News correspondents and film makers are upping the ante in bringing true stories into the light for society’s consideration through collaborative journalism, interactive film and additional media assets mined from social media and the depths of archives to create immersive documentary experiences.

A follow up to our Top 10 of Our Favourite Web Documentaries we did last year, here are our current top 5 favorite picks of web docs that cover true stories while shaping the digital audio- visual storytelling landscape.

1. Out my window
FACT: 180,000 people move into cities on a daily basis and it was estimated in 2010 that half the world’s population live in urban areas. That’s about 3 billion people living on the earth’s surface dealing with life in a city. With an abundance of the world’s population living in densely populated areas, appropriate urban planning that rears physically and psychologically healthy societies while considering sustainability is a hot topic.

Czech-Canadian filmmaker Katerina Cizek created a web documentary to present a sample of who inhabits the concrete residential highrises throughout the world, their prized possessions, their stories and what life, literally, looks like from their vantage point.

Using a patchwork of imagery and audio, once you click on a location on the map, you can take a 360 degree peek through the curtains of a highrise home in some of our planet’s most fascinating cities  – with permission, of course.

2. A Year at War
It’s 1995, the growth of the information super highway is in full swing. Media analysts predict the death of the printed newspaper, and the question hangs: what’s in store for the delivery of news in the indisputable rise of online culture?

Fast forward to a time when thirty thousand American soldiers went to war in Afghanistan, The New York Times created a web feature to document the plight of soldiers from First Battalion, 87th Infantry of the 10th Mountain Division. Reporter James Dao went front line to follow this band Of troops from March 2010 to March 2011 and created something akin to a digital news scrapbook.

Telling stories from the 3 different view angles of life on the field, individual soldier profiles and G.I. generated media albums, this web space features mini video documentaries, grabs of Facebook status updates, email snippets, smartphone footage and photo montages of a snippet of time on the line for these military personnel in Northern Afghanistan.

Uniquely harnessing the digital space to cement itself as an integrated media powerhouse, The NY Times created an audio-visual, interactive project that captivates with the hard facts and raw emotion of life as a professional soldier.

3. The Prism
Presented in English and Greek, this collaborative documentary is a multi-dimensional collection of images, videos and that form a broad spectrum of viewpoints from the Greek landscape in the wake of the country’s financial and political boiling point in the Winter of 2010.

A hybrid mentorship program, media investigation and art project, friends and video journalists Nikos Katsaounis and Nina-Maria Paschalidou came home from abroad to their beloved homeland and recruited 14 photojournalists and videographers to document the resoundingly visible evidence of widening cracks in Greek society.

Following ordinary citizens of Greece swept up in the complexities of demand for change and the repercussions of sudden paradigms shifts, this project covers topics relevant to underground sub culture to basic economic logic. With aims of breeding a new age of highly aware multimedia storytellers, The Prism features twenty seven stories which create a gateway into the new era of feature journalism.

4. 17.10.61
A digital exploration of a dark day in Paris when the persecution of Algerian-French citizens came to a climax  on the 17th of October 1961, the uniqueness of this French documentary lies within it’s entirely logical and engaging navigation and arrangement of story-telling assets.

Created by a collective of urban artists that dabble with alternate cultural and political uses for technology, it recounts the events that unfolded when the then- head of the Parisian police ordered the attack of 30,000 demonstrators crying out for equality.
Told through eight seperate eye witness accounts which have been recounted by actors, the audience can navigate by character or by way of an interactive map of Paris which will take them to a timeline of video, archive footage, interviews with historians, newspaper clippings and photography.

5. Exile without end: Palestines in Lebanon
What are the repercussions of being stateless? Complicated and challenging issues arise from the absence of a concrete identity through recognised citizenship in a state or nation, and Canadian broadcasting entity, CBC, delved deep into the subject.

News correspondants spent two weeks in Shatila,  a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. Built in 1948 and measuring one square kilometre in size, it’s 12,000 inhabitants are made up of four generations of refugees without official papers.

A micro-state in itself, this web documentary can be navigated through an aerial map highlighting key locations within the camp, defined places of importance to the community. Short video interviews profile the young, the old and a sample of those that have cornerstone roles in this “temporary” society capturing their lives of endless uncertainty.

The post Web Documentaries 2012 appeared first on Submarine Channel.

When the Klik! Animation Festival calls on you to pick the best music video of 2014 from their two-hour screening program, you say, “Yes!”

