The MIT Open Documentary Lab brings technologists, storytellers, and scholars together to advance the new arts of documentary . In November 23, 2013 the MIT Lab has launched_docubase at IDFA festival. Few things can compete with the emergence of a new media practice for sheer innovation and unpredictability. Conventions, orthodoxies and routine have not yet set in. Virtually anything is possible. Consider the earliest years of film, radio and television, when media makers engaged in unparalleled levels of experimentation thanks to the absence of rules. Today, this untamed creative fervor can be found in the new documentary: a fast-emerging form that includes interactive, participatory and community-created fact-based storytelling. 'Unruly' better describes the types of documentaries that are gathered in _docubase. Interactive, collaborative, location-based, community-created, parts of larger trans-media experiences… the projects gathered in _docubase defy easy categorization. They are made by and with communities, journalists, citizen-activists, film and video makers, game-designers, community organizers, data-visualizers and ordinary people. Some production teams model their credits on the conventions of film, others on games, and still others invent new ways of describing their work. Why so complicated? Because we are witnessing a rare moment that is in equal parts creative and inchoate. We will explore together how _docubase offers multiple ways of bringing order to this complexity.

1. Andrea Parisi
24.04.2014, EDUCAFE, METID – Politecnico di Milano
Get social with collaborative
movie-making
_docubase

2. MIT Open Documentary Lab
The MIT Open Documentary Lab brings technologists, storytellers, and scholars together
to advance the new arts of documentary.
In November 23, 2013 the MIT Lab has launched_docubase (beta) at IDFA festival.
William Uricchio
Professor of Comparative Media Studies
Principal Investigator (Utrecht University - Netherlands)
Sarah Wolozin
Director

3. MIT and Partners
In affiliation with IDFA and National Film Board of CanadaA project of MIT and CMSW
Supported by National Endowment for the ARTS
Powered by

4. Moments of innovation
MIT’s Open Documentary Lab
and IDFA’s DocLab have joined
together to put the long story of
documentary innovation into
perspective, and to speculate
about its future.
We take an expansive view of
documentary, and are above all
interested in the pas de deux
between representation and
technology, and the resulting
capacity to see the world with
new eyes.

5. Moments of innovation

6. Documentaries today
Few things can compete with the emergence of a new media practice for sheer innovation
and unpredictability. Conventions, orthodoxies and routine have not yet set in. Virtually
anything is possible.
Consider the earliest years of film, radio and television, when media makers engaged in
unparalleled levels of experimentation thanks to the absence of rules.
Today,
this untamed creative fervor can be found in the new documentary:
a fast-emerging form that includes interactive, participatory and community-created
fact-based storytelling.

7. “UNRULY” Documentaries
 Interactive, collaborative, location-based, community-created, parts of larger trans-
media experiences.
 They are made by and with communities, journalists, citizen-activists, film and video
makers, game-designers, community organizers, data-visualizers and ordinary people.
 Some production teams model their credits on the conventions of film, others on
games, and still others invent new ways of describing their work.
Why so complicated?
“Because we are witnessing a rare moment that is in equal parts creative and inchoate.”

8. _docubase
_docubase offers multiple ways of bringing order to this complexity

9. _docubase
A large number of projects cataloged in a database updated and evolving (148)
No video, app or software is actually on the platform
Detailed information sheet for each project
An expansive set of tags (metadata) to access each project.
These tags permit users to organize the database their way, creating from it new collections, pathways and
patterns of coherence.
Suggestions from _docubase’s users for alternate and perhaps better tags.
Language matters
“we will study how the _docubase community deploys language, including user-generated terms, seeking
ways to enhance communication across the field’s many disciplinary divides.”
Playlist
Curation also plays an important role in opening up and bringing order to the
database.
Different views and lists of projects

10. _examples
CLOUDS RGBDToolkit
24 Hours Berlin on Sept. 5, 2008
Faces of Facebook bird’s eye view
Star Wars Uncut A New Hope, into 15-second scenes

11. explore inside _docubase…
http://docubase.mit.edu

12. CURATORS, CREDITS and CONTACTS
www.facebook.com/MITOpenDocLab
twitter.com/opendoclab
docubase.mit.edu/contact/
www.youtube.com/user/MIT
www.youtube.com/user/MITNewsOffice

13. One Day in Boston (11 American cities)
http://vimeo.com/88190401

14. Thanks.
WEB SITE:
http://docubase.mit.edu/
http://opendoclab.mit.edu/
http://i-docs.org/
http://www.opendocumentaries.com/
http://filmmakermagazine.com
http://gamelab.mit.edu/
http://arts.gov/
http://www.indiewire.com/
http://cmsw.mit.edu/
http://onedayinboston.org/
http://momentsofinnovation.mit.edu/
examples:
http://docubase.mit.edu/project/star-wars-uncut
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w44cdIOor7E
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1636630114/clouds-interactive-documentary
http://app.thefacesoffacebook.com
http://www.zeroone.de/zero/index.php?id=450
Links