Vancouver Project

What is the Vancouver Project?

Like many good ideas, the Vancouver Project came into existence thanks to two things: (1) good conversation and (2) a few beers.

In this case, it all started with the recognition that journalists now have an unprecedented number of tools to tell stories in cool, new ways (think: live-updated twitter feeds, behind-the-scenes, multimedia blog posts, audience-journalist communication, viewer photo editing etc) – yet the journalism community has yet to truly put these unique forms of story-telling to use. That’s where we come in.

This project outlines a ‘new media’ approach to in-depth, visual journalism that we hope to execute at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. We are looking to partner with various journalism, multimedia and visual organizations to get the to gear, talent, and access needed.

Throughout the proposal, we reference numerous sources, inspirations and platforms by way of example. These show how various parts of this plan have been successfully done before. This project is not invention, but innovation.

Purpose of this Site

We hope to introduce you to our idea with the goal of finding partners, sponsors and supporters. This rough draft can, and will, be refined as much as necessary. Please consider this a starting point of discussion.

Overview

The Vancouver Project is a web-based, multimedia production (Las Vegas Sun’s For Want of Water) with an emphasis on ‘behind the scenes’ and live updates. The final product would be a single multimedia production which covered the Vancouver Olympics from unique perspectives (MediaStorm’s ‘Driftless’).

Moreover, it would be constructed of various individual stories, broken into chapters which share unique and untold and behind the scenes perspectives on the games (Luceo Images’ ‘Still Hoping’).

Specifically, chapters would be built around the different perspectives of people involved with the Olympics: athletes, press members, employees, local citizens and general audience members as they experience the Olympics.

This would differ from the standard TV presentation, which simply gives the viewer the perspective of the general audience. Moreover, the entire production process would be blogged and tweeted so that the audience could witness and participate in the construction of the piece (Newsweek’s Visions of China Blog).

We believe this would be a first of its kind, pulling ideas from numerous websites and building off multimedia platforms established by other multimedia groups.

The team would be made up of around 15 multimedia journalists with a special focus on photojournalism and ‘new media’ (twitter, blogs, etc). Ideally, the team would be a group of excellent photojournalists who are looking to bring a unique eye to the Olympics (Luceo Images’ Kevin German) to the various perspectives covered. The team would need to be ‘new media’ saavy (ie: blog, twitter capable), passionate about the project and united in the project’s goal.

Why Do It

The Vancouver Olympics are positioned at a unique point in time. It will be the first Olympics in which multimedia creation (video, photo, audio, motion graphics) is easy to accomplish thanks to video-capable DSLRs, small audio recording devices and the increase of online multimedia (a la MediaStorm, Story4, and Weyo).

Furthermore, we believe that there is a demand from the Millienial Generation for this type of behind-the-scenes access. This is the first generation to grow up with the web and adopt social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. We are trend-setters in this online social web, and as our generation leads, others follow around the globe.

This new social media paradigm has brought the demand for behind-the-scenes coverage and a participatory, conversational, product creation. Customers now expect explanations for how and why things were created, behind-the-scenes views, and immediate connection to the creators of content. This demand for behind-the-scenes branches out into all forms of media. Movie sets now require entire behind-the-scenes crews, etc. We believe this demand comes from an audience desire to break down barriers between the viewer and creator – making content more, raw, available and personal, while still producing at a professional level.

This behind-the-scenes demand is particularly prevalent in the photo industry. The instant success of The New York Times new photojournalism blog, ‘Lens,’ proves this. We desire to create the same type of ‘this-is-how-we-are-doing-it’ feel to this project (LA Times’ photographer Rick Loomis’ Iraq: News In Transition).

The Vancouver Olympics will offer a unique window to explore and test these beliefs.

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