docSHIFT: Real Stories to Mult iple Platforms facilitates new creative partnerships and helps develop innovative interactive documentary projects. docSHIFT is made possible with the support of the Ontario Media Development Corporation is presented in partnership with Ryerson University, Hot Docs, CFC Media Lab and the National Film Board. Table of Contents: Page 2 - LAUNCH Page 2 - TWEAK: IDEA-REFINEMENT BOOT CAMP Page 2 - CFC MEDIA LAB INCUBATOR Page 2 - INFOCUS LUNCH SERIES Page 3 – WORKSHOPS Page 3 - CROSSOVER WEEKEND Page 4 - DOCSHIFT INSTITUTE Page 5 - DOCSHIFT SUMMIT Page 8 - STEERING COMMITTEE Page 8 – INDEX Page 8 - CASE STUDIES Page 8 – SUPPORTERS Page 10 – APPENDIX, CASE STUDY: Inside Disaster Page 18 – APPENDIX, CASE STUDY: Storming Juno Page 26 – APPENDIX, CASE STUDY: Welcome to Pine Point Page 34 – APPENDIX, CASE STUDY: Choco-locate

LAUNCH docSHIFT was launched on March 26, 2009 with a Networking evening at The Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. The room was filled with doc makers from every imaginable field, film and television, interactive, online, games, mobile: you name it. Mark Greenspan of nextMEDIA delivered an inspiring presentation about successful interactive documentaries, and our 'Networking Bingo' game got people talking. TWEAK: IDEA-REFINEMENT BOOT CAMP The CFC Media Lab and the docSHIFT Initiative have joined forces to present TWEAK: an Idea-Refinement Boot Camp for Digital Documentaries taking place September 26 to 25, 2010. The program sought out experienced producers, creators, directors, writers, strategists and architects with an interesting interactive documentary idea and the desire to have their idea analyzed, work-shopped and honed from both a creative and business perspective. This 2-day weekend workshop was facilitated by a series of high level industry mentors along with UK’s Frank Boyd, former BBC Director of Creative Development and the visionary behind Crossover Labs. Selected participants retained ownership of their project idea but worked collaboratively in a group setting—sharing their idea, receiving input, and also giving valuable input on other projects. TWEAK (focused on idea refinement) was designed to compliment and extend from the Crossover Weekend which focused on idea generation. TWEAK was both a stand alone event and a good preparatory phase for those interested in the docSHIFT Institute. ________________________________________________________________________ CFC MEDIA LAB INCUBATOR A specialized four-day mentorship program held in January and February 2011, the incubator was designed to help six high potential creators take their interactive documentary project ideas to the next level. Participants were selected during the docSHIFT Institute jury process. Incubator sessions focused on idea refinement, audience clarification, and business planning. The lead mentors were Romeo Candido, Online Producer at Much Music, Anita Lee, Producer at the National Film Board, and Ana Serrano, Director of the CFC

Media Lab. The invited experts were Priam Givord, Creator – NewYork Exit NewYork; Tessa Sproule, Executive in Charge of Digital Programming - Factual, Arts & Entertainment and Documentaries at CBC; Joseph Wilson; Meagan Durlak, Partner at Matte Black; & Pearl Chen, Research & Technology Manager at CFC Media Lab. Congratulations to the four participants: The What Will We Be Project (working title) - Samara Chadwick; The Ghosts In Our Machine - Liz Marshall; Nicole McKechnie; The Ayahuasca Conversation - Robin McKenna; Moment of Contact - Kalli Paakspuu; Fordville - Min Sook Lee. INFOCUS LUNCH SERIES This new lunch-time interview series reveals the secrets of success, the business nuts and bolts, (and the blood, sweat and tears) behind winning Canadian interactive documentary projects. Presentations so far have included PTV Productions' Katie McKenna on their project Inside Disaster, Producer Gerry Flahive of the National Film Board on Out My Window and the Highrise Project, John Bessai & Joan Prowse on GreenHeroes, and Lalita Krishna on Choco-locate. WORKSHOPS docSHIFT is host to a number of special presentations and workshops. In February 2011 we held a workshop titled "New Media Legal with Mary Barroll" which explored legal considerations for interactive producers. Francesca Accinelli of the Canadian Media Fund was on hand in Fall 2010 to answer questions on the changes to the CMF guidelines. We hosted an Interactive Pitch Clinic in Summer of 2011 where Lalita Krishna advised on effective pitching for interactive projects. CROSSOVER WEEKEND The docSHIFT Crossover Weekend took place on May 8 to 9, 2011 at the Center for Social Innovation in Toronto, bringing together over 30 participants (both documentary and interactive producers) to develop creative ideas collaboratively. It was designed and led by interactive media specialists Frank Boyd and Mark Atkin. After a general introduction to cross platform production and some of the most successful and “noble failures” in the transmedia space, the facilitators began a series of thought-provoking exercises. Working in groups, participants analyzed

how and why we consume media over the course of a single day, a simple but effective exercise to drive home the importance of working in cross media spaces. Further discussions outlined the basics of user-centred design as well as the platforms, purposes, audiences, and business models currently at play in the media landscape. A central focus of the weekend was understanding the audience: how do you hone a compelling project that meets the needs of a specific audience, benefits them, and competes globally? Working together throughout the two-day workshop, participants designed plans for potential and real media projects and pitched them to the room for feedback. Though time was short, the collaborations proved successful, with new ideas and partnerships emerging ready to carry forward to the Fall docSHIFT residential lab and beyond! ________________________________________________________________________ DOCSHIFT INSTITUTE A four-month program that took place in 2011 led by chief mentors Richard Lachman and Diana Arruda, designed to take innovative interactive documentary ideas and projects and position them to become either commercial or critical successes through consultation, mentorship, workshopping and development funding. Mentors: Mary Barroll, Ilona Posner, Kat Cizek, Mark Greenspan, Lalita Krishna, Christine McGlade. Jury: Richard Lachman, Creative Consultant & Assistant Professor of Digital Media at Ryerson University & docSHIFT Institute Chief Mentor, Christine McGlade, Manager, Interactive and Digital Media at TVO, Elizabeth Radshaw, Director, Hot Docs Forum, Andra Sheffer, Executive Director, Bell Fund (Toronto Office), and James Weyman, Manager, Industry Development, OMDC. 2011 Winning Projects: Process, Cause & Effect (The Secret Location) is an interactive documentary and transmedia project that profiles groundbreaking artists who create beautiful works of art using computer code. Pipe Trouble (Pop Sandbox) cleverly re-imagines one of the most popular arcade games of the early 1990s, Pipe Dream. A prototype for Pipe Trouble was developed in the DocSHIFT Institute, and used to help secure full production financing from the Ontario Media Development Corporation's Interactive Digital Media Fund, the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund's Low Budget Interactive

Digital Media Production Program, and a license with investment from TVO. Slum of Millionaires (Storyline Entertainment) lets players try to become a millionaire while exploring Dharavi, Asia's largest slum in the heart of Mumbai. Sharavi's streets come alive through our characters, and an isometric view allows full exploration of the slum. Toronto Unearthed (Lola Media) is the app for anyone who has ever wondered what Toronto looked like when saber toothed tigers hunted the shoreline, what games village children played here 800 years ago, and when Toronto officially became the final stop on the Underground Railroad. ________________________________________________________________________ DOCSHIFT SUMMIT As the landscape for documentary storytelling expands, the need to be able to tell our stories on multiple screens is fast becoming a reality. Agencies, game companies, publishing companies, educators, broadcasters - they are all talking about the need to capture audiences with well crafted meaningful stories and cross-platform roll outs. Sure there are a lot of unknowns but at the docSHIFT Summit we are proposing it’s time for documentary filmmakers to boldly leverage our incredible ability to tell real stories and position ourselves as the go-to people in this new and evolving marketplace. Saturday, November 12, 2011: Keynote Address: Strategic Foresight & Innovation, Future Opportunities for Documentary Filmmakers in the Digital Era by Professor Charles H. Davis, Ph D, at the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Research Chair in Media Management and Entrepreneurship. Case Study: Welcome to Pine Point. Enjoy a live performance of this award winning interactive doc followed by Q&A with creators, Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge aka The Goggles. Panel Discussion: Interactive Documentaries, Framing the New Frontier. How do we define success when it comes to interactive documentaries, by eyeballs or engagement? This and other big picture questions are tackled in a conversation moderated by Katie McKenna, Interactive producer. Panelists include: Elizabeth Radshaw, Hot Docs Forum and Market Director; James Milward, Founder / Executive Producer, Secret Location; Ramona Pringle, Interactive producer, Ramona Pringle Productions, Inc., Assistant professor Ryerson New Media

