs. Viewers also bring different kinds of intelligences to their viewing – some are visual, others intellectual, some mathematical, others engage through emotional connections – and while a single narrative style can often hit many of these notes – some audiences are inevitably lost when their needs or interests aren’t addressed. The web allows us to present multiple story lines that offer news and information in a variety of way to appeal to different ways of apprehending information.
2. The Story never ends. Once production stops and editing is completed – the story telling ends for a traditional documentary – even though the story itself continues to evolve and change. Web technology now allows for continually evolving storylines. This means that new story elements can be continually added, revised or supplemented as events unfold. The story telling – and the shape of the narrative – doesn’t have to end until the story is played out.
3. Truly engage your local audience. Most films are only seen after they have been completed. This means that the only interactive possibility for community engagement or comment occurs after the film is finished. The rise of easily accessible community-generated content (from simple text comments to uploading photos and videos) shifts the interactive dynamic entirely. Webumentaries can directly engage their audience and take advantage of user generated content to increase the depth and scope of the coverage.
4. Making Connections. In addition to actively educating different audiences, a webumentary can also act as a resource for connecting different stakeholders. Working closely with existing social service providers, webumentaries can provide interactive tools that link people in need with responsible and well-vetted service providers – or community members with journalists – or politicians with the citizens they represent.
5. Sharability. Each story element will be “actionable” meaning that it can easily be easily shared – emailed, exchanged, printed, downloaded or embedded in another web site or blogg – so that element – and the story line it is embedded in can be travel freely on the web. Snagfilms.com has a very developed example of this concept.
6. Empowering Communities. Knowledge is power. So is the ability to express oneself publicly. By creating a local forums for education, information, and self-express individual community members can extend their social and political reach. And since it is a local forum, it also has the ability to hold public servants and politicians accountable to the people they represent.
7. Personalization. Each movement can be tracked and can be used to generate personalized “story paths” that can guide the viewer/participant through a meaningful educational experience. This guidance can be ignored, of course, depending on individual interests – but each user’s movements and interests will be tracked via a smart content rating systems so site can make smart recommendations about new relevant material or story developments that advances or complements their interests– like the Netflicks.com movie recommendation system.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Infodemic
Here is a new vocabulary term from South Korea, the vanguard of global web-interactivity, and my newest fascination.
Infodemic threatens civil incivility
By Peter Larsen @ Thursday, October 09, 2008 11:01 AM
South Korea plans to pass a number of draconian laws in a desperate attempt to regulate the Internet. The proposed legislation requires all news sites to follow the same restrictions as newspapers, TV and radio. All forum and chatroom users are required to create verifiable real-name registrations, while Internet companies will be forced to publicise their search algorithms in an effort to improve "transparency".
The Korean Communications Standards Commission has also been granted the authority to suspend the publication of articles suspected of fraudulent or slanderous content for a minimum of 30 days. Perhaps most shocking of all, Seoul has decided to subject innocent school children to government sponsored courses on proper Internet etiquette and ethics.
Jean K Min of OhmyNews International accused ruling party lawmakers and government officials of attempting to "save the deeply unpopular government by intimidating netizens from posting free online opinions with a variety of new legislation and legal threats."
However, South Korean president Myung-bak Lee defended the pending legislation as necessary to protect against "infodemics, a phenomenon in which inaccurate, false information is disseminated; prompting social unrest that spreads like an epidemic."
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Fox's Community Generated Video Snapshots
I just found website containing community generated video snapshots from Fox News that allows people to post their own short personal documentaries on line.
The production values are VERY high and they have a real network feel in the editing, so I mistrust that these are really "homemade" videos -- as the site suggests, but its a nice idea.
Coming from Fox, as you might expect, this has a real propaganda rah, rah America feel, but its nicely done.
It also has a nice picture viewers and also a fairly easy to access video-upload feature.
www.realamericanstories.com/
The production values are VERY high and they have a real network feel in the editing, so I mistrust that these are really "homemade" videos -- as the site suggests, but its a nice idea.
Coming from Fox, as you might expect, this has a real propaganda rah, rah America feel, but its nicely done.
It also has a nice picture viewers and also a fairly easy to access video-upload feature.
www.realamericanstories.com/
Saturday, October 4, 2008
fragments on craft
A producer I once worked with described making a documentary as a form of collage in which you collect pictures, stories, music, video and then combine them into a meaningful narrative form.
I've always liked this metaphor.