Klik!’s longlist contained 37 kick ass promos from all over the globe. All harvested from an even larger pool of entries submitted to the festival. We came to the conclusion that 2014 was the year of the music video. Giving an award to just one was not going to be easy. But the 2Pause jury verdict was unanimous, and no jury blood was spilled.

The winning video, directed by Rob Shaw, checked every box. (Scroll down to find out more about our criteria). But it did more that that. It stroke a chord, made a mark, rang a bell, lingered on in our minds, while challenging our definition of what makes a good animated music video.

1. The Uncluded – Organs (dir. Rob Shaw)

Our big winner was this beautiful music video that cleverly combines a DIY vibe with a classic stop-motion technique. The works of Starewitch and Svankmaijer come to mind – two respected pioneers of the stop motion genre. The animation perfectly fits the song’s indie vibe, and it features adorable yet relatable characters, while never failing for one second to deliver a powerful and inspirational message: “donate your organs.”

2. Wende – Last Resistance (dir. Aimee de Jongh)

Worthy of a special mention, this beautiful and haunting promo by Dutch animator and recent graphic novel debutante Aimee de Jongh charmed us with its understated but poetic wintery atmosphere. We were particularly impressed by the incredible relationship between the music and visuals it establishes, making both of them shine when joined together.

3. Pelo Mono – Cortocircuito en la Selva (dir. Perles & Perles)

Tribal beats, brilliant use of colors with a hypnotic mix of styles, this music video constantly kept us on edge making us wonder what’s going to follow next. Mesmerizing in every way. Made by the small animation studio Perles et Perles, Pele Mono was the first winner in a Spanish music video contest that fosters collaborations between audiovisual creators and musicians.

4. Efrat Ben-zur – Robin (dir. Merav Nathan, Yuval Nathan)

The very touching story of a little robin bird combined with the stunning design delivered by Merav and Yuval Nathan create in this music video an overall incredible experience. The promo also had the best, the most realistic and most detailed character design from the selection.

5. Cuushe – Airy Me (dir. Yoko Kuno)

Anime on acid. This simply mind-blowing student work emerged from the Tama Art University in Tokyo. Animation student Yoko Kuno created an incredibly accomplished and fluid animation. This is what a nightmarish out-of-body experience must be like. With its surreal and haunting images, this music video commands your attention from the first hand-drawn frame up to the very last one.

Your friendly neighborhood music video jury consisted of Maria Dicieanu – curator and managing editor of our (now defunct but still online) music video portal 2Pause.com, Remco Vlaanderen, editor-in-chief of Submarine Channel, and special jury member, director and animator Sverre Fredriksen (When I am King). Now go and check out his work.

So what did we look for in a winner, you ask? These were our down and dirty criteria:
~ The video should be interesting to watch, stand out and intrigue (predictable is not good).
~ have high production values (measured not by budget but by the quality time and the amount of love that was put into it).
~ and, perhaps most importantly, the music and visuals should work better together than they would do apart (1+1=3).

Our thanks goes out to Klik! for inviting us to be part of their jury with Sverre Fredriksen.

The post Animated Music Videos 2014 appeared first on Submarine Channel.

By Erik van Drunen

Alas, only two Dutch films in the international competitions this year: Splintertime by Rosto (Studio Rosto, A.D (NL), Autour de Minuit (FR) & S.O.I.L. (BE) and Pepe Luu by Valérie Chang (AKV/St. Joost Academy) in the Graduation Films Competition. 
And FYI, a Chang’s new Pepe Luu short is currently in production at sister company Submarine.

It is always an art to prevent your personal diary from exploding, because there is too much to see and attend. How then to pick but five favorites? Premiers and retrospectives, it all comes together in Annecy – which is why there is not only new stuff on my list. My visit lasted only four days, and I missed the legendary Dutch party, which would have definitely been the summit of my five picks.

1. Long Way North

A standing ovation as long as the credits rolled for Rémi Chayé’s directorial debut. The Long Way North (original title: Tout en Haut Du Monde) received the Audience Award at its premier screening. Well deserved! A family film set in Soviet 1982, where we literally embark on a journey with the young aristocrat Sacha who tries to save her family’s honor. A very entertaining film in which the Arctic becomes a character in itself – depicted in beautifully designed vast landscapes. Painterly and in vivid colors we experience the elements; snow, wind and cold. A French-Danish coproduction produced by Paris based Sacrebleu Productions with high expectations at box offices worldwide.

