WEBDOX: Doc & Tech LAB

The world of coding is revealed to the documentary makers by a team of techies with a soft spot for dox.

You will do interactive coding and apply it to your documentaries. You will think of new ways to create content for the web. You will try new ways of creating documentaries.

www.idrops.be

InteractBuilder

InteractBuilder: A community for developing Interactive Books

Organizing a Web Native Story

On the Tillman Story, we used a mind-mapping tool called Popplet, where all filmmakers could collaborate and build in elements at the same time. Once you create the main themes, you can begin to fill in the elements of the story that fit that theme, then make connections between the story elements.

Organizing a Web Native Story | Living Docs

Living Docs

Living Docs projects use the open web as their canvas. By working in the open and sharing their code, these filmmakers are building the foundations for a new genre of documentary.

Projects | Living Docs

Hypertext and Journalism: Audiences Respond to Competing News Narratives

The advent of new communication technologies has brought forth a set of opportunities and challenges for traditional media professions, such as journalism. This challenging new context is evident from the plethora of books and articles that suggest radical changes to human perception, cognition, and expression precipitated by new technologies. For example, a robust literature exploring hypertext suggests that computer technologies spell the end of what has traditionally counted as "good writing" and, in fact, portend the death of print. While these claims are provocative and somewhat convincing, they lack an empirical dimension that investigates "what these new systems 'do to' reader practices and what the reader can do with the systems" (Rasmussen, 1994, p. 105).

The purpose of this paper is to explore the particular challenges of hypertext theories to narrative forms and practices of journalism by examining the interactions of news readers and hypertexts. Specifically, it will report the findings of a qualitative study of online news users who read both an original news story that appeared on the Los Angeles Times website and a redesigned, hypertext version of the same material. By asking readers to think about and explain the differences between these competing forms of news, we hope to begin documenting the viability of hypertext and exploring its implications for journalism practice. The remainder of this paper will explain the theoretical framework guiding this study, methodology and method used, findings generated, and conclusions and implications for future research and professional practice.

http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/huesca.html

Rashomon Project

Med stadig større spredning av mobile kameraer blir demonstrasjoner, politisk uro, og andre nyhetshendelser ofte godt dokumentert med digital video og stillbilder, som blir lagt ut på nettet på nettsteder som YouTube. Samtidig er det fortsatt vanskelig å få et helhetlig bilde over en hendelse, med utgangspunkt i de mange forskjellige kilder. Resultatet kan fort bli at seerne trekker motstridende konklusjoner, fordi de bare får sett deler av det tilgjengelige materiale.

Rashomon-prosjektet har som mål å utvikle et online-verktøy som vil gjøre det enklere å sette sammen og offentlig gjennomgå flere videoer, justert slik at de vises samtidig. Innledende forsøk med video fra vanlige iPhone og Android telefoner viser at metadata innebygd i de digitale filene kan brukes til å gjøre en svært god justering. Når videoene er justert, kan lydsignaler fra videoene bli analysert for å ytterligere forbedre justeringen.



En slik verktøykasse vil være nyttig for det offentlige, borgerjournalister, og muligens også for domstoler eller i andre sammenhenger der en vil undersøke omstridte hendelser.

Målet med prosjektet er å gi publikum (potensielt hundretusener av seere) en mye bedre forståelse av omstridte hendelser med utgangspunkt i bruker-genererte bilder og video, sammenlignet med det som er mulig i dag.

Rashomon Project via  dimag.no

Interactive documentary and education: a field to explore

In our previous posts of this series (Part I – Part II) we tried to argue that although it is clear that the main scope of interactive documentary focuses on the field of audiovisual and cultural dissemination, we believe that there is another closely related field which soon will begin to emerge and explode giving us all their latent potential: the interactive nonfiction genres related to education, teaching and training. That’s why we started toproduce projects in the Interactive Communication Studies at the University of Vic in that direction.

Constructivist and constructionist theories applied to the field of education seem very relevant to our proposal, as they are flexible enough to adapt to the knowledge and multidisciplinary emphasize in the use of information technology and communication as an essential component of learning.

Constructivism is a theory of learning and an approach to education that lays emphasis on the ways that people create meaning of the world through a series of individual constructs. Constructs are the different types of filters we choose to place over our realities to change our reality from chaos to order. Simply stated, it is a learning process which allows a student to experience an environment first-hand, thereby giving the student reliable, trust-worthy knowledge. The student is required to act upon the environment to both acquire and test new knowledge.

i-docs

Interactive Narratives

Interactive Narratives is designed to capture the best of online visual storytelling as practiced by online and print journalists from around the country and the world. Our goal is to highlight rich-media content, engaging storytelling, and eye-popping design in an environment that fosters interaction, discussion, and learning.

