watch now! detail...
welcome to our new series of encounters with multimedia professionals. alexandre is receiving usat his home in paris today. in 1998, alexandre founded upian,a production company active on the internet. it creates information websites, does publicity workand web documentary production. the first web documentary supported byupian, was la citã© des mortes, in 2005. it describes the mexican cityof ciudad juarez, which holds the world recordof women homicides.
upian was behind the creationof several famous web documentaries, namely prison valley. alexandre, initiallyyou were neither a photographer nor a reporter. still,you support journalists' work. what made you startproducing web documentaries? it's a long story.i created upian in 1998. in fact, i was associatedwith cinema producers in those days. the company has been involvedin internet activities from the start. our line of businesshas meanwhile been streamlined,
but i was convincedfrom the start that internet is the placeto tell stories. it's the most beautiful placeto tell stories, the most beautiful playgroundfor authors. i have always taken a great interestin information and the cinema. i'm someonewith a strong appetite for movies and books.i watch and read a lot every day. so dealing with documentarieswas quite a natural choice. the internet is the mirrorof the real world.
it thinkit's quite a natural process. when i started producing orself-producing internet content, because anyone can produce contenton the internet, documentaries seemed to bea natural choice, as they look at the real worldfrom an author's point of view. my job is to work my waytowards fashioning a producer's job. my job is to accommodateother people's stories and views. we'll come back to that. maybe photographers, photo-journalistsand journalists were among the first
to use the internet for their purposes.i don't know exactly why, but... i guess the digital revolutionhad something to do with it. when photographers sawhow their tools changed, practically completely, that meant that they got access to the digital world on the screen, and maybe that's when we started inviting authors to tell their story. the first people who repliedwere "couples" at work,
i.e. journalists (writers)and photographers. like jean-christophe rempal andmarc fernandez for "citã© des mortes". this was also the caseof david dufresne and philippe brã´me, miquel dewever-planaand isabelle fougã¨re. our close collaboration with patrick codomierof "agence vu" means we'll continue working with writers and photographers in the future. but when you launched upianin 98, you didn't know
that you would embarkon the web documentary adventure. what provided the triggerto make you decide on that? political awareness from the outset, in other words, for me,the internet is a political area. we spent a lot of time lookingat these aspects to refine our tools. in the beginning we worked a littlein publicity, but much less now. we worked a lot for the media,made interfaces for media sites, thought about training,which is always a historical job... we tried to impact the worldin which we lived 15 years ago.
i.e. take a stand on politics. the first time i used the word webdocumentary was in 2003-4 after an editorial experiencecalled prã©sidentielle.net. in '98 i had boughtthat particular domain and its name. my intuition wasthat there was something in it, at least around the presidentialelections of 2002. can you describe that experience? a rather extraordinaryeditorial adventure. somewhat in line with fanzines.
we said: the internet belongs to all, you can set up a media there, without asking anyone's permission, no commission, no printing issues... aspects that have somewhat disappearedtoday, but that's another matter. thanks to the trust of some friends, i got a small budget and some talents around a triptych,i.e. i built up an fmr media around the presidential campaign.
the triptych was: information,service and entertainment. information: editorial chiefsand journalists. service isa basic aspect of the internet, which is still anextremely strong component. the borderline between service andinformation is sometimes very thin. and entertainment,a soft term for the humor used, which in those days was schoolboyish, caricaturesque, etc. my models arecharlie hebdo, le canard enchaã®nã©... in any case, around 2002, the internetwas the place for providing
slightly different political views,so it was a very positive experience. we combined professional skillsthat are rather different, such as journalism, comedy,graphic design and also development. such professionals thenall worked together. in 2002, the nf won the first roundin france, with jean-marie le pen. this was an extremely importantmoment for our entire generation. and we were at the very coreof all that. i often give as an examplethe evening of 21 april... - the day of the first round.- indeed.
when jospin was eliminated. there was a message on one forumwhich i opened with alexandre piquard, who is a journalistwith le monde now. the term used was "guilty vote". withinhours, it received 16,000 replies. and 150,000 all in all. one message that resultsin 150,000 replies. this gives you an idea of the scopepresidential messages had acquired. people got organized and startedbuilding up political parties, sending out thousands of messages.
this is when we decided to open upour editorial office to everyone. this adventure provided the buildingblock for a great many people. so in the end, i was convinced that theinternet was a place to tell stories and to boost them. for what reason?i've no idea. maybe it gave me confidence,something like that. i started a kind of investigation to see whether my intuitionproved to be right. i checked out "portals",as they were called then. i went to see broadcasters and thenational center of cinematography, cnc.