2. Eden’s Edge

Distributed by SixPack Film, Eden’s Edge is a film by American-Austrian artist Gerhard Treml is a completely different experience. Out of competition, but the still images seduced me to attend the screening. It’s a story told in nine episodes – each episode consisting of one single bird’s eye view at a person’s personal habitat. The occupant tells his or her personal story pottering around. Sobriety is directive and only little movements like softly moving laundry on the clothes line catch our attention for minutes. The self-imposed objective of an office called O.N.L.S.D. P.S. Note the abbreviation!

3. Stacey Steers, Between Dreams and Brilliance

In this year’s focus on Women and Animation, a retrospective of the animated works of American artist Stacey Steers. Not trained as animator or filmmaker she uses different techniques as collage, xerography, mixed media and found footage to create dreamlike and sometimes eerie films that brings the work of Larry Jordan in memory. Festival director Marcel Jean calls her ‘the best kept secret in the animation world,’ althought her work has screened at festivals like Sundance, Telluride and in MOMA New York. No strong storylines but enchantingly beautiful imagery and imagination that takes you on a voyage into the unknown.

4. Fly Mill

This is what’s good about retrospectives. In the middle of the overload of competitions of the new, thematically curated programming Annecy offers you the chance to catch up with missed gems or to relive them and see them in a new perspective. Eight or more short films in a compilation program is not an exception at festivals. And sometimes these compilations make for a bumpy ride, however beautiful its separate ingredients may be. This prize-winning graduation film, made at the Estonian Academy of Arts is such a film. It premiered in 2012 and won a lot of awards, but this was my chance to see it on the silver screen as part of the program The Future is Woman. Explaining this beautiful film by Anu-Laura Tuttelberg in words does it no justice.

5. We Can’t Live without Cosmos

A very easy pick. Grand Prize for Shorts of the prestigious festival is awarded again to Konstantin Bronzit. Two cosmonaut friends try to do their best while training to make their shared dream come true. According to Bronzit, this film only got selected by a few international festivals in comparison with his previous films. We Can’t Live Without Cosmos may not raise a loud laugh, its humor is much more subtle and seems to carry a hidden message about love and friendship, wherever we are and live… It was also awarded the Junior Jury Award for a Short Film. What a joy!

The complete list of the awards

Top 5 by Erik van Drunen. Erik works as a curator for animation and film programs, nationally and internationally. He is interested in the crossovers between several media and techniques and in the possibilities for the future of the field.

The post Annecy Animated Film Fest 2015 appeared first on Submarine Channel.

Graduation season just ended. Art academies worldwide opened their doors and proudly showed the world the talents they raised. In The Netherlands, the possibilities to study animation have increased and matured the last decade. Animation is booming and it shows. Even students of Illustration are showing off their animation talent these days. How smart of them to broaden their scope. The creative industries sector likes creators who’ve got more than one trick up their sleeves.

1. Typewriterhead, directed by Eric Giessman / AKV | St. Joost

Long time complaint in the Lowlands was that animation talent was fleeing abroad. Nowadays foreign talents come to the Netherlands to study. And successfully, we can say! Typewriterhead is a great example. In a convincingly 2D/graphic approach of CGI, the German director makes us a participant in his character’s attempts to tame his stream of thoughts. The vintage typewriter that functions as the protagonist’s head (a smart metaphor, and very retro cool…) produces an endless flow of thoughts, dreams and emotions. Giessman’s website shows many previous collaborations with students and professionals, and it was a good choice of the creator to become as a director himself.

Read about the process on Giessman’s blog
website: ericgiessmann.com

2. Depart at 22, directed by Wiep Teeuwisse / HKU

What a struggle graduating can be. Wiep Teewisse changed course radically just a few months before the date… Depart at 22 is a delightful short done in delicate pencil lines and other analog techniques. The film shows in an associative way the fear of the loosing the beauty of one’s body, while at the same time revealing the beauty of its decay. Made in only in seven weeks, this film shows great promise. Especially if you consider what Teeuwisse can do if she has more production time. Or is this a classical case of tight deadlines stimulating the creative process?

