Goa Hippy Tribe: Week 5 Lecture with Darius Devas

The week 5 lecture with Darius Devas and his interactive documentary Goa Hippy Tribe.

Darius’ parents were part of the generation that lived in Goa in 1960s and so that is how he accidentally came across the stories through the connections made via social media. The people that in Goa connected through Facebook and were able to reminisce about the times. It became an obvious decision to use Facebook as a central platform as Facebook started the initial interaction.

Darius felt trust was needed and utilised if he kept the project intimate, he was a child of Goa hippy tribe and there was lots of explicit material. This made the producers interested in him for the project personally. His previous experience with Lonely Planet showed him how things worked within an online environment.

Devas created a Goa hippy tribe Facebook group, all separate conversations that were happening on many different walls were being focused on a single page/thread. This allowed him to organise the reunion in Goa which gave him the opportunity to meet face-to-face for the interviews. The Facebook conversations prompted users to go through archives and uploaded photos which were later used in the doco.

Darius had previously worked with no budget on his independent feature film. But things happened so quickly when organising the project; SBS was on board, then there was funding from screen Australia and from the NSW government which helped Devas get on way to Goa to film reunion. This was a flagship project on SBS which helped them establish themselves as progressive station using different models for telling stories. Devas states that most media is moving toward smaller online projects, less crew needed, less budgets and allowing the story to lead the way.
Filming did not happen to the production schedule because the hippies didn’t want to be interviewed at specific times. This was Devas’ first seriously funded project therefore he wanted to do a good job.

Eight finger Eddie was the founder of the scene in Andjuna, the heart of the community in Goa and was one of the first to arrive. He was not at all a technical advocate, but was still present online through other people’s memories.
Each subject had a portrait filmed about them. These portraits had an overarching story. Because the Internet is all about short attention spans, this style fits in well within interactive docos. Devas claims it is a natural evolution of how people want to consume the content.

The edit and post production happened in Goa and was slowly released to the FB community. His blogs about the experience, kept the communities included if they weren’t able to make it to the reunion, so people that weren’t able to come were still able to really engage with community.

Devas discussed the limitations. The SBS version of the project was very curated in his opinion. He wasn’t allowed to film with a 5D that had just been released, despite the technology being more intimate and more flexible and therefore better for docos. Instead he had to use a big, bulky camera. He had difficulties working with designers and found it to be a very disappointing experience. He found that the content was taken and he was then excluded from discussion about the presentation. He was not happy with design and finds it very childish and not authentic to the story. He found the site itself to be very flash orientated which was old fashioned for 2011. He felt the project lost momentum with SBS because of the world cup.

The poster image took a lot of convincing, but he won and it was very successful in drawing attention.

Devas’ advice is to not lock yourself down into a model that can’t grow with the project, because things like that have their own life. He also advises to find a natural engagement, something that is a natural interest for people and to facilitate that space and those relationships.