i showed them our work and asked:"what is your opinion? is it likely to be aidedby the cnc one day?" for the people watching us... maybe you'd like to explainthe cnc's traditional role. the cnc is the national center ofcinematography and the moving image. an institution that has contributedto the so-called cultural exception. a public institution, paid with public moneys given to authors and producers,to help them make their projects.
traditionally, the cnc is primarilyconcerned with cinema. this is a rather virtuous systemand specific to france. it provides huge supportto creation and to authors. this encounter with the cncwas paramount. i realized there were people thinkingabout it at the same time as i. who not only listened, butwere themselves working at it. that's the trigger. you realizeyou're not the only one and that somethingis happening. i was the only one producingthis sort of thing for a while.
la citã© des mortes and thanatoramaare works that were self-produced, even if thanatorama receiveda rather small grant from the cnc, considering what the cnd is now capableof bringing to interactive productions. this is the beginning, this ecosystem, small bubbles beginningto surface... that triggered and resulted in the firstsuccessful programs we produced, programs that meettheir audience immediately. audience size,the number of people watching... - can you give us some figures?- it varies a great deal.
audience size, figures and the internet,is a huge topic. the first thing to say is that theinternet is mainly a niche market. the reverse of tv. the abolition of a - finally -ephemeral tradition in the history of the media: a large number of people who gatheredin front of one single channel. for decades, there were 3 channels,then 6 in france, so millions of people satin front of the tv at 8.30... the internet is the opposite.
billions of spectators, but also billions of topics. the audience is no longermeasured in the same way. i'm almost tempted to say:fortunately. so the questionof audience size is very complicated. because producers or broadcasters alwayswant the highest audience size possible. i think that's the wrong reflex. i think culture has everything to gain by avoiding to getthe highest audience size possible.
that said, i will answeryour question. it varies a great deal. the program which gets the mostspectators today is alma, and on the web we are close to onemillion spectators. we'll get there. but otherwise it's hundredsof thousands. but some programs aremuch more "intimate". i am thinking of the great workof philippe brault, whom i think youinterviewed beforehand, called "le jeu des 1.000 histoires",
based on "jeu des 1.000 euros",one of the finest programs we produced, and which remained confidential, because we feel at homewith this sort of confidentiality. it is an intimate work,a sensitive work. so it's several tens of thousandsto several hundreds of thousands. substantial figures, particularly for "alma", a very tough documentary. substantial figures which demonstratethe appetite of net surfers for this type of work.
so let's present alma.she's a child of violence, a girl from guatemala,who describes her life which is not really a bed of roses. how did this work come about? the encounter took placethanks to patrick codomier of agence vu. agence vu is active in the field ofphoto-journalism and well-known for its involvementin that field. a very solid agency. patrick has been interestedin the internet for a long time.
we meet up regularly to discuss things.and to look at his photography work. so one day he showed us the workby miquel dewever-plana. miquel was in guatemala then. so i meetpatrick and isabelle fougã¨re instead. this is another couple: miquel is aphotographer and isabelle a journalist. isabelle told us the detailsof this girl, alma, who was 25 years oldwhen i met isabelle. she had some of the photos miquel took. i was with my colleaguesã©bastien brothier,
who is in charge of setting upthe interfaces at upian. so, gradually we discoveredthe story of this girl. she spent 10 years...no, sorry, 5 years... ...in one of the most violent gangsof guatemala. she tells her story with extreme sincerity and truthfulness. so the end result was a very raredocumentary, a testimonyfrom an insider's point of view. you decideto listen to the baddie.
you decide to at least try to listen to someone from the inside. alma's story is totally crazy.i won't tell it here. i invite net surfers to watch it,but it really is an extraordinary story. i found isabelle and miquel's will topreserve this account interesting. in the end, it's an archetypal story. the story of a monster. a monster one graduallystarts to like and understand. this is a narrative stylei like a great deal.
the complexity of the human soul confronted with politicaland economic conditions... it is obvious by the way you tellthe beginning of the alma project that your role was not limitedto financing a project. you were involvedin the editorial aspects from the start. how do you do that? i guess many peoplecome and see you with their projects... ...and that you have to spend some timeevaluating them? what particular aspect interests you?what are your expectations? that's a complex question!