Website: www.wiepteeuwisse.nl
More of the director: vimeo.com/search?q=wiep+teeuwisse

3. A Morning Without Coffee, directed by Jelle van Meerendonk / AKV | St. Joost

In an apparently gawky style this uncompromising film depicts a bizarre universe full of detail, weird twists and events, and tons of black humor. So much joy this young talent is able to evoke with a traditional drawing technique. A Morning Without Coffee is an absurdist love story about a balloon and a cactus, writes the creator on his Tumblr, but the film is more, much more than that. Nominated for the annual St. Joost Award.

Website: jellevsdino.tumblr.com

4. Going Aut, directed by Floor Groep | Willem de Kooning Academy

Floor Groep used the collage form to design the shattered view of persons suffering from autism. Going Aut shows a keen awareness of the possibilities animation offers to visualize the deeply personal, or give insight into the aberrant. Again, this form of limited animation – a creative decision no doubt caused by production time constraints – payed off well. In this case it brought the creator a rich tapestry of images that express the “autistic state of mind.” Just imagine the creator out on the street filming locations with a camera attached to her head.

The director is working on her portfolio website.

5. F*cking Traffic, directed by Koen van Geel / AKV | st. Joost

Van Geel took the path of comedy. Not the easiest path, nor the most trodden in independent animation shorts. A bald choice. Traffic chaos is the theme here, but Van Geel takes it over the top, executing the animation in stylized CGI, using slow motion and stretching the images. Although a bit adolescent at times, F*cking Traffic also feels fresh and promising. With study pals Jeoffrey van Overveld and Reinier Peersman he founded Studio Kubus. The trio is awarded a rent free studio  space for one year to develop their plans to “combine 2d and 3d graphics to make awesome work and continuously experiment with new techniques.”

Showreel: https://vimeo.com/132270360
Website: http://studiokubus.com

Top 5 by Erik van Drunen

The post Animation Graduation Films appeared first on Submarine Channel.

This platform was made for this genre. Or perhaps it’s the other way around – what better way is there to explore the nuances of a particular community than actually exploring it? Whether it’s a click through experience, a self-guided series of videos and images, or a user-driven site that allows viewers to upload their own content, the interactive element is what drives these stories forward. It’s a medium that requires trust; communities trust filmmakers with their deeply personal stories, filmmakers trust viewers to immerse themselves in the experience. When all the elements come together it’s an experience that offers more depth than could be achieved with video alone.

Hollow arguably counts as one of the greatest examples. (We wrote about Hollow many times before). And we explored the possibilities of the genre with recent projects such as Refugee Republic and Who Are The Champions?. For this Top five, we asked new guest blogger Claudia Dibbs to select her five favorite location-based idocs.

The post Location-based Interactive docs appeared first on Submarine Channel.

But we also discovered some really good new VR pieces. We encountered adorable flashy-colored kittens, co-created giant structures made from hands, and experienced deadly war memories. Our Top 5 from the #WVRF selected by Ashes producer, Corine Meijers:

HANAHANA – Melodie Mousset and Naëm Baron (CH)

Winner Best Interactivity at #WVRF

In the interactive piece HanaHana you (co-)create a world where everything is made out of hands. The setting is a post-apocalyptic looking landscape. What is great is that every next user’s experience adds up to the previous one. It was as unsettling as it was addictive. And I must admit, they had to pull me out of the experience because I couldn’t stop. This was super fun.

The title refers to the protagonist Nico Robin of the Manga series ‘One Piece’, who —thanks to the power of the Hana-Hana fruit (called also the devil fruit)— can infinitely sprout and reproduce body parts on any surface so her enemy cannot escape from her. HanaHana premiered at World VR Forum.

Where to find it: Not available on online platforms for now.

Chocolate – Lead artist: Tyler Hurd (US)

Winner Best User Experience at #WVRF

Chocolate is the perfect name for this colorful piece, because it has the same endorphin-inducing qualities as the silky brown stuff, filling you with giddy, nonsensical joy. I wish I could wake up in this feel-good universe every day. Better than a cup of Joe! Chocolate is a psychedelic VR Music Video for a song by the same name by Giraffage. In the piece, you are a god that throws cute kittens at his worshippers. Your hands are cannons and there’s… champagne. The piece was made by the acclaimed VR creator Tyler Hurd, who affirms in a Forbes interview that the sheer enthusiasm brought about by his piece led someone at Sundance to yank the HMD cable out of the wall, because he was “going crazy trying to get the cats.

Where to find Chocolate: To get the cats and the feel-good vibes, one has to probably wait till the end for 2017 for it to be available on VR platforms. No release date has been announced yet.

