How Technology Changes Documentary
How has the form and function of your work changed with shifts in digital technology and platforms, specifically with the rise of social media? From means of distribution to fully-virtual film festivals, what a documentary is has been rapidly shifting.
According to Ersan Ocak of TED university, documentary adapts to developments in new technologies in a variety of ways. This includes "webdocumentary (web-doc), interactive documentary, database-filmmaking, transmedia, and non-linear documentary". This can result in documentaries being created with technology such as virtual reality headsets, such as films that are displayed in the MIT Open Documentary Lab and the VR For All initiative. Additionally, work that is distributed in an online space can lead to increased interactivity, as exemplified in Kate Nash's article “What Is Interactivity for? The Social Dimension of Web-Documentary Participation.” It is widely accepted that documentary often covers subjects related to minority groups and social justice topics, and the "participatory culture of the Internet provides a supportive environment for the socially oriented documentary"
Academic texts:
“MIT – Docubase.” MIT - Docubase, https://docubase.mit.edu. Accessed 26 July 2022.
Nash, Kate. “What Is Interactivity for? The Social Dimension of Web-Documentary Participation.” Continuum, vol. 28, no. 3, May 2014, pp. 383–95. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2014.893995.
Ocak, Ersan. New_forms_of_documentary_filmmaking_with. 2012, p. 7.
“XR @ ODL.” MIT Open Documentary Lab, http://opendoclab.mit.edu/xr/. Accessed 26 July 2022.