There are two main stages in the life of a web documentary. That can be brief instants of grace and some terrible bugs. Either/or – or both.
Grading – or the magic of colours at work.
Mixing – or the magic of sound editing at work.
Prison Valley has got these over and done with in the last few days – for the film part of the web documentary anyway. The French and American voiceovers have been recorded. Just got to find the German voice. How should we put this? We’re almost there. Exhausted. Thrilled. Anxious. Excited.
Ah yes, back to the film and my big, big piece of news is that the narrative version of Prison Valley will also be broadcast on… Arte TV station. The programming commission decided that this week. So Prison Valley will be web and TV – but still a documentary. With some interaction between the two broadcasting modes (shhh for the moment though).
From now on the whole team (writers/directors & Upian developers) will concentrate on the interactive part(s) of Prison Valley. And that’s a lot of work. A lot of craziness. Don’t believe the hype: the only thing flash about Flash is its name. The damn thing is so refined and so complicated – and so time-consuming. But when it works, by god it works.
Otherwise, there’s some good news on the festival front. Arte and the DocLab are going to present Prison Valley this week at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. Our web doc has also been selected for the Input festival, an international gathering of state television channels. That’s in Budapest, from 8th to 10th May.
Watch this space for my next post about the narrative issues raised by the web documentary genre. And our further adventures
See you soon!