Arden’s Wake – Project creators: Eugene Chung and Jimmy Chung / Penrose Studio (US)

In a world where the sea levels have risen to extreme levels, a young woman and her father live in a lighthouse that’s floating on top of the ocean. When dad goes missing, the daughter must descend deep into the post-apocalyptic waters previously forbidden to her, embarking on a thrilling journey of self-discovery. She unravels her family history, encounters strange underwater creatures and explores unknown worlds.

According to Penrose Studio, Arden’s Wake is the prologue of what is meant to be a series. The animation is absolutely beautiful and raises the expectations for the series. The studio created the piece with  Maestro, a social VR tool which Penrose Studio itself put together.

Where to find Arden’s Wake: It made its International premiere at WVRF. Will be released on various VR platforms in 2017.

PS the image with the girl and the turtle on top of this page is from Arden’s Wake.

My brother’s Keeper – Directed by Alex Meader and Connor Hair (US)

This a must-see cinematic virtual reality narrative that immerses the viewer in the story of two estranged brothers – Ethan (19) and Jackson (16). Fighting in the Civil War on opposing sides, they unknowingly reunite one last time on the battlefield at Antietam. “My Brother’s Keeper” was inspired by the PBS primetime drama series “Mercy Street,” and its launch during the Sundance Film Festival coincided with the premier of the series’ second season, which ends with the same historic battle. Produced by StoryTech Immersive and Perception Squared, this film is anchored in historical fact and places the viewer in the middle of this momentous and extremely deadly battle in North American history.

Where to find My brother’s Keeper: Oculus, SamsungVR, YouTube, HTC Vive, Littlstar, JauntVR and Facebook

Now:Zero – The Glitch Collective (CH)

This image above is the only official image of Now:Zero that I could find, and it doesn’t do justice to the incredible experience. Now:Zero is a VR installation made for Vive created by students from the Master’s program “Immersive Experience” at the Zurich University of the Arts, who made it this in just three weeks. The experience dissolves the distinction between the virtual and the real by tricking the senses.

You’re in a candy colored room with a view. Outside you see tall buildings. There’s a giant fork with a marshmallow on the floor (both in VR and in RL). When you pick it up, the room changes and seems to come alive. Suddenly you are transported and you find yourself on top of one of the buildings that you saw out the window. It’s windy out here (an assistent actually blows a fan on you, which makes the experience so much more vivid). The wind and the visual cues motivate you to carefully step from one rooftop onto the next, being careful not to fall into the looming abyss (very scary for someone like me who suffers from acrophobia). This sensation is again augmented by a physical component: an assistent moves the boxes below your feet that represent the rooftops you’re balancing on. It looks pretty lo-fi on the snapshot I made,  but believe me, Now:Zero was my biggest surprise at the World VR Forum.

The Zurich University of the Arts was in charge of the production.

Where to find it: You might catch it at VR events. We’re trying to get in touch with the creators and we’ll update this space as soon as more info becomes available.

• General source for loglines of these projects: wvrf17.worldvrforum.com/official-selection/

The post Best VR From World VR Forum 2017 appeared first on Submarine Channel.

We delved into the wealth of apps and software that are available online to bring you the “crème de la crème”.

The plan was to come up with a variegated offer that would cover all the crucial fields of current storytelling, from maps to video games, from advertising to journalism.

1) Eko Studio (Desktop, Free)

Eko Studios is an authoring suite that can help you tell an interactive story with plenty of narrative gimmicks, such as the possibility to make choices on behalf of the characters. Moreover, it offers a brief online guide book to build a solid interactive narrative construction.

If you want to see Eko Studio running on all cylinders do check out their original productions like Timeline or Wizard School Dropout.

2) Klynt (Desktop, Paid but there’s a free trial)

Klynt is a tool developed to create interactive web documentaries, reportages and the like.

It has a steep learning curve but the price you have to pay to get it (a few hundred bucks) is a big incentive to not give up. The good news is that there’s a 14-day free trial.

3) Storymap (Desktop, Free)

Storymap is a mapping tool developed by the Northwestern University’s Knight Lab, a team of technologists and journalists that aims to innovate news media.

Creating location-based narratives is becoming more and more common for journalists and Storymap helps you do just that.

Besides maps, you can use the tool also to tell a story through any (hi-res) image. You could, for example, use it to make Seurat’s painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte navigable. You could tell stories about each character in the painting and allow users to zoom in-and find out more about the smallest details in the image.

