Inside the Haiti Earthquake – Insidedisaster.com
novembre 3, 2010 by gholubowicz · 5 Comments
I went through a very interesting experience this morning when I visited « Insidedisaster.com« , a website where you can actually experience the way Haitians, humanitarians and journalists are dealing with the aftermath of the last earthquake. Produced by PTV Productions‘ Executive producers Andrea Nemtin and Ian Dunbar and by Internet Director Katie McKenna, InsideDisaster.com is neither a news multimedia production, nor a complete corporate assignment but a mix of both enhanced by a simulation game.
The platform is divided into two different part. The first one looks like a traditional website where you can find informations about the earthquake, the response of the humanitarian teams, the recovery process, but also informations humanitarian work and a quiz to evaluate your profile. (here)
The second one is a flash based website, built like a simulation/game, to provide a more immersive experience of what is the life in « Port au Prince » nowadays. As stated on the about page, Insidedisaster.com is
an interactive educational website about the Haiti earthquake and humanitarian work. The website is a companion to the three-part documentary series Inside Disaster, which follows the Red Cross humanitarian response to the January 2010 Haiti earthquake.
InsideDisaster.com combines content and themes from the documentary series with original material shot, photographed, and researched by our web team. The goal of the site is to help users explore the complexities of humanitarian work in the 21st century, as well as the specific challenges and experiences that arose from the aftermath of the Haiti quake.
InsideDisaster.com comes alive before a full documentary which will be aired on tvo in 2011. Here’s the pitch:
Inside Disaster follows international Red Cross disaster relief teams as they mount the largest single-country response in the organization’s history. Six hundred trained humanitarians from over 30 countries are on the ground in Haiti. Embedded in the Red Cross base camp, our camera had unprecedented access to the gripping stories, compelling characters and intense drama that unfolded after Haiti’s horrific quake on January 12 2010. This intense and compelling documentary takes us behind the headlines of a large-scale disaster to document the emergency relief operation from first response to recovery.
The interesting part is not the content itself – although it’s a very deep and well crafted one with a ton of detailed informations – but the sum of these different experiences which, to me, seem to be the first example of a full Transmedia storytelling strategy in the editorial world. We’ll have to wait until the documentary is aired on TVO next year to see if its content is redundant with the online production or not. But if it’s not, the whole experience could be the first of its kind and a strong model for photojournalist considering Transmedia storytelling and Multimedia.
A real Transmedia experience is rare enough to be noticed, and even though « Inside Disaster » would fail to match the Transmedia storytelling criteria, the project would remain nevertheless a significant breakthrough in terms of narrative experience. Sure, some will object that the lack of total objectivity and the blurry frontier between game/information/corporate worlds could be an ethical problem for the journalist and a misguiding information for the public, but I’m not really concerned by that if a clear mention is apposed to the different sections of the website and throughout the narrative line. Judge by yourself and let me know what your reactions are…
Haiti Schism, Morel vs. AFP
octobre 16, 2010 by gholubowicz · 7 Comments
The case of Daniel Morel vs AFP goes unnoticed in France, yet its legal implications are vast, as are the various positions stated by different well known actors of photojournalism.
Make no doubt that Daniel Morel only had one thing in mind on January 12 of this year: witnessing the atrocities and rampages resulting from the devastating earthquake which struck Haiti. Morel, former AP photographer, stopped covering news a while ago to refocus his work on documentaries projects. But this time, it was a matter of History, his history, the history of thousands Haitians, friends, relatives, neighbors, all living together in the same city, sharing the same culture, the same destiny.
How would have he ignored that, how being a photographer and obliterate this major event? He had to alert the public; he had to transmit this information and to bear witness for generations to come. He did it for History, for his history and for ours.
For those who missed the whole story and the legal battle engaged in since then by AFP – who “STOLE” Morel’s pictures on Twipics and sold them without compensation – against D.Morel, take a look at BJP who made a great compilation work on this.
If the debate is getting tougher online, about legal questions, Terms of Service and what should be used as argument from both parties. If comments are uncertain about whether or not the Twitter & Twitpics ToS should be different or the uploading process more careful with embedded data, there’s a more subtle concern that nobody seems to care about. A question that would potentially reshape the way we’re looking our business and our practices.
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Le Schisme d’Haiti
octobre 8, 2010 by gholubowicz · 2 Comments
L’affaire Daniel Morel Vs. AFP passe inaperçue dans l’hexagone, pourtant ses implications légales sont vastes, tout comme le sont les diverses prises de positions exprimées par différents acteurs du photojournalisme.
Nul doute que Daniel Morel n’avait qu’une chose en tête le 12 janvier dernier: témoigner de l’atrocité des ravages qu’avait générés le séisme qui venait de frapper Haïti. Morel, photographe pour l’Associated Press pendant 14 ans, avait cessé de couvrir le news pour se recentrer sur du travail documentaire. Mais il s’agissait d’Histoire, de son histoire, de l’histoire de milliers d’Haïtiens, amis, parents, relations, voisins, inconnus, tous vivant dans la même ville, partageant la même culture, le même destin.
Comment ne pas montrer, comment être photographe et oblitérer cet évènement? Il fallait alerter, il fallait transmettre cette information. Pour l’Histoire de son pays, pour son histoire et pour notre histoire.
Pour ceux qui auraient raté l’épilogue légal de cette histoire et la bataille juridique qui fait rage actuellement, British Journal of Photography reprends l’entièreté de l’affaire qui oppose désormais l’AFP, ABC, CNN, CBS et Getty au photographe après que les premiers aient décidé de récupérer gratuitement et d’exploiter commercialement, mais sans compensation, une des 13 images que Morel avait envoyé sur Twipics le soir même du tremblement de terre.
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Print sale for Haiti.
janvier 23, 2010 by gholubowicz · Leave a Comment
How will it work?
Book
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