Documentary Swarm
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A documentary swarm is a technique proposed for creating audio/video media content that combines documentary film, citizen journalism and also, possibly, the theory of nonviolence.
The proposition is to secure a number of inexpensive digital video cameras and distribute them into a group of people who produce the footage that will later be edited into one or more packages of content. The raw footage could then be edited by a single person, a group of people, or edited into multiple media texts by multiple participants.
A single, modestly budgeted project could supply a relatively large number of cameras and an editing platform, as well as the necessary media. The proposed technique is intended to empower people to be able to tell their own stories in their own terms and through their own experiences, and share these stories in a compelling way with their own communities as well as a potentially wide audience. This could be especially effective in situations in developing nations where the technology required to produce media texts has been prohibitively expensive, and where production crews consisting of outsiders would not be able to accurately capture a situation.
The earliest reference to the idea of a documentary swarm is possibly on a blog by 'Raccoon' [1], although it is similar in nature to such projects as Zana_Briski's Kids With Cameras.