4) Wirewax (Desktop, Paid)

Wirewax brands itself as “the smartest way to create interactive, shoppable and e-learning videos.” So, yes, it’s more commercially-oriented than other tools on this list.

With it, you can make your videos interactive with clickable hotspots (read: shoppable content), branching options and 360 panoramas.

Wirewax is a professional tool and it’s priced as such, but if you need to make a commercial interactive video, it’s probably the best pick.

5) Inklewriter (Free)

Inklewriter is an open-source tool to create interactive fiction with branching storylines. If you want to try your hand at story-driven video games this is a good place to start!

Inklewriter is intuitive, easy to launch and free and that makes it the perfect pick to conclude this list.

The post Top 5 Best interactive storytelling tools (Updated 2020) appeared first on Submarine Channel.

From Shamed by BBC Social

This year, our impact manager Yassin took our interactive documentaries Poppy and The Industry to Berlin to compete in the Online category. 24 Online projects from 12 countries that were invited to present. We didn’t win this year. But we did in 2014 with our i-doc Last Hijack Interactive and in 2012 with the interactive comic The Art of Pho.

Before we get to Yassin’s favorite projects, let me just explain that doing Prix Europa is a tough job. Only organizations or projects that received public funding are allowed to enter the competition, and that includes Submarine Channel. If your project is selected, you are required to come to Berlin and spend three long days cooped up in a cold room with 40 or 50 producers and directors from all over Europe. You listen to each other’s presentations, which are followed by a discussion. At the end of day 3 everyone casts their votes. All this is terribly exhausting but also extremely rewarding. You get to expand your network, make some new friends, but most importantly: the insights you gain from these interactive projects are invaluable.

Three days of presentations at Prix Europa. Photo by Mirka Duijn, director of our i-doc ‘The Industry’.

Now let’s get on with the Top 5!

What the Fake? / RTS (SRG SSR) / Switzerland

“The IQ of Donald Trump of 156 ranks him anong the ost intelligent presidents of the US”.

Fake news is one of the biggest threats of today, which is why this app from a Swiss public broadcaster is as relevant as it is useful.

What the Fake? teaches you to recognize fake news. The interface is similar to Tinder’s. You can swipe news articles left or right depending on whether you think they are true or fake. At the end of one of these Tinder-esque swipe-games, you are presented with a video of a Swiss comedian with a satirical late night show kind of vibe, who explains what was actually fake and what was not. That part was cleverly designed.

I found it very relevant that Radio Télévision Suisse provides actual tools for their audiences to learn how to distinguish fake news from the real thing. I think it works well to reach a younger audience, who mainly get their news from social media channels and who tend to stay inside their own information ‘bubble’. Fake news that resonates within a certain info bubble spreads fast and is hard to debunk.

Kudos for What the Fake, for its format, design and clever use of satire. The app is easy to use, convenient and fun.

Ramasjang Saves the World / DR / Denmark
Co-produced by BETAPILOT

Absolutely beautiful in terms of its impact. Aimed at children in the age of 3 to 6, Ramasjang Saves the World by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation creates awareness about climate change and it teaches children how to have a positive impact on the planet. In the app, kids can view content from the Ramasjang children’s TV channel and play several educational games. For this project kids meet a super cute bee who invites them to plant flowers in a beautifully visualized virtual environment on the app.

Along with the app, the broadcaster organized real-life events where kids got to meet with other kids and plant actual flowers together. Besides having a *real* impact on the world, it was also just kids playing and having a lot of fun.

Ramasjang Saves the World successfully uses gamification to create awareness around environmental issues. This project had the most public value for future generations.

Kidder and Shamed / BBC Scotland / UK

These are actually two projects nominated as one, but I would like to focus on Shamed – A 9-minute short film for smartphones told using screen captures only. It is a format that has been on the rise for the last few months with films like Profile or MarkyMark87.

Shamed is about revenge porn. A young girl wakes up after a night of heavy drinking. She scrolls through the messages and photos on her phone to find out what happened. When she is talking to her friends in group-chat, her phone suddenly explodes with messages. This is when she discovers that someone took a picture of herself lying naked on a couch, something that she can’t remember happening. A very moving story that gave me goose bumps.