The site is sponsored by the Online News Association, which works to foster innovation among online journalists and help those journalists, freelancers, academics, and students learn from the best practitioners in the field and from each other.

Please peruse the site freely. If you want to contribute something, or nominate something to be showcased, you'll have to log in. If you are already an ONA member, just use the same login and password. (If you can't remember it, recover it here.) If you're not a member, you can join here for just $75 a year ($25 for students).

Interactive Narratives - The Best in Multimedia Storytelling and Multimedia Journalism

52 Card Cinema

52 Card Cinema is an installation-based investigation into cinematic structures and interactive cinema viewership. The concept is simple: 52 cards, each printed with a unique identifier, are replaced in the subject's view by the individual shots that make up a movie scene. The cards can be stacked, dealt, arranged in their original order or re-composed in different configurations, creating spreads of time. The technology used is marker-based augmented reality, where special printed markers are recognized in the video feed and pass data regarding their unique identifier, their position, and their orientation. The computer then feeds a display overlaying the video clips of each shot onto the appropriate card and continually mapping their position and orientation.

52 Card Cinema

SnapDragonAR

SnapDragonAR is a unique new tool for artists, educators, and storytellers of all ages. Use the drag and drop interface to augment markers with in sight of your webcam with moving images. Place the markers anywhere you want to see your images come to life. Experiment, create, tell new stories. Transform any surface into a screen simply by adding a marker. Print stickers, bring everyday objects to life. Make your own projects at home. Simply print your markers, turn on the camera, and start dragging 2D images from your computer into the drop zones.

SnapDragonAR is produced by the Augmented Reality Lab at York University in association with Mark Fiala and is now available to download. The groundbreaking software is inspired by the works of G. A. Rhodes' 52 Card Psycho and Caitlin Fisher's Andromeda, co-winner of the City of Vinaròs 4th International Digital Literature Award 2008. Use your Mac (Intel only) and a webcam, print your markers, drag in some digital images or video clips (quicktime compatible clips required).

SnapDragonAR from Future Stories

Google Earth Movies

Google Earth Movies project consists in a series of interactive adaptations of emblematic sequences extracted from famous movies, recreated and played in Google Earth.

In this visualization software, which allows exploring the 3D world from many satellite sources - topographical and weather satellites - the original video camera movements are precisely transcribed in the original filming location and with the original soundtrack synchronized. Moreover, the software being interactive, a joystick may be used to manipulate the camera during the reading to observe the whole screen out landscape.

Thus, it is a striking cinematographic experience that is given to us: the objectivation operated by Google Earth, presenting ghostly worlds emptied from any characters, allows to be focused on the framing and the editing of these well-known movies haunting our imagination. Putting these narrative sequences back in context establishes a true bridge between these cinematographic, physical and virtual spaces. The spectator is freed from the frame and from the territory; he is given a new space of time, a sort of intimate screen out, interrogating its link to the real and to fiction.

Emilie Brout & Maxime Marion

Add Links and Chapters to YouTube Videos

HOW TO ADD CHAPTERS TO YOUR VIDEOS IN YOUTUBE
One of the services we cover this week lets you add chapters and scene sections to your video if you use their embeddable player, but you can do something similar directly in YouTube by just typing the timestamp into the description. YouTube will automatically hyperlink it to that point in the video.

1. LINKEDTUBE.COM - 0:43
This is the most simple and basic of the bunch, letting you add a clickable title to your video's player that links to any URL you provide, including your website, Facebook page, or an affiliate link.

2. VIEWBIX.COM - 1:40
This service does the same thing, but offers several other options including the ability to embed your RSS feed into the YouTube player along with your Twitter feed, Facebook pictures, and much more.

3. EMBEDPLUS.COM - 3:07
This player lets you add chapter markers and scene settings to your YouTube videos so viewers can easily jump between multiple segments of your video. This is especially helpful for longer videos, news videos, and tutorial videos that might want to allow viewers to easily skip to the next step in the video.

It also lets you add annotations to your videos that include clickable links to external URLs that point outside of YouTube, like to your website, Facebook page, affiliate link, or anything else.

4. YOUTUBE PLAYER API - 4:43
YouTube actually offers an API that lets developers customize the YouTube player and embed code with maximum flexibility. Thankfully, you don't have to be a developer to play with the YouTube Player API Demo they've setup, which you can find here:
http://rseo.co/yBoZPK

5. FULL-BLOWN CUSTOMIZATION - 5:29
For those who are brave enough to dive in to it, here's a tutorial explaining how you can setup your own custom YouTube player for your website:
http://rseo.co/wKTjJ5