Department; Richard Lachman, Creative Consultant & Assistant Professor of Digital Media, Ryerson University. Panel Discussion: Sponsorship & Brand Alignment, Strategies for interactive documentaries. Who to approach, how and when? Value alignment. Positioning. Finding Mutual Benefits. Creative Control. A panel discussion aimed at solutions moderated by Nina Beveridge, Beevision/Hop To It Productions. Panelists include: Kate Hanley, President, Digital Theory Media Consulting; Michael Joffe, Manager of Digital Innovation & Development, GlassBOX; John Hall, CEO, Gone in 30 Entertainment; Michel Pratte, Manager business development, Temple Street Productions. Case Study Presentation: Choco-locate. An insider’s look at how this project was developed from concept to beta. Producer Lalita Krishna tells us how her iPhone app and website became much more than a simple companion to her TV documentary. Bell Fund Briefing by Andra Sheffer, Executive Director, Bell Broadcast & New Media Fund. Presentation: Intro to the World of E-Learning: Storytellers Wanted! Dr. Jeremy Friedberg (Co-Founder, Spongelab Interactive / Co-Chair Interactive Ontario e-Learning Committee) provides a snapshot of Ontario’s growing interactive educational product industry and opportunities that exist for documentary filmmakers e-learning. Canadian Media Fund Update and Q&A with Francesca Accinelli, Director, English Market for the CMF Program Administrator at Telefilm Canada. Broadcasters Talk Digital. Moderator Jeanette Loakman helps us discover how broadcasters are defining success for interactive documentary properties. What are they looking for? What are they funding? What is the future? Panelists include: Caitlin O'Donovan, Director of Kids Interactive at Corus Entertainment; Simon Foster, SVP Digital Publishing & Business Development; Christine McGlade, Manager; Interactive and Digital Media TVO; Tessa Sproule, Director, Interactive Content CBC; Chris Harris, head of online content, Shaw Media. Sunday, November 13, 2011: Keynote Speaker: Understanding attention patterns in the 21st century by Matt Locke, the former head of multi-platform commissioning at Channel 4, and former Head of Innovation at BBC’s New Media.

Paper Proto-typing: Back to docSHIFT by popular demand! De-bug and instantly test your design process at this hands-on workshop with User Experience & Usabiltiy Consultant Ilona Posner from the CFC Media Lab. IdeaShift Workshop. Join Anthea Foyer, Co-founder and Creative Strategist at The Labs, for an interactive group session aimed at untangling and understanding the relationship between story and platform. docSHIFT Institute Proto-type Showcase. Our four lab participants unveil their game, mobile app, and website proto-types and share key lessons learned in the development process! ZEEGA! Straight out of Harvard’s MetaLAB, Zeega is a new platform for creating interactive documentaries and inventing new forms of storytelling. Digital Rights: Legal Landscape and Realities with Trevor Fencott, Stohn Hay Cafazzo Dembroski Richmond LLP. Digital Tools and Technology Overview. Flash/iOS/HTML5/PANO2VR/Google Earth/Snapdragon/KORSAKOW, what tools or platforms are best for your project? Find out about new trends and old news! How do you ramp up for production? What team do you need? Moderator, Kathleen Webb, Project Manager, Transmedia Research and Innovation Centre Ryerson University. Panelists: Sean Flynn, Zeega; Richard Lachman, Creative Consultant and Assistant Professor of Digital Media at Ryerson University; Andrew Roth, Future Cinema York. OMDC Digital Tax Credits Q&A with Mike Olivier, Business Officer, Tax Credits. History Gone Digital: from forgotten to fabulous. A case study session presented by Julia Bennett, Producer, Pink Job productions. Featuring: the story behind "Le Journal de la Commune 1871" from collective Raspouteam, France. Documentary Games Panel Discussion. Matching documentary content to a game: What works and what doesn't. Moderated by Sasha Boersma, Business Analyst & Producer: Interactive, Convergent, Games: bewareoftheleopard.ca, Professor, Interactive Digital Media, Centennial College. Panelists include: Alex Jansen, Pop Sandbox; Tony Walsh, Phantom Compass; David Fono, Atmosphere Industries; Jim Munroe, No Media Kings. Interactive Project Budgets & Project Management 101. Pitch Contest! Audience Choice. $1500 Cash Prize.

STEERING COMMITTE Nina Beveridge, Producer / Director / Creative Director, Beevision Productions; Blake Fitzpatrick, PhD, Documentary Media Graduate Program Director, Ryerson University; Gerry Flahive, Senior Producer, National Film Board of Canada; Mark Greenspan, Executive Director, Achilles Media; Lalita Krishna, In Sync Video, DOC Toronto Co-Chair; Richard Lachman: Creative Consultant & Assistant Professor of Digital Media, Ryerson University; David Oppenheim, Head of Development/Producer, Interactive, Kensington Communications Inc.; Ramona Pringle, Media Director, PeakMedia Collective; Elizabeth Radshaw, Director, Toronto Documentary Forum, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival; Ana Serrano, Director, CFC Media Lab. INDEX The docSHIFT Index is a sortable, searchable library of interactive and digital documentaries. With over 100 projects to choose from, it is one of the largest databases of its kind worldwide. Please peruse, discuss, debate, & leave comments to let us know what you think. The docSHIFT Index & Case Studies are online in archive form at doctoronto.ca/docshift- index CASE STUDIES docSHIFT Case Study Papers take us behind the scenes and screens of the new and growing interactive documentary genre. The papers will look at a selection of interactive docs, chosen for their ability to exemplify key issues currently facing creators today. The four Case Studies are: Inside Disaster, Storming Juno, Welcome to Pine Point and Choco-locate, avai lable in the Appendix section. SUPPORTERS docSHIFT is made possible with the support of the Ontario Media Development Corporation on behalf of the Ministry of Culture.

docSHIFT is presented in partnership with Ryerson University, Hot Docs, CFC Media Lab, the Bell Fund and the National Film Board.

docSHIFT Networking Partners are Interactive Ontario and Banff Next Media.

APPENDIX: CASE STUDIES Page 9 - Inside Disaster Page 18 - Storming Juno Page 26 - Welcome to Pine Point Page 34 - Choco-locate

     

Inside  Disaster ABSTRACT

This case study explores InsideDisaster.com, the companion web platform to PTV Production Inc.’s documentary television series about the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the subsequent humanitarian efforts in the country. Based on insight from Interactive Producer Katie McKenna, this study focuses on the two step production strategy adopted by the InsideDisaster.com team and their leveraging of Web 2.0 platforms.

INTERACTIVE PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE: Toronto-based PTV Productions Inc. produces documentaries, lifestyle, factual series, and digital media content.

THE CONCEPT

In January 2007, director / producer Nadine Pequeneza approached the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies (IFRC) to make an observational documentary on their disaster relief team, and the difficulties facing humanitarian organizations in a world of increasing natural calamity. The idea was to embed a camera crew with the Red Cross in the days and weeks following a disaster, and gain unprecedented access to the compelling characters and intense drama that unfolded. After nearly a year of consultation, the Red Cross agreed to allow a camera crew to record their work[1].

