The presentation outlined The Awra Amba Experience, an interactive web documentary about the village of Awra Amba in Ethiopia. The project aims to tell compelling stories from the community while also allowing users to engage with the content and participate in activities. Currently, the team is working on post-production of films for the documentary, completing a virtual tour of the village, designing a "social fabric" participation activity, distributing the documentary through online platforms, fundraising, and developing a TV documentary.
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The Creative Team Behind The Awra Amba Experience
1. THE CREATIVE TEAM Write This Down Productions is an award-winning London based film and
multimedia production company, founded in 2005.
We are inspired to tell compelling and positive human stories, as a way into more
www.writethisdown.co.uk
difficult social, political and environmental issues from around the world.
Our films have been seen by millions of people globally, on multiple platforms
including cinema, television, web and handheld devices.
Serdar Ferit
Co-Director /
Cinematographer
Julie Kim
Pati Keilwerth
Graphic Designer
Co-Producer
Nick Norton-Smith
Sound Designer
James Arthur Ida Sjoman
Creative Technologist Project Assistant
Tigist Getachew Jan Totzek
Translator 360 Programmer
Paulina Tervo,
Producer / Director
Agnez Philipos
Local Producer
Paul Jackson
Illustrator
3. PRESENTATION
The Awra Amba Experience
A collaborative web documentary
1. What is Awra Amba
2. How it became an Interactive Documentary
3. The Web Experience
4. Participation & Social impact
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9. 2004 - 2008
First impressions
Building a relationship
30-minute observational doc
MY MOTIVATION
10. 2010 - NOW
Working together with community
Enable discussion and participation
A project that benefits Awra Amba in a
sustainable way
NOW
- Experiment with new technologies and non-linear storytelling
- Wanted to engage people in not just viewing but acting
- Benefit for the community
15. THE WEB EXPERIENCE - WEAVE
THE SOCIAL FABRIC
The world is becoming more globalised and our lives are interconnected
10-week participatory activity constructing a new social fabric
Inspired by the content, we encourage users to make links connecting
Awra Amba to other examples of social fabric
We enable users to hang links from the video timecode
Each link that the user weaves becomes a pattern in a visualisation which
after 10 weeks woven into an interactive scarf - the Social Fabric
A different colour thread each week corresponds to our weekly theme
The end product depends on audience participation
The emerging pattern will be woven into a real scarf sold
Fair Trade business
21. SUMMARY
What next?
Right now we are working on:
- Post-production of the films
- Completion of the virtual tour
- Design and implementation of the social fabric
22. SUMMARY
What next?
Right now we are working on:
- Post-production of the films
- Completion of the virtual tour
- Design and implementation of the social fabric
- Distribution - Partnerships with online platforms and
organisations
23. SUMMARY
What next?
Right now we are working on:
- Post-production of the films
- Completion of the virtual tour
- Design and implementation of the social fabric
- Distribution - Partnerships with online platforms and
organisations
- Raising more finance - £60,000 still needed for
production and outreach
24. SUMMARY
What next?
Right now we are working on:
- Post-production of the films
- Completion of the virtual tour
- Design and implementation of the social fabric
- Distribution - Partnerships with online platforms and
organisations
- Raising more finance - £60,000 still needed for
production and outreach
- Developing TV documentary - phase 2
- Introduce myself: \nMy name is Paulina Tervo and I work primarily as a documentary filmmaker and producer. My production company is called Write This Down Productions. We are based in Istanbul right now but we work all over the world. Our primary focus is always the issue and the story - the genre is secondary. This means that our ideas are expressed in the way we best see fit to tell the story. We make documentaries, fiction as well as interactive projects merging multimedia storytelling.\n\nI personally have an interest in anthropology and human rights and I studied development studies. \n\n- My first encounter with interactive documentaries was at the Esodoc workshop in 2009 where I became inspired by Kat Cizek and Alexandre Brachet’s work. Since then, this new genre has completely swept me off my feet. \n\n- I’d like to introduce my team - all dedicated to the project way beyond any financial gain. Over the last 6 months they have become almost as enthusiastic as me about Awra Amba and they work on the project because they believe in it.\n\n\n
- The Awra Amba Experience is probably best described as an experiment in interactive storytelling and social entrepreneurship. \n\n- Firstly, documentary storytelling is no longer about telling one linear story on one platform. For me a documentary is about treating a real life subject and that does not necessarily mean that the best medium is long form film. Or film at all.\n\n- Secondly, I believe that anyone who tells stories has a motivation to change the world and to see catalyst for change. \n Firstly, we are using different storytelling methods to best tell the story, including traditional documentary film, panoramic photography, interactive tagging and animated sequences. Secondly we are using multiple platforms to tell it on - web, mobile, cinema, television and gallery spaces. Thirdly, we are using the audience to tell another story, and in the process they will create a product.\n\n\n\n\n\n