My own approach emerges from a journalistic tradition. My collage process usually begins with months of intense research, talking with experts and academics, to provide an informed foundation of knowledge. My goals in making "news" is to focus on exploring new topics, or presenting information in a new way, or crafting a new synthesis of the existing information about a given topic.
At the heart of this process is always telling personal stories. I am always searching for human stories that can exemplify larger social and political trends -- in a personal and emotional way. I firmly believe that human faces and personal stories are the most effective vehicle for communicating new ideas to a general audience.
I've always liked this metaphor.
My own approach emerges from a journalistic tradition. My collage process usually begins with months of intense research, talking with experts and academics, to provide an informed foundation of knowledge. My goals in making "news" is to focus on exploring new topics, or presenting information in a new way, or crafting a new synthesis of the existing information about a given topic.
At the heart of this process is always telling personal stories. I am always searching for human stories that can exemplify larger social and political trends -- in a personal and emotional way. I firmly believe that human faces and personal stories are the most effective vehicle for communicating new ideas to a general audience.
Friday, October 3, 2008
free docs online
Check this out. Snagfilms is offering free documentaries online -- and you can post the ones you like on your own site! If you can stand a brief commercial at the head of the film, it's not a bad way to watch some good films.
Producers with orphaned docs take note! The film maker shares advertising revenue with Snag films -- in exchange for on-line distribution rights.
The cool Web 2.0 element is that its really easy to pass these films around -- or even -- as I've done below -- embed a link to the film in another web page or blog. Just click the link below to watch the film -- or hit snag and you can pass it along...
Producers with orphaned docs take note! The film maker shares advertising revenue with Snag films -- in exchange for on-line distribution rights.
The cool Web 2.0 element is that its really easy to pass these films around -- or even -- as I've done below -- embed a link to the film in another web page or blog. Just click the link below to watch the film -- or hit snag and you can pass it along...
Moving Documentary to the Web, Part I
2 October 2008
Traditional documentaries usually focus on an idea or social issue and explore it in a linear fashion. Today, on the web, documentaries no longer need to be linear. Here are some thoughts on the past and future of documentaries.
What is a documentary?
At the simplest level, a successful documentary tells a good story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Typically, a producer/director collects a variety of characters, voices, pictures, graphics, words, and music and weaves them together into a narrative experience.
Bad documentaries bore, frustrate and confuse the viewer.
The best documentaries organize their material in an emotionally powerful and intellectually insightful way. When done well, the experience of watching the film can profoundly influences how individual viewers think and feel about the topic. At the community level, the most powerful films can alter social policy, save lives, change public behavior and inspire new legislation.
Traditional Forms
The traditional form of the documentary is a creature of the movie theater and the television station. Feature documentaries, those designed for release in theaters today, are intended to be viewed by a “locked down” audience who occupy fixed seats in an physical establishment and passively consume the product in a darkened theatre. These kinds of films – think of the best films of Werner Herzog or Michael Moore – often combine long narrative arcs from beginning to end with a strong first person narrative that enables the film makers to include tangential sections that don’t necessarily contribute to the overall narrative. Narration may be strong or weak, depending on the degree to which the filmmaker embraces an observational style – but a physically captive audience allows the filmmaker to take the viewers on a long, meandering, and often idiosyncratic journey.
The television documentary is a creature of the network time-slot. If the documentary was produced for a commercial network or cable outlet this usually translates into thirty-five to forty-two minutes of material broken down into seven or eight digestible chunks (each with their own nearly completed cliff-hanging dramatic arc) that can be interrupted by commercial breaks – the life blood of the for-profit television distributor – and which keeps you coming back to find out “what’s going to happen next?” If produced for a PBS outlet then the typical hour-long film often runs about 50 uninterrupted minutes and needs to have both an overarching narrative arc as well as a series of smaller interlocking narrative arcs which can often be broken down into three or four act structures – that can sustain the interest of the audience without commercial interruptions.
The narrative demands of a televised documentary are often stricter than those of a theatrical documentary – one has to assume that the television viewers may be distracted by environmental concerns – be it changing a screaming baby, refilling their bowl of ice cream, or getting another beer out of the fridge. This means that the narrative guidance that accompanies the film must be strong and clear enough that the story can survive missed moments. This often translates into a very literal narration track that constantly tells and reminds the viewer of what is happening and repeats the main themes of the program.
Future of Documentary
The evolution of Web 2.0 technology and wide spread Internet access is transforming the communications arena – and giving rise to new narrative and documentary possibilities.