Pequeneza had been developing the Inside Disaster television documentary concept with PTV productions and TVO for over a year before Katie McKenna was brought on board as the Interactive Producer.

The objectives of the InsideDisaster.com web platform were to incorporate an interactive account of a humanitarian disaster and the affected country’s recovery, to serve as an educational resource on humanitarian work with citable research, visualizations, and topical debates, and to act as a showcase for the Inside Disaster documentary television series, the participants, filmmakers and funders. Such a platform would require a significant amount of time to create, time that a documentary about natural disasters that could strike at any moment didn’t have.

While an alternative would have been to simply put the documentary footage away until the web platform was ready, McKenna instead saw an opportunity to build the Inside Disaster brand, amass an audience and distribute high-demand content right away.

As McKenna developed the interactive component, hired her team, and applied for funding, she did not know where or how the final project would unfurl. Once assembled, her production crew was placed in the curious position of having to sit and wait for a natural disaster to strike.

The interactive team’s plan was to send a field producer into the world’s next disaster zone. One option was for the producer to collect footage, bring it home, and release all the content when everything was perfect and ready – 9 months to a year after the disaster had occurred. This traditional method of planned and calculated production would be the approach Inside Disaster, the documentary television series, would take.

What McKenna did know however was that there is always a great deal of activity and interest in information related to any disaster. It did not make sense to send an interactive producer to cover a disaster for InsideDisaster.com and not to offer real-time content to the audience– especially if that content would be in high demand. The challenge for InsideDisaster.com was to establish a presence and attract attention to its content during the brief time span in which people would be seeking coverage of the disaster online.

Due to time constraints related to web production turnaround and the desire to promptly disseminate documented disaster content, InsideDisaster.com was divided into two phases. The development phase (Phase I) launched the same day as the Haiti earthquake . Phase II, launched nine months later, was the result of lengthy planning and ultimately culminated in a wide-reaching educational resource about the Haiti earthquake and humanitarian work (www.insidedisaster.com), and the interactive first-person simulation project Inside The Haiti Earthquake.

INSIDEDISASTER.COM: Phase I

Phase I of InsideDisaster.com involved a simple Wordpress blog. The blog took a week to program and design and outside of labour expenses, cost $75 for the Wordpress platform template. Simple and affordable, www.InsideDisaster.com was launched on the same day that the earthquake struck Haiti, January 12, 2010. Following the earthquake, Phase I of the platform became a live media operation: distributing new footage daily – 3 minute video stories, blogs, and photos – direct from Haiti.

Instead of trying to appeal to a vague and fickle mass, McKenna’s plan was to create content for a specific audience. She knew that a loyal community of people interested in humanitarian work would be interested in the site. She knew she had to think seriously about the site’s audience and had to create content they would genuinely like. This meant a lot of time, and a lot of adaptability.

As soon as the interactive crew knew they were going to Haiti, McKenna immediately changed the site’s strategy. McKenna considered the people who would continue to be interested in the situation 3 months, 6 months, and even one year later: Haitians living abroad. McKenna’s new plan had many elements: she hired a Haitian blogger out of Montreal, Carla Beauvais, and conducted as much outreach as possible to the Haitian and humanitarian community across North America. She knew these people would be looking to info and news from Haiti, and she wanted to make InsideDisaster.com an authoritative and reliable source of news about the Haiti earthquake.

Rather than following media interest and dropping off the map as soon as people’s concern for Haiti waned, InsideDisaster.com Phase I strove ahead knowing that select groups of people would still be interested.

Creative Commons also played a key role in InsideDisaster.com’s distribution strategy, as did free tools like Survey Monkey (for user-testing project titles) and Google docs. Releasing all content under a Creative Commons license, a large part of McKenna’s efforts during Phase I was to give the material away. This work entailed calling news networks, and contacting other blog sites. As a result, footage and images credited to InsideDisaster.com were distributed widely across all of the major Canadian news networks.

Because the content itself would be InsideDisaster.com’s greatest draw, the site’s pitch was not technological innovation. Instead, the focus was on making the material immediately accessible to as many people as possible. The site needed to be easy to find, so McKenna chose to provide as many venues as possible for people to find the content. This meant that instead of attempting innovation during the few weeks during which people searched for information, footage and stories from Haiti, InsideDisaster.com was disseminating their content across existing, free platforms such as YouTube, Flickr, and Wordpress.

For InsideDisaster.com, the story out of Haiti didn’t have to end when the production team came home. Instead, a Haitian named Emmanuel Midi continued to blog and post photos from Port-au-Prince, keeping the site interesting and up-to-date long after the production team had left. In fact, Emmanuel’s blog posts were the most trafficked entries on the entire site, some of which were published six months after the earthquake. Seemingly obscure blog posts spread like wildfire through the Haitian community, garnering many comments and confirming McKenna’s hunch that Haitians would know best how to cater to their community, and were in fact using the site to build an important community and network online.

TIP >>> GET A BLOG UP - START OUTREACH EARLY.

Invite people into the production process, and connect with people who are keen about what you are doing. Launch a website early even if it’s cheap and not perfect, even if you might change the title. Start a mailing list – it is worth it to make the connection.

TIP >>> CROWDSOURCING – ASK YOUR AUDIENCE FOR ADVICE.

The tools are free, and the results are always surprising. By showing your imperfections, and by asking for advice, you create a sense of ownership within your audience, and they will be compelled to share your story. Using crowd sourcing to make creative decisions also impresses your funders and reduces groupthink and power struggles within the team.

TIP >>> CREATIVE COMMONS – SHARE YOUR CONTENT AND GAIN VISIBILITY.

Creative Commons is a way of being interactive.

Use pre-existing channels on the web to share and generate interest around your content.

TIP >>> BUILD A COMMUNITY AROUND YOUR “BRAND”.

The idea of building community around the site is important. If you are trying to build awareness and excitement about the project – and about the film, a year in advance – the content on the site needs to communicate with audience, and encourage participation.

TIP >>> BE SPONTANEOUS. TRUST YOUR AUDIENCE.

By trusting your audience and handing them the keys to the content, you get magical connections – communities coming together, facilitated by the technology.

INSIDEDISASTER.COM: Phase II

In the months leading up to the launch of the Inside Disaster documentary television series, the challenge for InsideDisaster.com was to remain relevant and maintain an interest in the cause, while promoting the upcoming television series.

By October 2009 McKenna had submitted PTV’s successful Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund application, proposing to use existing Web 2.0 tools to deliver in depth content and historical context to current events. McKenna knew there was a community of people interested in humanitarian work, and she knew that during a disaster, everyone would be asking questions about the humanitarian effort, and that no existing web platform was currently serving such needs.

Phase II of project was to include a first-person simulation, Inside the Haiti Earthquake, which would allow users to experience the aftermath of the quake from the perspective of a journalist, an aid worker, and/or a survivor.

The InsideDisaster.com team knew that public interest in a disaster would be high for a short period of time and that it would then precipitously drop off, with another bump of coverage a year later. The documentary television series was initially slated for release on the one-year anniversary of the disaster but the site didn't want to disappear in the meantime . Once interest in the disaster had waned, the challenge for Inside Disaster.com was to remain relevant, maintaining an interest in the subject and in the documentary series.

As a whole, the web strategy deployed for InsideDisaster.com has been praised as “the first example of a full Transmedia storytelling strategy in the editorial world[2]”.

DEFINITION >>> INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARY

Content that gives the user some agency in determining the flow and outcome of the story. – Katie McKenna

CREATOR’S TIP SHEET SUMMARY

1. Get a blog and mailing list up right away.

2. Don’t be afraid to be simple.

3. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Use tools that already exist.

