After a couple ideas been thrown around the room, between Olivia and Antonia, I gave an idea of doing an interactive documentary on the effect that the most recent hail storm had on Melbourne’s business, houses and families (influence from pbs ‘after the storm‘). On the surface it look’d do able but after fleshing it out on paper, we found that it had many aspects that led to a time consuming project. For example, travelling to multiple locations to take video and audio interviews, then finding these people and making sure that they’re fine with it. Whilst doing all of this collaboratively, the chances of completing to due date, seemed like a stretch.
Therefore after bringing on another team member, San, he had an idea of doing an interactive documentary on Korsakow about people favourite travel experiences. We then wrote up a short 200 word pitch that helped narrow down what we wanted to make exactly, and what we hop it will achieve. This is what we came up with:
Our team intends to explore relationships between multiple standalone answers of a simple yet open question; what does travel mean to you? It is a question that is open enough to offer unique and engaging answers, even to those who have not necessarily travelled overseas. Through listening to our participants’ answers we will transcribe, tag and categorise them based on common themes and shared experiences. Using this small sample we can begin to visualise how these stories parallel or contrast, and with more data we could explore the frequency of certain experiences, for example. To our viewers we intend to present each fragment as an audio interview paired with any pieces of media they captured while on their travels (photos, videos, social media posts etc.). As a common theme comes up in their answer viewers will have the option to view another fragment that shares that theme. Allowing them the agency to explore the themes or elements that they find most intriguing — this both introduces interactivity and non-linearity in a meaningful way in the piece.
After we talked about the pitch and what we liked and we didn’t like, we came to the conclusion that we should slightly alter the topic to; what is one of the worst experiences you’ve had travelling? This idea seemed more exciting because its more funny and amusing hearing stories about bad things happening to people, instead of how someone has such a good time drinking beers in Vietnam.