The vast realms of materials now available online can be a rich wellspring or a blinding torrent of unevaluated materials. The rise of blogs is one expression of the need for a point of view to guide the consumer through these jungles of raw information. Like the traditional documentary producer, the blogger assembles a collection of documents, narratives, and visual materials – photos and video – and weaves it together into a comprehensible narrative experience. Many of the first wave of bloggers were print journalists who began to post journal entries, op-eds and editorals about their areas of expertise and interest. The open world of the web meant that almost anyone could create a blog and post their thoughts in an easily accessible forum – and almost anyone did. The result quickly expanded the definition of an “on-line journalist” in ways that still haven’t been entirely assimilated by the social and legal systems of our society.
Web sites now proliferate for almost all television documentaries. These sites typically make the documentary available for on-line viewing and provide additional “web” features that are usually scraps and left overs from the production process: Supporting documents, outtakes from the main production, and interviews with experts and production staff. These websites are almost always supplemental – in the best sense of the word – to the liner visual experience of the documentary film.
Some “web-based" documentaries are also appearing – usually fairly short episodic narratives that offer a “TV” on the web viewing experience – but they are fairly traditional in form and content.
The traditional documentary must now evolve to meet the new potential of the interconnected and interlinked world of web 2.0. In the last few years we’ve seen the rapid and dramatic rise of photo and video sharing sites that enable people to produce and then distribute their own “content.” I would argue that these uncurated public sites, while immensely popular and often profitable, do not rise to the challenge of the documentary tradition. The central element of the documentary tradition, no matter the medium, is an authored exploration of a complex social subject matter.
Elements of Web Documentary 2.0
Web 2.0 now allows now us to combine a whole new set of graphic tools and informational system to depict and explore complex social phenomenon through a narrative lens. A true Web 2.0 documentary will take advantage of these new ways of depicting information and engaging with an audience. The Web 2.0 documentary will still be an authored experience – once that involves entering into an interactive space that is structure and organized to lead the consumer thought a series of experiences – visual, aesthetic, intellectual and emotional – which leaves them transformed in their understanding of a particular social phenomenon or issue.
The Web 2.0 documentary will not have a single “finished” product but will instead be a temporally evolving experience that will grow and change from day to day as the phenomena it addresses continues to grow and change.
It will also be interactive in several senses – it will enable have accessible points where the public can contribute their own thoughts and experiences as a comment upon – or an amplification of -- theme addressed in the production – be it through photo or video sharing.
It will enable "crowd sourcing" of actual content -- meaning that individuals will be able to add their own video or audio or graphic contributions to the project. These elements will always be vetted by the documentary producer/ currator -- to ensure that they are relevant and contribute to the overall themes addressed by the documentary project.
There will also be spaces built into the main story elements that allow viewers to add comments, and links to other relevant materials, and contributing to on-line data bases and archives.
It will be accessible through a variety of entry points and will offer a variety of simple narrative storyline that can be followed depending on the point of access or the interest of the consumer. Each story point in a particular story line will be self-contained enough to stand alone and provide a satisfying and digestible experience but will also combine together to form and frame a larger story that evolves over time.
Each story point will also be “actionable” meaning that it can easily be shared – emailed, exchanged, etc, with friends and other potentially interested parties.
to be continued....
Traditional documentaries usually focus on an idea or social issue and explore it in a linear fashion. Today, on the web, documentaries no longer need to be linear. Here are some thoughts on the past and future of documentaries.
What is a documentary?
At the simplest level, a successful documentary tells a good story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Typically, a producer/director collects a variety of characters, voices, pictures, graphics, words, and music and weaves them together into a narrative experience.
Bad documentaries bore, frustrate and confuse the viewer.
The best documentaries organize their material in an emotionally powerful and intellectually insightful way. When done well, the experience of watching the film can profoundly influences how individual viewers think and feel about the topic. At the community level, the most powerful films can alter social policy, save lives, change public behavior and inspire new legislation.
Traditional Forms
The traditional form of the documentary is a creature of the movie theater and the television station. Feature documentaries, those designed for release in theaters today, are intended to be viewed by a “locked down” audience who occupy fixed seats in an physical establishment and passively consume the product in a darkened theatre. These kinds of films – think of the best films of Werner Herzog or Michael Moore – often combine long narrative arcs from beginning to end with a strong first person narrative that enables the film makers to include tangential sections that don’t necessarily contribute to the overall narrative. Narration may be strong or weak, depending on the degree to which the filmmaker embraces an observational style – but a physically captive audience allows the filmmaker to take the viewers on a long, meandering, and often idiosyncratic journey.