4. Benefit from Creative Commons.

5. Crowd source and ask your audience for advice.

6. Build a community around your project.

7. Trust your audience.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What was so unusual about Inside Disaster’s anticipated audience behaviour?

How did Katie McKenna make the decision between relevance and perfection? Why?

Which Web 2.0 tools were used in the first phase of Inside Disaster? Which other tools could have been used?

Which elements of Inside Disaster’s strategy are subject-specific? Which aspects can be applied to other interactive projects?

Which aspects of Inside Disaster’s success were based on expertise? Which aspects were based on luck?

APPENDIX A

TEAM Development Executive Producers (Ian Dunbar & Andrea Nemtin) Katie McKenna - Interactive Producer Nicolas Jolliet - Field Director Emmanuel Midi - Translator / fixer Cyrillien - Driver Yshia Wallace - Designer Nicole Chung – Programmer Production Andrea Nemtin - Executive Producer Ian Dunbar - Executive Producer Katie McKenna - Interactive Producer Spencer Saunders - Technical Lead Kirk Clyne - Creative Lead Nicolas Jolliet - Field Director, Videographer & Blogger, Inside Disaster.com Director, Cinematographer, Editor & Composer, Inside the Haiti Earthquake Michael Gibson - Writer/ Director, Inside the Haiti Earthquake Nicole Chung - Lead Developer, Inside the Haiti Earthquake Peter Henderson - Graphic Designer, Inside the Haiti Earthquake Kyla Reid - Lead Researcher, Inside Disaster.com Lyndsey Westfall - Social Media & Marketing Lead, Inside Disaster.com Claire-Helene Heese-Boutin - Haiti Researcher, Inside Disaster.com Emmanuel Midi - Field Reporter, Inside Disaster & Haiti Today Lucas Ng - New Media Assistant, Inside the Haiti Earthquake Sarah Greene - Copy Editor & Fact-checker, Inside Disaster.com Colin Murray - Production Artist Advisors Tim Allen - Professor, Development Studies Institute (DESTIN), LSE Morgan Clendaniel - Deputy Editor, GOOD Magazine

Patrick Crowley - Area Coordinator, Kandahar, Tearfund Carol Devine - Advocacy Advisor, Board of Directors, Dignitas International Shelley Gornall - Operational Data Management Specialist, UNHCR Mark Greenspan - Chief Operating Officer, Achilles Media Mareike Schomerus Production Notes • Did you shoot during the linear shoot days? yes • If so, did you use different crew? yes • How many WEB crew members? 1 from Canada, 2-3 from Haiti • How many cameras? 1 • What type of camera? Canon 5D • What format did you shoot on? HD Technical Notes: Software used? Macbook pro + FCP for editing in the field Audience Metrics

Peak audience: 4,576 on January 13, 2011 (Earthquake anniversary)

Revenue Generation “Since the website launched less than a month ago, our business outreach is in early stages. Right now there are two revenue streams available to our website: advertising and DVD sales. We created the Inside Disaster website with advertising space built in, and we launched in October with a series of placeholder ads we donated to partners and friends of the website (advertising a local business and charitable organization run by colleagues in Haiti), as well as providing ad space to Flash Media hosts Infuxis, in exchange for reduced hosting fees. We are also in the process of creating playable DVDs of Inside the Haiti Earthquake that will be sold on the PTV website, on their own and in conjunction with the Inside Disaster film, for approximately $20-$25. We expect revenue to be modest but steady.” Bell Report (December 2010) Longevity of Project : Site last updated May 2011 AWARDS Winner – 2011 Games for Change Awards (Transmedia) Winner – Horizon Interactive Awards (Best in Show) Winner – 2010 Applied Arts Interactive Awards (Gaming) Nominee – 2010 Canadian New Media Awards (Best Web-Based Game) Nominee – 2010 Social Impact Games (Best Social Impact Game) Nominee – 2011 History Makers (Best Interactive Production) Nominee – 2011 Webby Award (Best Writing in Online Film & Video) ________________________________________________________________________

Storming  Juno INTERACTIVE PRODUCTION COMPANY: SECRET LOCATION Written by Samara Grace Chadwick / Edited by Steven James May

ABSTRACT This case study interrogates the creative process behind the production of the platform StormingJuno.com. Based on interviews conducted with Executive Producer James Milward and Producers Noora Abu Eitah and Sabrina Saccoccio, the study focuses on the challenges encountered when attempting to pair a website and a linear television documentary within the parameters of Canada’s broadcast funding structure. INTERACTIVE PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Secret Location is a Toronto-based digital agency and production company. James Milward is Secret Location’s Founder & Executive Producer. Launched November 11, 2010, in tandem with History Television’s Remembrance Day broadcast of the Storming Juno docudrama about the June 6 1944 D-Day storming of Juno beach by Canadian Forces, the web platform StormingJuno.com attracted over 100,000 visits its first day. Inside six months, the platform attracted 500,000 unique visitors. With a 20% bounce rate, an average of 7 minutes spent on the site by each visitor, and a SXSW Interactive web award nomination, StormingJuno.com remains one of History Television’s most successful digital properties to date. Based on the varied interests of those involved with StormingJuno.com, insight into the production of the platform provides an opportunity to explore how broadcast and new media interests can be balanced while still yielding a successful interactive documentary platform. THE CONCEPT Initially conceived by Michael Kot, then Head of Original Programming at History Channel, along with Christopher Gagosz of Windup Filmworks (later partnering with the broadcaster Entertainment One) the platform came about following the commissioning of the Storming Juno television docudrama. In search of someone to bring the platform to light, Gagosz approached Secret Location’s executive producer James Milward about creating an interactive online component for the docudrama. Secret Location’s original concept for StormingJuno.com was to take a 360-degree camera and walk it up the beach as the television property’s D-Day re-creation was taking place, following the actors as they departed the landing craft and stormed up the beach. However, it became apparent to the producers that this set-up would not be possible within the television production timeline. In addition, the logistics involved in such a large production, requiring a second shoot day, were simply beyond the scope of Secret Location’s budget and means. Having to rethink the original idea, Secret Location collaborated with Christopher Gagosz on new ideas along with the rest of the interactive team. A long brainstorm resulted in the final 3D engine concept.

Visitors to StormingJuno.com would find themselves in a stationary position in the middle of Juno beach, with a 360 degree rotating view. Recreated manually as a matte painting, the beach would be populated with the characters and actual scenes from the television production.

The construction of the dome required extensive post-production based on stills from the Storming Juno television program shoot, 3D modeling and stills that the interactive team would shoot themselves. Software required to create the dome included Blender 3D, 3D Studio Max, Flash and Adobe Creative Suite. Prior to commencing work on StormingJuno.com, Milward and Gagosz traveled together in late 2009 to interview Canadian D-Day veterans. Gagosz would send James early versions of the script for review and feedback based on the interactive concept. When it became clear that the television production would not have the resources to exploit all possible stories, the interactive companion found its core strength: to tell the stories that would not be featured in the linear television property. By the time Secret Location’s platform pitch made it to Chris Harris, Shaw Media’s Director of Digital Content, Harris was “blown away”. As noted by Harris, “not only was it a ground-breaking way to tell these really compelling stories, but the technology was never really seen before, so we were in from the get go”. TIP >>> TO GET EVERYONE ON THE SAME PAGE UP FRONT Make sure there (is) a mutually agreed upon vision of success. This is a really critical, and often overlooked criterion. Once you’re all on the same page, the TV producers can often stop micromanaging, and enfranchise the interactive team to take the original idea and run with it. – JAMES MILWARD TIP >>> BUILD VISUAL PROTOTYPES EARLY ON Building a quick visual prototype during the pitch helps to get people on the same page right away. – JAMES MILWARD Creating prototypes of the application during the ideation phase maximizes the productivity during the build. – NOORA ABU EITAH TIP >>> STORYBOARD, WIREFRAME, BEFORE YOU GO OUT AND SHOOT Make sure that you have nailed down your concept before you go out and you shoot it. And storyboard out your concept – also called wireframing. Walk through

the user experience step by step before you go out and shoot something. – SABRINA SACCOCCIO

