Could the collision of the Internet and the form of documentary see the end to ‘comatose’ viewers? Peter Wintonick, filmmaker and cocreator of new media conference Cutting Truths, thinks so.

In the Internet, he sees the possibility of audience members becoming participants and ‘choosing where to go and what to do and how to use the information within one project; it’s not just one message directed down a single pipeline to a comatose viewer. The audience becomes an audience who participates, a cocreator, not just someone absorbing information.’

The day-long Cutting Truths conference, being held as part of Hot Docs, looks at the impact that convergence and interactivity will have on documentaries. It also confers $5,000 in development money from the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund to the winning project at an in-conference pitch.

Sara Diamond, artistic director of media and digital arts at the Banff Centre and coproducer of Cutting Truths, calls Hot Docs ‘the ideal venue to explore interactive media and digital technology and its huge impact on documentary.’

Digital technology includes DVDs, CD-ROMs, virtual reality environments, digital cameras, the world of digital channels and perhaps most notably, the Internet, which is both a means of delivering material and a component of the changing face of production. It is this aspect that Cutting Truths will concentrate on.

‘What’s probably very important to underline is that the focus of Cutting Truths is to look at interactivity and the ways the role of the author and the role of the viewer has shifted and is shifting,’ says Diamond.

‘At its most basic level [the Internet] is a marketing tool and a different delivery method, but Web-intended projects are the future: interactive, nonlinear,’ says Wintonick.

‘Traditionally, the way the Internet has been seen, especially in most corporate [applications], is as a one-way delivery system for marketing information. What’s exciting is that we should be thinking about it as a two-way interactive thing,’ he says.

Examples of this shift can be found at the Picture Projects website, which proclaims ‘toward a new documentary’ on the homepage. The 360 Degrees of Criminal Justice project on the site tells the story of young offenders by way of pictures, first-person accounts (from all involved, including judges, prison guards and the victims themselves) and webcams that give the eponymous 360-degree view of participant’s environments. The site includes a space for viewers to post messages and several quizzes, one of which tells you if you have ever indulged in behavior for which you could be incarcerated.

The Witness website, which looks at injustice around the world, is another example. The site distributes video cameras to organizations worldwide, which then take on the role of documentarian. ‘More of a bit-by-bit addition of information than a linear documentary,’ says Diamond. ‘I think there’s a whole other use [that the Internet lends itself to] which is interesting. [With] the 24-hour posting from a huge number of correspondents, the viewer gets more of an overview than from one person making a documentary.’

Barbara Janes, director general of the English Program at the National Film Board, which is also involved in presenting Cutting Truths, says the board is interested in the Internet both as a means of delivery and for its implications for content.

‘Our interest is twofold: how Canadian creators use the Internet to create new kinds of content and then how can those be transmitted to other people who can interact with them,’ says Janes.

And the emphasis is on content. ‘The NFB’s adapted to every new medium that’s come along. How can we use the Internet to deal with content in a new way? The Internet is such a multifaceted technology. At the same time it can be a delivery system, a production technology and an information source. It can be a medium in itself. That’s what makes it so confusing for everyone.

‘It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to think you could make short docs and post them on the Web and have people look at them. That’s not a particularly big stretch,’ says Janes. ‘But if you’re going to deal with complex content, how do you structure that in an interactive way? Or, is the answer to do it in the traditional way and publish it on the Web? That’s an option, but what interests us is how that could generate new content.

‘We are experimenting with content in terms of what is an interactive production and how does it differ from a traditional linear documentary. Everyone has their own vision of what a Web doc is or could be. We’re playing around the fringes of that area [to see] if we’re not going to follow the documentary structure at all or are we trying to structure information in a different way,’ says Janes.

One example in production now is ‘a subject that could have been done in a linear documentary approach – the occasions in history when the War Measures Act has been used in times of crisis in Canadian history. One could make a traditional documentary about the War Measures Act in Canadian history.

‘Rather than take that approach, we thought the subject lends itself to people making judgements. Usually what’s being expressed is the filmmaker’s point of view and the audience reacts to that. We’re going further. We’re asking people to come to their own conclusions in an interactive way. We’ll create a fictional situation that might call for the invocation of the War Measures Act, allow the participants to investigate and come to their own conclusions about whether it would be justified in that case and then vote. There are a number of ways you could do it.

‘This is just one application, this is one way of trying to get people to interact with non-fiction content – to involve them in a way that is other than having a clear point of view presented to them and they react to it,’ says Janes.

Diamond points to the work of a group called Blast Theory which is behind Desert Rain, which Diamond says is a ‘reconsideration of the Gulf War.’ In the virtual reality piece, which is being turned into an Internet game, participants are ‘asked to rescue a number of people who have disappeared in the war. They learn about the nature of war and the media.

‘There’s a lot of focus on understanding production in terms of what people are creating and how the esthetic is shifting,’ says Diamond. ‘There’s a sense of presence through some of these technologies that you didn’t get before and a sense of excitement that hasn’t been around TV since the days of the live studio shoot.’

And if nothing else, the Internet has the effect of putting filmmaking in almost anyone’s hands.

‘In the last decade, TV has driven doc in terms of funding and content and form, and I think the new digital technology can liberate independent filmmakers from begging for $400,000 every time they want to make a film,’ says Wintonick. ‘It can be as simple as small-scale documentary artists using those digital cameras to produce docs that get put on the Internet. It could be Web cameras. There is a tradition on the Internet – if you want to call that documentary – where you can for 24 hours a day become a voyeur in someone’s personal space. [It] goes back to cinema verite in the ’60s.’

Three projects have been chosen for the Hot as Hell: The Cyber Pitch session, which marks the culmination of the conference.

‘[In the Cyber Pitch] filmmakers are going to have the opportunity to describe the project and how it will use interactive media. We’ll be looking for creativity and effective use of documentary as a form and the way they’ve used interactive forms to enhance the medium and move forward,’ Diamond explains.

And, where’s the money in interactivity?

‘Some of it could come through combining cross-media applications, TV and the Web and something wireless based. [One] could put that together with a subscription service, sometimes there’s money there,’ says Diamond. ‘Interactivity is not a big moneymaker. We’re trying to figure out the economics of it. We’re in a shifting culture – we’re still testing out the different economy.’ *

-//www.picture-projects.com/index.html

-www.blasttheory.easynet.co.uk

-www.witness.org