The first of Futurescape’s new series of guest blog posts comes from Justin Buckwell, founding creative partner at multiplatform strategy and branded content agency Dubz.
He talks about their innovative online TV documentary Goa Hippy Tribe, which is incorporating a Facebook group directly into the show’s production process.
Goa Hippy Tribe follows a young Australian film maker Darius Devas as he uncovers the story behind the global hippy mecca that Goa was in the 70’s, given there’s a big reunion of that scene that’s just happened there.
This will expand out over March and April 2010 with a series of video vignettes being released through the Facebook group.
It’s a new way of story telling that is taking broadcast into environments where it hasn’t be tested before. In this instance, via the documentary format.
Traditionally in documentaries there would be a lead-up research and interview process that would never be seen by an audience. Then this material would all be culled and edited into a half hour or hour of television for people to passively experience.
What we’re looking to achieve with Goa Hippy Tribe is to allow people to experience and become part of the documentary process, seeing Darius as he’s travelling through this event on-the-fly: making contact with people to be interviewed, hearing new leads, gathering insights and taking on all the highs and lows the whole thing entails.
The documentary is about a tribe or group and the strategy is to ripple the project out from inside the Facebook group. By using Facebook, people can provide comment and engage in discussion with Darius and the others involved in the Goa reunion.
And the group discussion is helping Darius shape the documentary. He feedbacks into the group with each post to enrich the experience and contextualise it with photos and video snippets.
The series will launch on a fan page and we’ve created a visual identity that will ‘package’ the series in a more traditional television sense. The series is the product of the group about the group, facilitated by Darius.
This approach is turning the documentary from a passive experience into an active one and building a community with our audience. Video is still a key part of the event, with a series of short-form videos from Darius slated to be progressively fed into the Facebook group.
But it’s our hope that by the time video is released, with the build up of audience interaction beforehand, our Facebook audience will feel a far greater sense of community and involvement with the documentary than they could otherwise feel from watching an hour of telly from their couch.
Our role at Dubz.tv has been to drive the digital strategy and audience experience behind the process. We’ve been working with TV production company Freehand who came across Darius and wanted to do something new using the digital space as the central hub.
The documentary’s been commissioned by Australian broadcaster SBS and part-funded by industry body Screen Australia, given it’s an innovative take on broadcast and delivering new ways to tell a story and engage with an audience on a far deeper level.
SBS is experimenting with social programming and this is specifically a non-TV broadcast commission. The aim is to deliver the doco over Facebook and we’re expecting the first VTR to be out early March and then every three to four days a new VTR wil be released, for a total of 13 x 4min.
Please feel free to join the group to see how the series unfolds http://bit.ly/9QSA6i
If you’re making a new social TV series, Web TV show or multiplatform production and would like to contribute a guest blog post, please e-mail editor@futurescape.tv