INTERACTIVE SHOOT StormingJuno.com set out to satisfy four core objectives: 1. Promote the television property, Storming Juno. 2. Develop the story beyond the linear television program while remaining consistent with its tone and style. 3. Encourage the historical legacy aspect of the project by creating a library for Canadian veteran stories about D-Day. 4. Push the envelope in terms of innovation as required by the Bell Fund which was providing 75% of the platform’s funding. While the television program team was shooting, the interactive team shot stills with a Canon 5D and collaborated with the set photographer who was shooting on a Canon 7D. Because the television program shoot was long and had a diverse range of scenes, Secret Location had to choose one of the only days that the television crew were shooting on an actual beach to get all the visuals for the 3D environment. These images, along with film stills and shots taken by the on-set photographer were key to the construction of the matte painting for the 3D dome environment. The challenge for Secret Location was to find a way to work with the television program shoot while fulfilling the interactive team’s needs. The Entertainment One producers, and director Tim Wolochatiuk generously provided Secret Location access to the television crew. It was in everyone’s collective interest that the visual elements of the interactive property be aesthetically consistent with the television program. However, since the television production team was not thinking specifically about programming the story for the web, it was up to the interactive team to do so. This required the interactive team to have a solid prototype of the user experience because taking the online user into consideration once everything was already shot would severely restrict the team. Every decision about the interactive shoot and design, such as frame rates and video codecs, was run past the technical team in advance.

TIP >>> BE IN CONSTANT COMMUNICATION WITH THE TV PRODUCERS The TV producers should be involved in the new media project from the initial design stage and updated throughout production to ensure that the expectations and deadlines are hit. – Noora Abu Eitah TIP >>> BE OPEN ABOUT WHAT YOU NEED UP FRONT Aligning with the TV producer is the most important thing. From the initial stages of development, you connect with the TV producers and make sure you're all on the same page in terms of what is feasible and what will work. – NOORA ABU EITAH TIP >>> CREATE MEANING FOR THE USER It is not enough to put straight play video online and call it an interactive documentary. There has to be some reason why, as a user, you are interacting with it. The advantage of the online medium is that, when it really works, you achieve this enhanced sense of connection, and a further sense of meaning. – JAMES MILWARD TIP >>> AVOID APPLYING TECHNOLOGY TOO EARLY. I find that the way to define what you want on a project is ultimately by taking that story, and figuring out what is the best way to achieve that story in the digital platform. Ask yourself first what you want to achieve and then you’ll figure out which technologies are the best vehicle for that story. – JAMES MILWARD The idea ends up driving the technology usually, and the technology then reshapes the idea, sometimes. But it starts with an idea. – SABRINA SACCOCCIO

THE PRODUCTION The Production of StormingJuno.com spanned early July 2010 to November 11, 2011, involving wireframing, design, animation, 3D motion and integrating the site with Flash. The television team shared its footage with the digital team, allowing construction of the matte painting to begin right away.

Building of the beach took many weeks. There was constant communication with the television team who kept producer Noora Abu Eitah and the programmers abreast of their edits and visual choices for the television program. Storming Juno producer and writer Christopher Gagosz was involved in the entire process, communicating with Noora Abu Eitah multiple times a day, reviewing the digital team’s designs and edits. Once the television component of Storming Juno was at the rough-cut stage, the television producers shared the assembly with the digital team so that they could intercut the footage with the animations used for the push-ins (the transitions from the beach to the veteran interviews). The interactive team then advised which clips they would need, whether from the navy or the first wave infantry, in order to connect the pieces of the online experience together. The interactive team had to wait for the fine cut of the television documentary before they had a final sense of what was available to them.

CREATOR’S TIP SHEET SUMMARY 1. GET EVERYONE ON THE SAME PAGE UP FRONT 2. BUILD VISUAL PROTOTYPES EARLY ON 3. CREATE MEANING FOR THE USER

4. BE IN CONSTANT COMMUNICATION WITH THE TV PRODUCERS 5. BE OPEN ABOUT WHAT YOU NEED UP FRONT 6. AVOID APPLYING TECHNOLOGY TOO EARLY 7. STORYBOARD, WIREFRAME, BEFORE YOU GO OUT AND SHOOT APPENDIX A:

Production Notes Did you shoot during the linear shoot days? Yes If so, did you use different crew? Yes Crew members: 3 Cameras: 2

Types of camera: Canon 5D & 7D Format: Stills Technical Notes: Software used: Blender 3D, 3D Studio Max, Flash, Adobe Creative Suite. Audience Metrics Total visitors: 100,000 visitors on the first day, and 500,000 in 6 months. Peak audience: First day, simultaneous to broadcast Bounce rate: 20% Average Time on site: 7 minutes AWARDS Gemini nomination FITC nomination FWA's Site of the Day SXSW Interactive Awards finalist Pixel award nominee and Webby honoree APPENDIX B: STORMINGJUNO.COM CREDITS Website Created By: Secret Location Executive Producer: James Milward Producer: Noora Abu Eitah Creative Director, Lead Designer: Pietro Gagliano Technical Director, Lead Developer: Ryan Andal Art Director, Motionographer: Steve Miller Developers: Gino Fazari, Michael Phan, John Callaghan, Darryl Cheung Matte Painters: Jordan Nieuwland, Steve Miller Writers: Christopher Gagosz, Noora Abu Eitah, James Milward Designer: Janice Tsang Photographer: Hugh Probyn Compositions / Sound Design: Lodewijk Vos Editors: Jason Lord, Jonathan Lall Research: Historica-Dominion Institute, Entertainment One, Windup Filmworks, Secret Location Music by: Daniel Pellerin, Mark Stewart Voice Over Talent: Ben Muir THE FILM AND CINEMATIC SEQUENCES Produced by: Entertainment One and Windup Filmworks REAL STORIES Director: Barry Stevens Directors of photography: Mike Grippo, Brian Kelly Producer: Christopher Gagosz

Associate producer: Jeffery Sturge Editor: Sean Kang Produced in association with The Historica-Dominion Institute: Project Manager: Jenna Zuschlag Misener Deputy Project Manager: Jill Paterson Researchers:Céline Garbay , Dr. Andrew Theobald, Sam Gojanovich, Shayla Howell Archival footage and photos courtesy of Department of National Defense (Canada), Library and Archives Canada, and US National Archives SECRET LOCATION PRODUCED THE SITE WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund History Television Canada The Historica-Dominion Institute Entertainment One Windup Filmworks Hard Citizen

Welcome  to  Pine  Point FEATURED INTERACTIVE PRODUCTION COMPANY: The Goggles

(Pinepoint.nfb.ca home page, December 2011. Source: pinepoint.nfb.ca)

Written by: Steven James May ABSTRACT Created by The Goggles and produced by the National Film Board of Canada, this case study strives to account for the international praise and awards bestowed upon the interactive web documentary Welcome to Pine Point. WARNING: This study includes story spoilers. Experience the documentary first. PROFILES The Goggles is a Vancouver-based production company founded by Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons who together make ”one normal human being”, according to Paul (personal communication, November 12, 2011). The National Film Board of Canada is the country’s publicly funded “centre for the creation of audiovisual materials” (Canadian Heritage, 2010). THE CONCEPT The Goggles set out to create a book about the death of print and ended up with Welcome to Pine Point. Paul Shoebridge, one half of The Goggles, describes the project as "part book, part film, part website" (personal communication, November 12, 2011). Intrigued by what he and Michael Simons – the other half of The Goggles – observed as the fading status of their generation's family photo album, Michael stumbled across the story of the erased town of Pine Point, NWT. A place he had visited as a child, Michael learned of the town’s demise by way of the website Pine Point Revisited (http://pinepointrevisited.homestead.com/Pine_Point.html) created and maintained by former Pine Pointer Richard Cloutier.

