I can’t quite believe it’s our final Future Documentary Sandbox workshop tomorrow, I’ve been telling all the project teams how fast 3 months of scheming can go, and all the way along I didn’t realise just how fast it feels until you’re on the inside and with them along for the ride. It’s been a transitional few weeks at camp #docsandbox as all our teams have moved into the final making, then panicking, then refocusing and making again all in the spirit of Sandbox experimentation. I thought a quick and very brief project roundup at this point would be useful.

For Orion: Behind the Mask, it’s been a pretty rapid change of pace, as a breakthrough at the last Sandbox workshop saw them changing tact and looking towards creating a more cinematic web based artwork. Jeanie, Judith and Sally have been doing the pragmatic and functional tasks of gathering together all the elements that need to go into the web build and making lists, as well as compiling all Jeanie’s research around Orion and fandom. The time and space REACT has bought for Jeanie as a film maker has been invaluable and in her words ‘a luxury’ as she has had the space to think about carefully crafting the narrative for the film and wraparound. This has enabled her to immerse herself in the Elvis myth and how the King was portrayed, embodying a myth of the music industry at a time when people were starting to connect with faith outside of the church. 

The Boron Mon Amour team are busy prototyping and testing. John has been interviewing bands from around the world called Boron via skype, whilst putting together a rough edit for the film, meanwhile Marcin is building the interactivity in broad brushstrokes to get a sense of how it might feel. Emma is getting ready for user testing and building frameworks for audience engagement and Mike is animating cockroaches, I can’t wait to see how this concoction turns out. Above is a shot taken from John Burgan's film.

Page to Stage have completed their shoot, an epic day by all means… See Sheila’s brilliant blog post about how it played out… ‘We got it done - just. Two recording engineers and all their kit, one binaural sound recordist, two camera people, one EyeDirect camera box for into-the-lens interviews, one hi-speed GoPro camera and operator, forty four musicians, several assorted animal skins (for the timps), a highly decorated Baroque horn, an 18th century bassoon with some bits missing, four orchestral administrators and a floating CEO, a birthday cake, Amanda and me. (and a very noisy rehearsal a few rooms away, which kept trying to intrude)’

The next stage is the paper edit, storyboarding and trawling through all the content as the team prepare content alongside Dean’s design direction and ideas for interaction points.

The JtR 125 team have been supported by advisor Catherine Catton from UKTV who has given the team some insight into the two main ways murder thrillers work on TV- either procedural (the mechanics of crime) or emotional (the horror of the crime.) They feel the playable element is best served by the procedural but still want to bring out the emotional journeys within, so maybe a bit of both will work. The look and feel for the game environment has taken a leap forward from these insights and they are now looking to complete the current early stage build of 1888 Whitechapel in 3D but not as a visually realistic location, but as a geographically scaled but accurate location with an abstracted art style in black and white. They sight this CG and animation mash up as an influence- ‘Once there was a king’ by Tytus Majerski.

The Quipu team now have a blogsite/ website to begin to start promoting the project, as their collective energy go into front end development for the interactive documentary and archiving the stories they have collected. Maria and Ros are really getting inside the testimonies of the Peruvian women to build this multi vocal narrative framework that encapsulates the shape and metaphor of the Quipu as a method of storytelling.

The Risk Takers Survival Guide is also developing quickly as shoot dates and locations are set, with the key characters lined up to feature in the film. Matt and James are playing with playing with how the participant makes decisions throughout the film based upon risks that can increase or decrease their life expectancy. This will be done through the ‘death meter,’ brutal I know, based upon your age, sex and country of residence, the meter will work out when you are likely to die. Final choices about content are being ironed out, but I can reveal two chapters, the risk of coffee and the risk of back-packs. Here's an info graphic from the facebook group I f**king love Science which has been influential on design aesthetic for the team.