Presentation for the Social Innovation in a Digital Context (SIDC) course for the Lund University Internet Institute, Lund, Sweden, 2013

1. Social media/new documentary
filmmaking, citizen journalism vs.
the mainstream media.
Lund University Internet Institute
Seminar 30 January 2014
By dr. Joshka Wessels

2. Definition and Theory
“ Documentary cinema is a genre of
representing the historical world”
– Hosseini & Wakkari, 2004
Documentary is "a creative treatment of
actuality”
- John Grierson

3. The worlds’ first documentary
1922

4. Mobile camera
• Robert J. Flaherty (1884-1951) was the first
who combined actualities, scenics, and
storytelling in a structured montage.
• First anthropological AND documentary film.

5. Documentary Filmmaking
• Film as a tool for ethnographic/geographic
research
• Filming unscripted and unrehearsed human
behaviour
• Analysis of “the other”
• Medium to present research data or findings

6. Documentary Filmmaking
• Film as a tool
– Observation, listening and inquiry
– Anthropological research process
– Unedited footage or filmrecord
– Transcribed film text
– Differs from human perception
– Reflections of physical and social realities
– Heisenberg principle

7. Documentary Filmmaking
• Selectivity (angle, frame, focus, time,
placement of microphone, etc. etc.)
• Ruby (1982) inspired by Thomas Kuhn and
Clifford Geertz: film does not convey reality.
• Pictures are a way we structure the world
around us not a picture of it (Sol Worth, 1981)
• Jay Ruby: reflexivity

8. Documentary Filmmaking
• Personal, theoretical and cultural biases
influence the information we collect, they
shape our filmed material.
• Taking up the camera is inherently subjective
and selective
• Point of View (POV)

9. The Authored Documentary
Capturing Reality ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPavxiKKT2
w
Do you HAVE to film people you don’t like ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWBYf7Je0
AM

10. Anthropological film
• Fieldwork, spending long time with the
communities
• Film always in combination with other
ethnographic and social information
• Creation of research films from existing footage
• Film & video archives: Göttingen Institute for
Scientific Film, Smithsonian, RAI
• Worth & Adair: giving camera’s to Navaho Indians
(1972)

11. Participatory Video
• Giving the camera away for: empowerment,
consultation, testimonials, video diaries
• 3 CCD digital handy cams
• Collective action
• Grassroots movements
• Documenting Human Rights violations
• Video and citizen journalism
• New technologies, mobile phone, smart phones
• Collaborative documentaries
Burma VJ

12. Citizen vs. Mainstream
• Journalists are connected to broadcasters,
newscooperations and newspapers
• Independents vs citizens
• Video journalism vs Documentary filmmaking
• Balance
• What is the role of journalism ? Debate

13. Citizen vs. Mainstream
“Tomorrow’s Journalism will be the result of the
collaboration between amateurs with good
practice, and professionals who conceive, and
produce the subjects in the form of enquiries
and reportage”.
François Longérinas, the director of the EMI
Information and Media school

14. Syria Deeply
http://alpha.syriadeeply.org/
“Syria Deeply is an independent digital media
project led by journalists and technologists,
exploring a new model of storytelling around a
global crisis. Our goal is to build a better user
experience of the story by adding context to
content, using the latest digital tools of the day.
Over time the hope is to add greater clarity, deeper
understanding, and more sustained engagement to
the global conversation”.

15. Where is Gary ?
http://whereisgary.net/
• internet-collaboration between professionals and
amateur
• The first Belgian webdocumentary project by
Jean Baptists Dumont: “I chose the webdocumentary format because it allowed the
investigation and the reporting at the same time,
live on the web.“
• Grand Prix award at the WebTV festival 2010.

16. The Aatsinki Season
• http://www.aatsinkiseason.com/
Experience one year in the life of a family
of reindeer herders in Finnish Lapland.
And challenge what you think you know
about man’s place in nature.

17. Web & Documentaries
• Documentary practice on the Internet intends to reflect
the historical world.
• Some of the elements of documentary practice on the
Internet have indexical relation with the real world.
• Documentary hypertext is built around an informing
logic and provides historical and informative links to
events and elements.
• Documentary practice in the internet utilizes a body of
text in the form of commentary or interview. As in
films, this speech can share conventions with diaries,
essays, and also incorporate rhetoric devices and rules.
Hosseini & Wakkari

18. Web & Documentaries
• Documentary hypertext can use modes of
representation to convey their perspective
• The voice of documentary hypertext is built from
the treatment of each of the consisting elements
as well as their arrangement.
• The practice of creating a documentary hypertext
can be an individual practice or be supported by
organizations that are known as supporters of
documentary practices (such as the National Film
Board of Canada).
Hosseini & Wakkari

19. Unique Characteristics
•
•
•
•
•
•
Hypermediated.
Media is secondary material.
Clusters of information.
May have multiple authors and contributors.
Can have forums.
Use visual design, information architecture,
and interaction as voice.
• Broadcast their material in real-time.
Hosseini & Wakkari

20. Web Documentaries
http://www.thecreatorsproject.com/blog/the-6-most-innovative-interactive-webdocumentaries
http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/report/2154239/webdocumentaries-easy
http://documentary.net/about/web-documentaries/
http://film.culture360.org/magazine/in-focus/webdocumentaries-be-when-it-allstarted/

21. Web Documentaries
PRESENTATION OF FINDINGS
• Which webdocs did you explore ?
• What was your favourite webdoc and why ?
• Main characteristics of your favourite webdoc
?
• Do you think webdocs can play a role in social
change and movements ? How ?

22. Web Documentaries
Mainstream newspapers, magazines, television
networks and publishers once merely
republished their content online.
THE WEB: whole array of tools, features and
formats.

23. Web Documentaries
• A web documentary is more than just a
traditional, linear documentary transposed
online. In addition to audio and still and moving
images, a web documentary features multimedia
tools that facilitate viewer interaction.
• “Web documentaries are hypermediated clusters
of information that demand the audiences
participation and interaction” - Hosseini and
Wakary, 2004

24. Workshop multimedia stories
Combination of text, still photographs, video clips,
audio, graphics and interactivity presented on a
Web site in a nonlinear format (…..)
The key is using the media form - video, audio,
photos, text, animation - that will present a
segment of a story in the most compelling and
informative way.
http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/present
ations/cat/storytelling

25. Workshop multimedia stories
Nonlinear means that rather than reading a
rigidly structured single narrative, the user
chooses how to navigate through the elements
of a story.
http://www.360degrees.org/perspectives.html

26. Workshop multimedia stories
• five steps to a multimedia story are :
– The subject & story,
– Creating a story board,
– Reporting with multimedia,
– Editing for the web,
– Producing the story.

27. Story board linear story

28. Story board non-linear story

29. Workshop multimedia stories
• Choose a subject
• Define your target audience ?
• Which media are you going to use ?
–
–
–
–
–
–
Film
Audio
Animation
Text
Music
Theatre, performance, dance (transmedia)
• Develop a non-linear story board for your story