At the encouragement of a colleague, The Goggles pitched Welcome to Pine Point to the Vancouver Office of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) in 2007 as a stand-alone online story. The NFB liked it. As Loc Dao of the NFB recalls, the National Film Board of Canada worked with The Goggles throughout development to “re-shape the story into an interactive documentary, building on the lessons that the NFB had learned in creating its previous 11 award-winning interactive docs” (L. Dao, personal communication, February 10, 2012). While the focus of Welcome to Pine Point swayed for a period from being a project about Michael’s reflections on Pine Point to more of a documentary about what happens when economies fail and the impact on hometowns in general, Shoebridge notes that “in the end it came back to being a bit of a hybrid of those two things” (Shoebridge & Simons, 2011). In terms of visual style, Simons recalls that Rob McLaughlin at the NFB suggested The Goggles bring the same handmade approach used for their previous print projects to Welcome to Pine Point (personal communication, November 12, 2011). Simons recalls how glad he now is that Rob encouraged them use to use that style: That marrying of tactical representation of things on the Internet, and having real paper, real cut-out things, brought that warmth they (users) were looking for and I think it really complemented the story. (M. Simons, personal communication, November 12, 2011) As for storytelling structure, rather than opting for the Choose Your Own Adventure approach to creating an interactive digital work, The Goggles chose a more traditional, linear approach. As Paul notes, (I)f you were to draw the map of how

you go through Pine Point, it’s a line that has a beginning, a middle and an end. Along those points, you can go up a bit and down a bit but you never go off into a different line. (P. Shoebridge, personal communication, November 12, 2011) Michael explains their story structure thought process as follows: A story’s usually linear. A beginning, middle and end. Why wouldn’t we do it that way, since that’s the way it’s usually done? (Shoebridge & Simons, 2011) TIP >>> Have your story and concept on top and don’t let go of that.-Michael Simons (personal communication, November 12, 2011) TIP >>> As traditional storytellers, your skills are suddenly needed. You don’t have to let technology tell you what to do. –Michael Simons (Shoebridge & Simons, 2011) DEVELOPMENT Interest in Welcome to Pine Point started to gel at the NFB in early 2008, translating into “Investigate” financing for the project being allocated by the Film Board. Much of development was spent refining the parameters of the project. As explained by Michael: We worked on form for six months on this project. What if they (users) get up and go to the washroom or they’re at work and they can’t listen to it? That’s why that (text) narrative is there. If you just look at that text, you’re fine. But if you wanted to you could listen to it with sound and we think this added a layer. (M. Simons, personal communication, November 12, 2011) The idea of incorporating “visual footnotes” into the project emerged early on as a way to “deliver in a different voice a second layer of content that helps inform the main voice” (P. Shoebridge, personal communication, November 12, 2011). As Paul explains, Some people don’t like to dig through photos. We do. In some cases there were 50 photos. Some people don’t want to watch a music video from the 80s. Some people love it. Some people watched it 20 times. You can’t dictate what kind of content people will like so what we did is we made sure the main story was up top in the text. (P. Shoebridge, personal communication, Nov. 12, 2011) Paul continues: (Text) allows for an interesting and distinct arc. There are surprises. When you find out Richard is in a wheelchair, that’s an important part of the story and where you put that is important. If you went with a non-linear, more 3D space, people could skip ahead and find that out before you wanted them to. We felt that viewers like to be guided. It’s kind of a Tour Guide mentality – we pointed things out and allowed people to sit in their own space. You can’t force the thing because you have no idea what they’re going to do. (P. Shoebridge, personal communication, November 12, 2011)

The Goggles also spent development seeking out a suitable programmer for the project. Simons describes the process as being much like a filmmaker seeking out an editor (M. Simons, personal communication, November 12, 2011). The programmer would require an open attitude to taking direction and tweaking the project to deliver pacing and tone, something that a programmer would normally not have to consider. In the end, Vancouver-based mod7 were brought into the project. The final stages of the programming were handled by the NFB’s in-house team. By the middle of 2008, The Goggles received the first green light from the National Film Board to start production of the project. TIP >>> We always tend to push back on the robot. We turn off unnecessary interactivity, if we can. –Michael Simons (Shoebridge & Simons, 2011) TIP >>> If techniques don’t stick or make sense then don’t employ them, no matter how tempting they are. –Michael Simons (personal communication, November 12, 2011) PRODUCTION Michael characterizes the production phase of Welcome to Pine Point as a “dance” of pairing existing archival material of Pine Point into the project along with the original artwork created by The Goggles (M. Simons, personal communication, January 10, 2012). While the image quality of the archival photos and videos of Pine Point varied greatly, including low resolution media and third generation copies of documents, The Goggles chose to embrace this aesthetic and build it into the overall look and feel of the final project (M. Simons, personal communication, January 10, 2012). As explained by Michael, the dubbed videos and photocopied documents had an “authenticity to them, an innocent, naive quality” (M. Simons, personal communication, January 10, 2012) that worked well with the tone of the piece. In total, the production phase of Welcome to Pine Point took twelve to fourteen months in addition to three to four months of programming that included edits “right up to end” (M. Simons, personal communication, November 12, 2011). As noted by Paul, “we tried to build a space, with sound and visual and textual elements to pull people in as much as possible by surrounding them with the content” (P. Shoebridge, personal communication, November 12, 2011). Describing their creative process as something that “comes in waves” (M. Simons, personal communication, January 10, 2012), Paul provides the following example of how chapters of the project typically manifested themselves during production: There’s the storyboarding and the script writing and then you have an idea and you’ll talk about it, but it’s a while before it gets manifested in the digital space. For

instance, an idea that starts with ‘maybe the bird should fly away with the string’ means, let’s go get the illustrator, storyboard it out, get approval on the sequence, get it illustrated, then bring that to the programmer, communicating pacing and tone, then tweaking that until you’ve driven them crazy. Eight months later, the bird is flapping. It’s definitely not instantaneous. (P. Shoebridge, personal communication, November 12, 2011) The Goggles approached the production of Welcome to Pine Point by asking creative questions such as “what’s the best way to tell the story of the basement, to tell the story of what the town looks like now?” (P. Shoebridge, personal communication, November 12, 2011). As Paul continues, We (would) have to come up with things, usually starting from the point we were hoping to make, then looking to the assets we had that might best tell that part of the story. From there, we would add technique, technology or aesthetic to best frame the content. An animation, a pile of photos, a step-by-step walk through the town. All of that’s created in the end. Whatever we thought would be best to tell that part of the story. (P. Shoebridge, personal communication, November 12, 2011)

