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eb documentariesA new way to tell your story

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The average person spends less than a minuteon a web page.

Many of our clients have complicated stories to tell, but are unsurehow far to simplify their stories for audiences that are notoriouslyuninspired by complexity or short on time.

A possible solution?Web -documentaries or “web -docs”.

Web -docs are an emerging form of media that use digitaltechnology to increase audiences’ attention and deepen theirinterest in a topic by a more considerable degree than most othermethods.

So, how do they work?

Web -docs are interactive, multimedia documentaries hosted onthe web. They are still an emerging eld, so there are few rules,but they tend to o er audiences more choice and control thantraditional media.

Simply put: They are like digital “Choose Your Own Adventure”stories through the use of clever interactive menu options. Web -docs put emphasis on what the story makes people do , rather thanwhat it says to them. They provide audiences access to greatercontext but ultimately leave them in control of the journey theytake.

They can be produced on an independent do -it-yourself basis orby broader crews of collaborators and so far, have mainly beenused in journalism and art. Current usage of the medium hasdemonstrated that, by putting the viewer in charge,web -docs can retain even the most ckle of audiences’engagement for ten minutes, and sometimes longer...

Simply put:Web-docs are like digital“Choose Your Own dventure”

stories.

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It is hard to understand how addictive they can be before you’ve seen onefor yourself. Here are some of our favourite examples :

The Guardian produced a web -doc about bush res in Tasmania in 2013 obtained400,000 views, with the average viewer spending 17 minutes on the site. “That’s veryhigh for one article,” said Francesca Panetta, special projects editor at the paper, at arecent event on web -docs hosted at City University in London.

Pioneered in Europe, web -docs have already had political in uence.

Nowhere Safe , produced by France’s Samuel Bollendor , documented poor housingin the country, and images from it were used during the 2012 presidential electionswhen housing became a pivotal campaign issue.

“The idea was always to ght the idea that the public on the web won’t stay formore than 20 seconds,” says Bollendor who started as a photojournalistdocumenting social problems around the world, but moved to web -docs aftergrowing frustrated with the use of his images in magazines without further context.

The Cadillac example: Highrise , a multi-part web -doc produced by the National FilmBoard of Canada, in part for The New York Times , about the history of vertical livingand issues of social equality in an urbanized world, has garnered 8.4 million shareson Twitter and 2.9 million shares on Facebook, according to its producer, Kat Cizek.

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Dirty Money , made in -house for the World Development Movement, drawsattention to funding for harmful mining in Indonesia by UK banks, and hasgarnered 7,000 views since November 2013, with viewers spending an average ofseven minutes on the site and 10% of them signing up afterwards to “take action”.Those numbers may not seem terribly impressive on rst glance, especially whencompared with alternative methods of engagement for digital communicators in

the commercial sector. But when you realise they are purely organic views,produced on a shoestring budget without any promotion or marketing budgetbehind it, it becomes a realistic and a ordable option for non -pro ts on limitedbudgets.

National Public Radio (NPR) collected stories from the Mexican -American borderin Borderland , which presents readers with statistics of border crossings in

real-time as they begin their journey through the documentary.

When “Main Street” became a talking point to counter “Wall Street” in the 2008US Presidential elections, a group of radio producers and graduate students setout to prove that there wasn’t just one “Main Street” USA . The group recorded thestories of hundreds of towns across America and then encouraged others to sendin their stories. The site currently features more than 800 streets across thecountry.

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Where do we think web -docs are headed?

Development in web -docs is currently being led by academics, artists and journalists and is generally a niche media.

We at Brickwall think that this could soon change.

There is broad potential for web -docs across a variety of third sector andcommercial markets, particularly in elds where nuance is of special value or whereyou might have a tendency to over -communicate to your target audiences becauseyou have so much to say (!) It can make it hard for your audience to nd the exactinformation they are looking for.

The challenge is in organising your messages and creating an engaging narrativeout of them.

“Web -docs have potential in fieldswhere nuance is of special valueand where context and personalstorytelling can help fill in abroader picture.”

“Producing these requires a new way of working,” says Kat Cizek, who made theHighrise web -doc. Web -docs require strategic insight from both thosecommissioning the project as well as those producing it, along with a creativewillingness to try something new. The medium cuts across a combination of areasof digital communications expertise, and this is where we step in.

Web -docs can be an inspirational project for an organisation looking for aninnovative new way to tell its story but that does not necessarily mean they requirethe creation of an entirely new set of communications materials. It might be a caseof creating a narrative that links your already existing materials together in anengaging way for your aud ience.

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If your interest has been piqued, give us a ring.(In the meantime, there are also plenty of other examples of interesting web -docs out there to explore:

Hollow, a web -doc about a depressed small town in Washington State, which has been decimated by

economic changes since the 1950s, was produced by a Masters student at Emerson College, ElaineMcMillion, and funded with $25k on Kickstarter.

Alma, produced by Upian & Arte TV in 2012, is a r st -person confession by Alma, a member of one ofGuatemala’s most brutal gangs. It won the She eld Doc Fest Innovation Award in 2013.

Question Bridge , produced by Hank Willis Thomas in 2013, is a “transmedia art project that seeks torepresent and rede ne black male identity in America”.

And if you’re still hungry for more, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Docubase project hasbecome a repository for web -docs, worldwide, with lots of other examples.)