I am not going to talk about how we are using the technologies that we are all very aware of because that’s the area for my colleagues here who are going to talk later this afternoon on the panel. Instead I’m going to focus on how this particular story became an interactive documentary, how we have decided to tell the story and how we envisage the audience participation in the project. \n\nI’m also going to talk a little bit about collaboration with the subjects of this documentary, the social impact that we envisage the project having.\n\n- What I will present today is a work in progress and we are about half way through it at the moment. We have shot the films and the content, which are now in post-production, we are in the process of building the website including the 360 virtual tour and we have a prototype for the audience activity. \n\n- We are still short of budget to finish this ambitious project \n- Please note that what you see today are drafts and not final designs of the website. I’m just showing you them so that you can get an idea of our style and aims. \n\n
I will start by telling a story. In 1972, a young farmer in Ethiopia abandoned his family in order to attempt to start his own village. He was considered a radical heretic by all those who knew better; his elders, the church and the government, to name a few. \n\nHis vision for a new way of life included the following ideas: \n•Making men and women truly equal - in work as well as in the home \n•Abolish racial and ethnic discrimination \n•Review any old traditions that may harm people or slow development \n•Invest the majority of the turnover in social services such as education, health and elderly care \n•that there would be no violence, crime or other conflict \n\nMany people tried to stop Zumra from realising this preposterous plan. \n\n-His family disowned him\n-The government imprisoned him\n-Religious people tried to kill him\n-His wife left him\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
- 40 years later, Awra Amba is a happy, healthy village, where men and women divide labour and decision making. \n\n\n\n
- Everyone has access to education, food and clean water\n\n\n\n
- Almost half of their turnover is invested in social services including elderly care and education \n\n
- Awra Amba has conquered poverty in one of the poorest regions in one of the poorest countries in the world. \n- They have become a model not only for other Ethiopians but also for NGOs who have been battling for decades on how to combat poverty. \n- They have also inspired people in developed countries, who have started visiting them looking for answers in their own lives \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n
- I first came across Awra Amba in 2004 when I was travelling in Ethiopia \n- In the last 8 years Awra Amba has under gone major economic advances through their own efforts. There are no NGOs working there. \n- Tourism has increased heavily, they now have nearly 10,000 visitors every year, mainly other Ethiopians who come to learn from them but also a lot of Western visitors make the long journey there \n\n- Their story inspired me because I was sick of always seeing bad news stories from Africa and never the innovation, the entrepreneurship and the joy that I myself associate with Africa and Ethiopia. I want to ensure that it’s not all about Joseph Kony on our screens. \n\n- In 2008 I made a half hour film on a shoestring budget \n- Back in 2010 when we released the film online on international women’s day in collaboration with Youtube we had over 10,000 views in 24 hours with no other PR. \n\n- As a result screenings at festivals and online we noticed that the debates after the film always went on for ages. It always turned from a Q&A to a discussion and it made us realise there was a place for something much more interactive. \n- Collectively we were able to discuss the issues and learn from each other so that we all left the room richer. \n- An effective way to explore the village was to build a 360 virtual tour - to experience the richness of the the sounds, the views and the people’s stories. \n- So to address the need I started to think about how we can make it into an interactive project where the audience is an active participant \n\n- It was also important to me to involve the community in the project and that we would work together on both the content and the outcome of the project \n\n
- So in 2010 I returned to Awra Amba to discuss this idea with the community. \n\n- They surprised me by being very receptive to it and even told me they had built their own website despite not having internet connection in the village!\n\n- They were keen to get to know their sisters and brothers around the world and excited about the idea that their philosophy would be known outside of Ethiopia. \n\n- At the same time they had embarked on some pretty major self-funded development projects, like a new high school, and welcomed support for it. \n\n- We decided that the best way to tell their story was through a virtual experience of the village where users are able to take a wander around at their own pace, and discover the village through short documentaries and other multimedia content. \n
We started out by brainstorming the concept with our web and design team. After many days of work we decided that the website would focus around a weaving theme - since weaving is the main livelihood of the community and the one thing that distinguishes them from other villages. It also worked so well for the whole concept, from a metaphorical to a visual and interactive level. \n\nThis is an example of the style and look of the animated introduction that we are working on - it fuses kinetic typography with a very organic, handmade style of animation, keeping the theme of weaving going throughout. \n\nWe are in the process of storyboarding the animation right now which will be used to draw in the user. \n\n\n