Programming challenges encountered during production included The Goggles being told flat out at one point by a programmer that displaying multiple videos sources playing independently on one page was simply “not possible” (Shoebridge & Simons, 2011). Paul and Michael then had to work with their programming team to find a creative work around that fit within the limits of the software but still delivered the intent successfully (Shoebridge & Simons, 2011). Though they started working from locked design maps, by the end of the project the programmers at mod7 had gone through eight to ten passes of the project with The Goggles to tweak the project’s pacing, emotion and tonality (M. Simons, personal communication, January 10, 2012). While Social Media often has a strong presence within interactive web documentary projects, in terms of building extensive sharing options in to the project, Michael notes that it “might have been more of a distraction because of all of a sudden you’re breaking the spell” (M. Simons, personal communication, November 12, 2011). As noted by Michael, what The Goggles didn’t want was to make a project “with a certain type of interactivity and then say, what movie can we make?”, preferring instead to “stick with the story and then see what is available" (M. Simons, personal communication, November 12,2011). Much of the success of Welcome to Pine Point comes down to the extraordinary creative relationship between Paul and Michael. The two have worked together for over a dozen years and have achieved a creative mind meld of sorts. As Paul explains, We have a kind of openness with each other which from the outside might just look abusive more than anything else…we’re able to push each other’s ideas around where it’s kind of fun and friendly but still make the idea bigger and better hopefully. It’s hard to involve a third person or anybody else for that matter. That’s what’s worked for us. That’s how we fell in love. (P. Shoebridge, personal communication, November 12, 2011) References Canadian Heritage. (2010, March 11). National Film Board of Canada. Retrieved from http://www.pch.gc.ca/pgm/flm-vid/publctn/2009-04/104-eng.cfm Shoebridge, P, & Simons, M. (2011, November 12). Welcome to Pine Point [Audio]. CREATOR’S TIP SHEET SUMMARY Have your story and concept on top and don’t let go of that. As traditional storytellers, your skills are suddenly needed. You don’t have to let technology tell you what to do. We always tend to push back on the robot. We turn off extra interactivity, if we can. If techniques don’t stick or make sense then don’t employ those devices, no matter how tempting they are.

THANK YOU TO PAUL SHOEBRIDGE, MICHAEL SIMONS, JENNIFER MAIR, LOC DAO AND MARCO AVOLIO FOR THE INTERVIEWS, INFORMATION AND MEDIA. THIS CASE STUDY IS DEDICATED TO GLORIA THE DOG WHO PASSED AWAY ON NOVEMBER 12, 2011. APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

Choco-­‐locate     FEATURED INTERACTIVE PRODUCTION COMPANY: CHOCOLOCATE MEDIA/IN SYNC MEDIA

Written by Steven James May ABSTRACT This case study features the in-progress, three-screen documentary project about the transformative power of chocolate by Lalita Krishna of In Sync Media. Through evaluation of the project's soft launch website and iPhone application, the study speculates into how these existing screens might best assist the emerging narrative of the yet to be completed non-fiction television program. INTERACTIVE PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE In Sync Media is a production company based in Toronto, Ontario. Lalita Krishna is the President of In Sync Media which wholly owns Chocolate Media, the producers of the Choco-locate project. THE CONCEPT The “real” objective of Choco-locate, notes Lalita Krishna, is to “highlight the issue of Fair Trade” as it relates to chocolate production and consumption (2011). Krishna learned early on with the project however that people do not want to be told about “another product that (they) can’t put in (their) mouth because someone, somewhere is suffering somewhere in the world” (2011). While the aim of Choco-locate is to inform and educate users about what is at stake with the production of chocolate and of the benefits of Fair Trade exchange, Krishna realized that this had to be done gradually through an online community (2011). By featuring the stories of independent Chocolatiers and their stores on the Choco-locate website and iPhone app, Krishna’s strategy has been to tap into a community of chocolate enthusiasts and to move them in the Fair Trade direction (2011). TIP >>> CREATE A PITCH TRAILER Interactive has to be an experience. The best

way to do it (is) to produce a trailer so you can at least get a sense of what that experience is going to be. – LALITA KRISHNA (2011) TIP >>>HELP USERS LOCATE WHAT THEY WANT People who like chocolate want to find chocolate. They don’t care about history. – LALITA KRISHNA (2011) DEVELOPMENT Krishna’s first step in terms of developing the website and iPhone App was to create a trailer for the project (http://youtu.be/pi1SxgV8Vo8). The goal of the trailer was to illustrate to potential funders the experience that Krishna was trying to achieve with Choco-locate. The trailer pitch ultimately succeeded in its objective and aided in securing development funding support for the project from Ontario’s public broadcaster, TVO, in March of 2009 (L. Krishna, personal communication, January 8, 2012). As for the initial scope of the project, it was at the recommendation of TVO that Krishna decided to limit the initial scope of the website and iPhone app to the Province of Ontario. TVO’s interest in such a scope stemmed from its mandate as an Ontario public broadcaster (Krishna, 2011). This approach was also of benefit to In Sync Media since it gave the company a realistic territory to serve (Krishna, 2011). TVO’s Christine McGlade felt that mobile should be the focus and that it was the ‘cool’ part of the project (L. Krishna, personal communication, January 8, 2012). While In Sync also limited the initial scope to Ontario because of funding constraints, in all proposals Krishna indicated that Ontario was the testing ground (L. Krishna, personal communication, January 8, 2012).

(An early Choco-Locate beta website, then known as the Choco Files. Source: thechocofiles.com) Instead of handing off the interactive components of the project to others once receiving development support from TVO and the Bell Media Development fund, Krishna hired an interactive Producer, Ramona Pringle, who assumed the creative lead. Krishna decided also to head directly to her target users and focus her energies towards conducting extensive focus groups with fans of chocolate. Conducting a total of four focus groups with “Foodies” face to face and online between April and September, 2010, Lalita was able to gain valuable insight into what connoisseurs of chocolate might be looking for in a chocolate-themed website and mobile app (L. Krishna, personal communication, January 8, 2012). Of the forty respondents to Krishna’s initial online questionnaire, fifteen were then selected for round table discussions. According to Lalita, her decision to use focus groups saved her months of writing and calling that would have been required to obtain the same insight into chocolate consumption obtained from the focus groups (L. Krishna, personal communication, January 8, 2012). For example, Krishna was able to identify four types of Chocolate fans including Health Nuts, Connoisseurs, Guilt Free Lovers, and Family Fun (L. Krishna, personal communication, January 8, 2012). As Lalita discovered through her focus groups, “it’s important to get user perspective off the top. It should be driven by the user not the Producer or Director” (Krishna, 2011). Coming out of her extensive focus group sessions, Lalita felt well informed of the user experience that she wanted from the website and mobile app. Pringle created the design document for a Wordpress website (called The Choco Files) while Krishna created the design document for the mobile component (Choco-locate) and storyboarded the entire project prior to reaching out for help from a software developer (L. Krishna, personal communication, January 8, 2012). TIP >>> BE PREPARED FOR the LONG HAUL Once you’re online, be prepared that you’ve got a baby who is going to grow up 19 years. – LALITA KRISHNA (2011) TIP >>>IDEAS MATTER The idea ends up driving the technology. The technology reshapes the idea, sometimes, but it starts with an idea. – LALITA KRISHNA (2011) PRODUCTION While Lalita had originally received push-back against her strategy of launching all three elements of the project at once, her plan was to use the website and iPhone app to “push the television documentary” since they would be completed prior to any potential film festival screenings and TVO’s broadcast of the television documentary (L. Krishna, personal communication, January 8, 2012).

In January 2011, Lalita hired a Toronto-based software development company, Hippo Foundry, to create the website and iPhone app that she wanted. As noted by Hippo Foundry’s Taylan Pince, Choco-locate was the first documentary related iPhone app and website that the company had been approached to create (T. Pince, personal communication, January 5, 2012). As such, their first task was to build an admin panel for the Choco-locate website that would allow Krishna and her documentary team to log in and enter chocolate information (T. Pince, personal communication, January 5, 2012). Krishna also wanted her crew to be able to post individual blogs to Choco-locate.com so Hippo Foundry built individual blogs templates into the platform (T. Pince, personal communication, January 5, 2012). Once the website was ready for Krishna and her crew to start plugging chocolate information into the site and to post blog entries, Hippo Foundry started working on developing the project’s iPhone app. In terms of the app, Lalita’s plan was to initially feature independent Chocolatiers in the Greater Toronto Area of Ontario (Krishna, 2011). Users of the iPhone app would be able to search for different types of chocolate, learn about pairings that go well with certain chocolates and find the location of stores where chocolate could be sampled (Krishna, 2011). The app would also feature weekly specials from different Chocolatiers in the Greater Toronto Area. According to Krishna, this feature would give a reason for users to continue using the app (Krishna, 2011).

