Guinea pig detectives cover page. Illustration by Pierre Durand.
Together with my friend and colleague Patricia Bergeron I spent last week in intensive consultations about cross-platform documentaries – meaning documentaries which aren’t just a film or a TV program but also play themselves out on the web, including in the social networks. ( Cross-platform or transmedia is different from multi-platform in that the content actually varies from one platform to the other, making for complementary parts of a greater whole.) With our project Guineapig Detectives – about citizen investigations of new forms of advertising – Patricia and I were finalists in the Reboot competition organized by DOC Canada. I will tell you more about our project at a later date but the graphics will give you some hints. As finalists we had the privilege of several sessions with pioneers of multi-platform production and even ARG‘s – alternate reality games. Among the mentors were moderator and Reboot organizer Brett Gaylor ( the director of Rip! A Remix Manifesto), Evan Jones of Stich media, Katarina Cizek who made a Filmmaker-in-Residence at the National Film Board and Lance Wieler, a partner in Seize the Media. You can actually see presentations by these people on the DOC web site, along with the keynote by digital distribution pioneer Robert Greenwald. Since Patricia is herself a new media expert ( lots of good material on her blog about the subject !), I am sure I learned more than anyone else during this week which ended very well indeed, because Patricia and I actually won the coast-to-coast competition ! Thanks Jessica Berglund and Franck Le Coroller for research help with the project.
Guinea pig detectives cross-platform overview.