- Inspired by other 360 projects including Kat Cizek’s Out My Window and a colleague’s work in the slums of Kroo Bay in Sierra Leone we decided to create an immersive space where the audience could feel very close to the villagers and their life, a bit like being on one of the tours in Awra Amba. \n\n- I’m going to show you a quick demo of what we are working on right now including a preview of one of the short films. You are the first ever audience to view this demo and film! \n\nPlease note that this is a work in progress and that many elements are still missing and under development. \n\n- This homepage allows you to access 10 locations in the village with panoramic views inside where you can explore the content. \n- Inside each location, you can discover objects that highlight as you scroll over them. The objects open up films (one film in each location which is tied to a particular theme and character), and a host of other multimedia content, even including an online shop! \n- There are 10 documentaries that tell the story of Awra Amba through different themes. \nYou can also access the themes through a secondary menu which allows you to just watch the films \n- The idea is that the audience makes their own way around the village \n\n\nhttp://panographer.de/download/awraamba/drawn-pano/drawn-pano.html\n
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- Finally what I’d like to talk about is how we envisage the audience to participate in the project. \n- What we find interesting about Awra Amba is how it’s woven its own moral fabric. This is a community building on values like equality and care for others, in a world which is losing its values and which seems less and less equal. They have really analysed the social problems and come up with solutions, creating a ‘template’ for a good life. We wanted to take this idea and let the audience explore it further. \n- Also we wanted to make a link between the Awra Amba community and the audience and do something to help the community. \n\nInspired by the weaving tradition in Awra Amba we came up with the moral fabric concept. \n\n- The first part of this you’ve seen - explore how Awra Amba is held together by moral fabric in the films and the virtual tour \n- the tone, look & feel visually uses the theme of weaving, threads and fabric\n- So we created an activity over 10 weeks for audiences to weave a moral fabric of links, suggestions and debates which we visualise in a scarf\n- Practically, we launch the project with all the 10 films there, but will feature one film weekly on the site & syndicate as a series over 10 weeks to online media partners. These include online newspapers and magazines, blogs and social networks. \n- In that week we encourage users to make links connecting Awra Amba to other examples of moral fabric and to take part in weekly debates helped by our NGO partners. These are linked to the themes that the films represent. \n- each contribution becomes a thread in the scarf visualisation that gets woven into an interactive scarf over 10 weeks\n- Each week has a different colour thread which corresponds to our weekly theme\n- The end product (and the width of the colours) depends on how much the audience participated in the particular week \n- At the end the final artefact stays online as a resource but it also becomes a physical product. \n- The emerged pattern will be used as a motif for a real scarf woven by the Awra Amba community \n- This scarf will be available to pre-order and purchase through the site\n- This helps the community grow their economy in a sustainable way and in the long run helps them to modernise their weaving business \n\nIf there is time say this: If not just say people can explore it through the link: \n- To demonstrate this - I will show you how it’s been built using popcorn. \n- Please note that this is only a prototype, no design has yet been made \n\n\n\n\n
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- \n- Lots of efforts and hard work have gone into this project and we have been able to achieve a lot on a small budget since everyone who works on it works on a partly deferred payment. \n
- \n- Lots of efforts and hard work have gone into this project and we have been able to achieve a lot on a small budget since everyone who works on it works on a partly deferred payment. \n
- \n- Lots of efforts and hard work have gone into this project and we have been able to achieve a lot on a small budget since everyone who works on it works on a partly deferred payment. \n
- \n- Lots of efforts and hard work have gone into this project and we have been able to achieve a lot on a small budget since everyone who works on it works on a partly deferred payment. \n
- \n- Lots of efforts and hard work have gone into this project and we have been able to achieve a lot on a small budget since everyone who works on it works on a partly deferred payment. \n
- \n- Lots of efforts and hard work have gone into this project and we have been able to achieve a lot on a small budget since everyone who works on it works on a partly deferred payment. \n
- \n- Lots of efforts and hard work have gone into this project and we have been able to achieve a lot on a small budget since everyone who works on it works on a partly deferred payment. \n
Thanks for listening and you’re welcome to ask me any questions you have now or later on during the conference. \nI’m also interested in your feedback on what you have heard and suggestions on how to make this project even better. If you want to keep in touch with us please follow us on Twitter or sign up for news on our website. \nThank you!\n