As for Krishna’s vision for the website, the objective changed from the original concept of a stand alone website to a website that served as an extension of the app (Krishna, 2011). Choco-locate.com would have the same features of the iPhone app but would also be blog-based and would feature what was new within the chocolate world. The site would also feature the same weekly chocolate specials from Ontario Chocolatiers as featured by the iPhone app. In addition, Choco-locate.com’s blogs would provide users with behind-the-scenes access to the ongoing production of the television documentary and would once again help promote the App (Krishna, 2011). Hippo Foundry built placeholders into the Choco-locate.com template allowing admins the ability to insert custom graphics on the site, switching their location on the platform to draw attention to different aspects on the project, such as pushing a certain chocolate store featured on the Choco-Locate Facebook Fan page (T. Pince, personal communication, January 5, 2012). As for Social Media, the aim according to Pince was to make the platform as “social as possible” (T. Pince, personal communication, January 5, 2012). Facebook and Twitter integration were considered must-have share options for both the website and App (T. Pince, personal communication, January 5, 2012). While YouTube sharing functionality was also added to the project, Matt Rintoul of Hippo Foundry notes that Lalita’s original vision of integrating Foursquare was abandoned since Foursquare is less about sharing and more about checking in and earning rewards (M. Rintoul, personal communication, January 10, 2012).

By the Summer of 2011, the website and app were ready and in July of that year soft launches of both were made. Since the first soft launch, Hippo Foundry has made four to five subsequent updates to the app in order to work out programming bugs (T. Pince, personal communication, January 5, 2012). Additional event functionality has also been added to both the app and website, in addition to the inclusion of new chocolate stores and more Ontario cities. Hippo Foundry continued its work on the project into January 2012, including the development a mobile website for Android and BlackBerry mobile device users (T. Pince, personal communication, January 5, 2012). An early indication of the potential success of the iPhone app resulting from its soft launch came from an independent Chocolatier outside of Toronto in Cobourg, Ontario. Krishna was approached by Mercury Chocolate and was asked why their store wasn’t currently being featured. This response resulted in the store being added to the iPhone app and being featured by Choco-locate.com (Krishna, 2011). The soft launch of the website and app also allowed Krishna to aggregate user information early on. Users were able to create their own profiles, suggest other stores, and comment on chocolate. At an early stage, Krishna was creating what she calls a “Chocolate Community” (Krishna, 2011), noting she was “building an audience…so that when our documentary is launched we’ve already got a critical mass of people who we know we can push and tell them the documentary is out” (Krishna, 2011).

Each time a new city is added to the project, Krishna does a press launch to help attract more attention (2011). In addition to spreading word of the project, Lalita found that her media launches resulted in people at events becoming followers of the project online. In Sync Media has since repurposed the project’s original pitch trailer to serve as a promotional ‘how to’ video for the app and website (http://youtu.be/0tsm6gIc89Y) (L. Krishna, personal communication, Feb 10, 2012). As for the future of Choco-Locate, Krishna notes how she simply “can’t finish” it, Our platforms are all ready, ready to go, but they are going to continue to push and promote the documentary...We’ve also created a community whom we hope to nurture and foster and build a relationship with. (2011) In terms of monetization, now that the app is live and active Krishna notes that the “world is our oyster” (2011). Following the 2011 expansion of the app to include Montréal, Krishna sees potential for further expansion into California by 2012 and also Vancouver, New York and Seattle (L. Krishna, personal communication, February 10, 2012). Krishna has plans to keep the iPhone app free to download from Apple’s App Store and will instead bring on sponsors in different cities since the app now has value attached to it (2011). Crowdsourcing is also key to the app’s success since the project’s online community is continually giving new content, according to Lalita (2011). Each Thursday both the website and app are updated with new content, allowing the platforms to remain fresh and to increase the chances of repeat visitors (Krishna, 2011). While Krishna readily admits that the television documentary is a “stand alone” work in terms of the narrative and is separate from the website and the iPhone app, she does identify areas of overlap such as the raw food activist from the television documentary who is also a contributing blogger to Choco-locate.com (L. Krishna, personal communication, January 8, 2012). TIP >>> DON’T BE OVERWHELMED BY TECHNOLOGY Find people you know you can work with. – LALITA KRISHNA (2011) TIP >>> SOFT LAUNCH AWAY The thing about a soft launch is you can always have another launch! – LALITA KRISHNA (2011) TIP >>> REFRESH WEB AND APP CONTENT OFTEN (Updating content) encourages repeat visits. – LALITA KRISHNA (2011) TIP >>>APPROACH UPDATING WEB AND APP ELEMENTS LIKE YOU WOULD A SERIES Which content should (you) produce when, who is going to do it and how does it get done? – LALITA KRISHNA (2011)

CREATOR’S TIP SHEET SUMMARY CREATE A PITCH TRAILER FOR YOUR APP OR WEBSITE. DON’T BE OVERWHELMED BY TECHNOLOGY. SOFT LAUNCH. THE IDEA COMES FIRST. BE PREPARED FOR THE LONG HAUL. REFRESH WEB AND APP CONTENT OFTEN. APPROACH UPDATING WEB AND APP ELEMENTS LIKE YOU WOULD A SERIES. THANK YOU TO LALITA KRISHNA, TAYLON PINCE, LEE DALE, MATT RINTOUL, MARCO AVOLIOAND SASHA BOERSMA THE INTERVIEWS, INFORMATION, & MEDIA. References Krishna, L. (2011, November 12). Choco-Locate [Audio]. APPENDIX A

December 2008 – TVO development funds secured (for a television documentary only) along with OMDC SCI funds and CanWest Hot Docs funds. Development spent getting to know users, identifying target groups, pulling team together and conducting focus groups. December 2009 – Mobile and web documents designed at the end of Development. March/May 2010 – TVO production funds for television documentary committed. July 2010 – TFO production funds for television documentary committed. CMF POV funds also secured. September 2010 – Development Phase with TVO completed. TVO “loved” the mobile and website concept. October 2010 - Applied to the Bell Fund for Production funds. November 2010 – Bell Fund commitment secured. December 2010 – OMDC Digital Media Fund commitment secured. January 2011 – Production of web platform, iPhone app and documentary all commence. July 2011 – Web platform and iPhone app soft launched. August 2011 – Post-Production of the television documentary commences. Spring 2012 – Formal launch of web platform, iPhone app and the documentary. Production Notes Different crews for web platform/iPhone App and television documentary? Yes. Crew members: Close to twenty. Technical Notes: Software used: TextMate, Django (Python), Apache, EngineX, Ubuntu OS, Apple iOS. Audience Metrics (ALL DATES AS OF DECEMBER 15, 2011) iPhone App downloads: 774 (without paid advertising) New Visits average: 85.1% Website: Page views- 17,178 Website: Unique visitors - 4,288 Bounce rate: 70.91 % Average Time on website: 00:05:24 APPENDIX B: CHOCO-LOCATE CREDITS

Website Credits: Producer: Lalita Krishna Website Developer: Hippo Foundry Inc. Website Designers: Say Yeah Inc. Photo Credits: Hillary McCarrel, Lalita Krishna, Michael Allcock and suzanne Murdoch Featured Bloggers: Hillary McCarrel, Michael Allcock, Lalita Krishna, Pria Muzumdar Documentary Credits: EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: LALITA KRISHNA DIRECTOR/WRITER: MICHAEL ALLCOCK DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: STANISLAW BARUA EDITOR: DAN HAWKES COMPOSER: OHAD BENCHETRIT and Justin Small The docSHIFT Case Study Research Initiative was made possible with the support of the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund.