East Doc Platform’s (EDP’s) Doc Tank, a development laboratory for documentary projects with transmedia and campaign potential, presented the five best transmedia projects yesterday at the Cervantes Institute in Prague. EDP, organised by the Institute of Documentary Film in association with the One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, took place in Prague from 6-12 March. 

A full tuition package for id w, an interactive documentary workshop in Nyon, Switzerland, was awarded to the Slovenian/US/German transmedia project Teslafy.me by Janja Glogovac, about the inventions of Nikola Tesla and his vision of a world in which nature and technology could coexist in harmony. Teslafy.me is now in post-production as an interactive website and virtual-reality documentary project, and is scheduled for release in July 2017. 

Four other transmedia projects, mostly interactive documentaries, were presented this year. The German project Pre-crime – A Predictive Policing Simulator by directors Matthias Heeder and Monika Hielscher is intended to raise awareness about the biased techniques that police are using to prevent crime. The warm-hearted 4GenWomen (Romania/Slovakia/Spain/Turkey) by Paula Onet is an observational project about different generations of women with different value systems living in the same households. Lithuania’s The Ancient Woods [+lee también:
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An intense three-day programme was held for the Doc Tank participants, taking them through all the stages of development, such as design, financing, user experience and augmented reality, offering consultation and guidance by Doc Tank tutors and experts such as William Uricchio (MIT Open Documentary Lab), John MacFarlane (American Documentary, POV Digital), Susanna Lotz (id w), Christian Popp (YUZU Productions) and others. In addition, within the Project Market, individual meetings were scheduled for the participants with international producers, programmers, and representatives of funds, festivals and media.

A lecture on designing, developing and financing transmedia projects was given by transmedia expert and producer Arnau Gifreu-Castells, highlighting the role of the executive and transmedia producer as the architect of a coordinated structure of media platforms and the person in charge of the finances. Consultant and transmedia expert Sandra Gaudenzi focused on the user in interactive storytelling: in transmedia projects, the author is no longer just a narrator, but also an architect who creates the rules, while the users have their own agency, which makes iterative testing of the concept an important part of this type of project. Focusing on the evolution of VR, Jindřich Trapl and Adam Široký presented an overview of the consumer-quality and professional cameras available on the market. 

All of the projects participating in the Doc Tank are also eligible for several East Doc Platform awards.