Both shorts went viral in Scotland. BBC Scotland said they are working on a series of similar films. It was made by millennials for millennials and they succeeded in reaching this hard-to-reach audience that basically live their lives online because of its innovative format. But the project also managed to create awareness on a very sensitive subject, and that was the most beautiful thing about it.

Watch Shamed on Facebook

#DutchArms by Lighthouse Reports / The Netherlands / Co-produced by KRO-NCRV, Bellingcat, De Correspondent.

The creator of #DutchArms, Klaas van Dijken, is a freelance reporter who discovered that there is a substantial amount of Dutch vehicles being used in warzones. Sometimes on the ‘right’ side, but mostly by rebels and terrorist groups. With this project he has developed a website that traces where vehicles come from and where they ended up.

Van Dijken worked did this with the help of open source material and the citizen journalists of Bellingcat (see also this documentary by Submarine). Once there is a suspicion that a weapon is Dutch, they will investigate online photo and video sources to follow its journey through the warzones. Van Dijken initiated this project to give others the same tools in order to boost the transparency of the weapons industry.

This project denounces that the Dutch government has been delivering weapons to groups and organizations whose norms and values are not in line with those of The Netherlands. And they did this very well. In terms of public value as well as innovation #DutchArms ticks all the boxes.

Read the longread in English, here.

Obituary / DR / Denmark

Funny thing. We have to wait for a someone to die before this project will be released. I, for one, almost can’t wait. Obituary gives people –mostly famous Danish folks– a platform where, after they’ve passed, a film will be uploaded in which they discuss how they viewed l

I am really looking forward to the reactions of the audience, because this project breaks the taboo surrounding death by posthumously giving people a voice, so they can be remembered in a way they see fit. Not for what they did, but for who they were. Talking about death really reflects how people view life and the things they find important, maybe even what it means to be human or what it means to be alive. I could learn so much from these people’s stories. I’d totally watch these videos once they go live. And if there would be a Netflix with these kind of video obituaries, I’d probably binge it in a day!

The post Best Online Projects from Prix Europa 2018 appeared first on Submarine Channel.

In this article, we grouped 5 of the best VR experiences that arrived this year. Of course, VR is a very broad field encompassing gaming, cinema, art, and theater, so it’s particularly difficult to come up with a balanced selection.

We strived for the best and picked 5 must-watch/play VR works.

1. Half-Life: Alyx

In 2004, Valve’s Half-Life 2 revolutionized the world of videogames thanks to its bold storytelling, physics and graphics. 16 years later, Half-Life: Alyx did the same for virtual reality.

As The Washington Post’s Gene Park put it, Half-Life: Alyx may be for VR what Citizen Kane represented for cinema.

If you have a SteamVR-compatible headset, this game is definitely a must-play.

1. All Kinds of Limbo

When the lockdown drew the curtain over theater stages across the world, many productions moved online.

Some shows were just toned-down replacements of the real deal, others were daring narrative experiments pushing the boundaries of online storytelling. In the latter group, we find the National Theatre’s All Kinds of Limbo.

Using VR technology to craft the staging, audiences step into the performance space with the musicians for an immersive musical experience to the tunes of reggae, grime, classical and calypso.

1. Great Hoax: The Moon Landing

Great Hoax: The Moon Landing is a satirical VR comedy in which players fake a moon landing for the Taiwanese government.

“I wanted to make an interactive political satire about the Taiwanese government faking our own moon landing and show the world that we can be ‘great’ too,” said director John Hsu, “you, the audience, are going to become ‘the first Taiwanese astronaut landing on the moon.’ If we cannot solve actual problems on Earth, we can always stun everyone with a spectacular show.”

Grat Hoax: The Moon Landing can still be found at festivals around the world.

1. Dreams PSVR

Media Molecule’s Dreams is a game that allows you to create other games. It was launched back in February and it quickly became a favorite of every budding game developer.

In July, Media Molecule added support for PlayStation VR bringing the game to the next level in terms of immersiveness and seamless interaction.

1. The Hangman at Home

What does the hangman think about when he goes home at night from work? The Hangman at Home is an interactive animated experience exploring themes surrounding acknowledgment and the awkward intimacy of humanness. It’s based on the poem by the iconic Carl Sandburg from Smoke & Steel (1922).

The Hangman at Home was the Grand Jury Prize winner of Best VR Immersive Work at the international Venice Film Festival 2020 and it’s one of the most compelling pieces of this year’s “serious” VR.

Credit header image: Media Molecule 

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