As a quick summary, for this assignment my group created an interactive documentary called “Net Adaptation“, which centred on the question of “How are creative industries having to adapt to the internet and online spaces like social media?”. We left this question quite broad so that our interviewees, who were young industry professionals just breaking through into their respective industries, as well as a couple of teachers, to gain a multitude of perspectives on the topic.

 How does your interactive screen media project respond to the possibilities offered by online spaces?

Our project takes advantage of online spaces as it allows the user to decide what part of the project they want to explore, deciding on what industry they want to investigate, be it Journalism, Film, Music, or Photography, and then to what interviewee they are most interested in. By making all these options available to the user, as well as breaking down the interviews into short 1-2 minute videos, our aim was to make a highly digestible documentary series, one that responds to the level of interest of the user. In the world of online spaces attention is key, and we have tried to focus the creation of our project around this idea, making a project that offers a breadth of information and perspective into the questions our project asks, and can be viewed in as small or as large a dose as possible. In a lot of linear documentary features, the audience is incredible passive and just has to accept they have no influence over what they are seeing, and there are countless times where I had wished they would stay on a certain person or segment of the documentary but due to the editing restraints of having to make a marketable, 90 minute documentary, a lot of information is cut out and we have to rush past all these people. Our attention and interests become secondary to the filmmakers, which is exactly the opposite of what we wanted to achieve in our project, where we give the audience the choice of what interests them.

To what extent would you consider your work to be web specific?

In terms of being web specific, our documentary works as an interactive project that gives agency to the audience, where they are able to view what interests them most. The democratised elements of online projects like Jonathon Harris’ “Balloons of Bhutan“, which gives the audience the ability to choose the content that interests them the most, where they can explore as much or as little as they desire. This is something that is strictly web specific, as we are unable to influence the works of linear, more traditional screen projects as once they are finished they are done, whereas the potential of web specific works is the ability to constantly adapting to their audience and their interests. This is something that our project has the potential of doing, as we can easily add to the project by interviewing more people from the 4 industries, or even creating a whole new section, branching out constantly, which is the most exciting part of online screen production to me.

 

What did you learn about online screen production through making your project?

I learnt a lot in this project about adapting the idea to suit the audience and the platform you are on. The more we made throughout the semester and in this project specifically, we made a pointed effort to steer our work into areas that made it more accessible to our audience, deliberating constantly whether or not his was strictly what we wanted or what was best for the audience. I believe online screen projects need to be more strictly associated with their audience as its the only platform where the place you view the project can be changed at a moments notice if the audience loses interest even for a second. What is dangerous about this thinking though is that if you begin to make content, of any form, focussing solely around what you think the audience wants, then not only will you not make something you are really proud of, but will also feel detached to what you are making. Making screen content for an online space is a very odd thing as in one hand you are given complete freedom in a multitude of aspects like content length, censorships, etc. But on the other hand, you almost have to make your content more marketable and consumable so that an audience actually watched it, which creates a very fine line.

 

How is the production for a smaller scale project different from traditional media?
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How can we make engaging online content?

The main advantage of having a smaller scale project made for the internet compared to more traditional platforms is that you are able to create and publish your work at an alarmingly fast rate. In our project, we were able to film and edit our interviews on the same day and have them completed in under 24 hours, and due to all of our interview segments being modular, we would not need to wait for the rest of the projects content to be made to have a completed piece of content. If you look at things like documentary features or even short form series like what you see on Netflix, they would have to wait months to accumulate all their interviews and content to even begin to start editing their work, whereas in online projects, you are able to constantly edit and expand your work, creating this idea that an online project is never truly finished.

In terms of making engaging online content I believe this really centres around both being able to find an audience that engages with your work, as well as making content that is easily digestible, and appeals to this specific audience. Throughout this semester it has become more and more apparent that one of the most difficult things you could try to achieve is to make an online screen project that appeals to everyone, as the internet is a vast ocean of content, coming from a vast amounts of places, a lot of which will have higher production budgets and better equipment, and trying to compete for the attention with places like that on the internet is foolish. The best approach I believe is to make content that you are proud of and are deeply interested in, and then find an audience that shares your interests, and possibly try to expand from there.

“Know yourself – and know your Audience” – Tennessee Ernie Ford.