The television documentary is a creature of the network time-slot. If the documentary was produced for a commercial network or cable outlet this usually translates into thirty-five to forty-two minutes of material broken down into seven or eight digestible chunks (each with their own nearly completed cliff-hanging dramatic arc) that can be interrupted by commercial breaks – the life blood of the for-profit television distributor – and which keeps you coming back to find out “what’s going to happen next?” If produced for a PBS outlet then the typical hour-long film often runs about 50 uninterrupted minutes and needs to have both an overarching narrative arc as well as a series of smaller interlocking narrative arcs which can often be broken down into three or four act structures – that can sustain the interest of the audience without commercial interruptions.
The narrative demands of a televised documentary are often stricter than those of a theatrical documentary – one has to assume that the television viewers may be distracted by environmental concerns – be it changing a screaming baby, refilling their bowl of ice cream, or getting another beer out of the fridge. This means that the narrative guidance that accompanies the film must be strong and clear enough that the story can survive missed moments. This often translates into a very literal narration track that constantly tells and reminds the viewer of what is happening and repeats the main themes of the program.
Future of Documentary
The evolution of Web 2.0 technology and wide spread Internet access is transforming the communications arena – and giving rise to new narrative and documentary possibilities.
The vast realms of materials now available online can be a rich wellspring or a blinding torrent of unevaluated materials. The rise of blogs is one expression of the need for a point of view to guide the consumer through these jungles of raw information. Like the traditional documentary producer, the blogger assembles a collection of documents, narratives, and visual materials – photos and video – and weaves it together into a comprehensible narrative experience. Many of the first wave of bloggers were print journalists who began to post journal entries, op-eds and editorals about their areas of expertise and interest. The open world of the web meant that almost anyone could create a blog and post their thoughts in an easily accessible forum – and almost anyone did. The result quickly expanded the definition of an “on-line journalist” in ways that still haven’t been entirely assimilated by the social and legal systems of our society.
Web sites now proliferate for almost all television documentaries. These sites typically make the documentary available for on-line viewing and provide additional “web” features that are usually scraps and left overs from the production process: Supporting documents, outtakes from the main production, and interviews with experts and production staff. These websites are almost always supplemental – in the best sense of the word – to the liner visual experience of the documentary film.
Some “web-based" documentaries are also appearing – usually fairly short episodic narratives that offer a “TV” on the web viewing experience – but they are fairly traditional in form and content.
The traditional documentary must now evolve to meet the new potential of the interconnected and interlinked world of web 2.0. In the last few years we’ve seen the rapid and dramatic rise of photo and video sharing sites that enable people to produce and then distribute their own “content.” I would argue that these uncurated public sites, while immensely popular and often profitable, do not rise to the challenge of the documentary tradition. The central element of the documentary tradition, no matter the medium, is an authored exploration of a complex social subject matter.
Elements of Web Documentary 2.0
Web 2.0 now allows now us to combine a whole new set of graphic tools and informational system to depict and explore complex social phenomenon through a narrative lens. A true Web 2.0 documentary will take advantage of these new ways of depicting information and engaging with an audience. The Web 2.0 documentary will still be an authored experience – once that involves entering into an interactive space that is structure and organized to lead the consumer thought a series of experiences – visual, aesthetic, intellectual and emotional – which leaves them transformed in their understanding of a particular social phenomenon or issue.
The Web 2.0 documentary will not have a single “finished” product but will instead be a temporally evolving experience that will grow and change from day to day as the phenomena it addresses continues to grow and change.
It will also be interactive in several senses – it will enable have accessible points where the public can contribute their own thoughts and experiences as a comment upon – or an amplification of -- theme addressed in the production – be it through photo or video sharing.
It will enable "crowd sourcing" of actual content -- meaning that individuals will be able to add their own video or audio or graphic contributions to the project. These elements will always be vetted by the documentary producer/ currator -- to ensure that they are relevant and contribute to the overall themes addressed by the documentary project.
There will also be spaces built into the main story elements that allow viewers to add comments, and links to other relevant materials, and contributing to on-line data bases and archives.
It will be accessible through a variety of entry points and will offer a variety of simple narrative storyline that can be followed depending on the point of access or the interest of the consumer. Each story point in a particular story line will be self-contained enough to stand alone and provide a satisfying and digestible experience but will also combine together to form and frame a larger story that evolves over time.
Each story point will also be “actionable” meaning that it can easily be shared – emailed, exchanged, etc, with friends and other potentially interested parties.
to be continued....
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