there are many irrational aspectsthat make a producer become involved. i think it's talent above all.when you see miquel's photos for the first time, you realizethat he has great talent. combined with the strong storyhe wants to tell. i'm here to tell stories. my job as a produceris to tell stories. there needs to be narrative strength which goes beyond the topic,if possible. a good documentary, be it on tv,
in the cinema or on the internet, is one that exploresa very specific topic, but also one that servesas a platform for another great story. when i said alma was the storyof a monster one ends up liking, we're well beyond the topicof guatemaltecan gangs. in the documentary alma, spectators identify with the figure, be they city or countryside dwellers. in any case, far away from guatemala.
but one identifieswith her story. things we all have experienced more orless. not necessarily personally, but she talks about her relationship withher father, studying, falling in love, losing her baby... these are tragediesspecific to her context, but they can also happen to others,in a general way. so, you need a good story. it's alwaysdifficult to say what a good story is. a good story is not a topic. i don't need a topic, i need stories,humans, intimate stories... this is our credo at upian.
when you look at what we've produced so far, certain topics emerge. we've been exploring things that reflect the toughnessof the world we live in, namely a criticism of capitalism,which i hope to be constructive... but we also try to understand.take prison valley for example. it's the story of the prison industryin the usa, but it's also the storyof a world going crazy. what kind of world is thiswhich makes money out of imprisonment?
a world where prisoners are sentenced to very long terms in state prisons and have to work for a pittance, building high-security cellsfor the prison industry. this obviously raises big questionsabout mass imprisonment. so, we've been trying to understandthe toughness of the world. but now i'm much more openin terms of topics. i'm quite inclinedto get a bit closer... ...to our own urban environment,scratch the surface and discover
what the great majority of people do. then there is a slightlymore pragmatic angle. as a producer you have to knowthe editorial line of the broadcasters you work with. it would be a serious mistaketo approach broadcasters with a story you knowis not their line of work. so you have to work on the relationship with broadcastersto be in line with them. - you're the interface... - yes.
that's a producer's job. a producer enables authorsto tell their story. to get there, he will accompany the editorial work of the authors and then provide the financing, the guarantee of a good resultin the best possible conditions. in france, one of the possibilities isworking with public broadcasters, france tv, arte, with whom we have aspecial relationship, and radio france. still photography occupies a lot ofspace in web documentary productions.
video a little less. why is that? is there a certain distrustas regards video? no, absolutely not. listen... i don't know which wayto take it at upian. i already mentioned a guy, sã©bastien. he is the globalartistic director at upian. he is a photography expert. so he sortof provides the bridge to photography.
he knows photographyand the world of photo-journalism. i am much more intuitive. i "devour" a lot of photographs,because i read a lot of newspapers. for our friends who are watching,even newspapers in paper format. so i'm quite focused on that: photo-journalism in the french press. that said, i'm convinced- since we did so quite recently - that photos, a computer screenand the net really work out together. but that depends on the usage.drawings too.
an image on the pc screen which allowsthe audience to understand a story within secondsbecause a photo is a story: this really works with a computerscreen, also because of its proximity. you're much closer to itthan to a tv or a cinema screen. i put photos and the internet and they really work. this may be of interestto photographers who think that to work on the net you haveto do videos. not necessarily. some stories can be told marvelouslywell with photos, others with videos.
obviously it depends on what kind ofstory you want to tell. photo-journalists have shownthe real world with a point of view for quite some years now. so there are natural "couples":the internet and photo-journalism. i'm coming back to almawhich you produced recently. i think it was the firstweb documentary adaptation for tablets. why did you do so? does this formatchange the public's reception? watching alma on a tablet is the best way to discover it.
but it came about by accident. when we started working on alma,the tablets appeared on the market, but they weren'tin as much demand as today. in terms of navigation,the principle in alma is that of a split top-bottom screen. you have the main screen i call the "confession" screen,where alma tells her story. there is something happeningon top of the screen and if you click on it,there is a second film,
a kind of curtain coming down showing photos and drawingsor video spots close to photography. this is more evocative. so the spectator can choosebetween one or the other. some people, including myself,remain with alma throughout. it depends on the moodand on the public i'm showing it to. alma gives you the possibility to discover the story in your own way. it took months and months to work outand to find the right format.
on a tablet you can use your finger instead of the mouse, so that can work. not only that:it adds a tactile dimension. you can touch the protagonist. it cannot be described in words.you have to try it to see. so the result was totally adaptedto the tablet, but that was an accident. at the last stage of production,we felt that this kind of screen was going to be the best wayto discover the film, although it's not a film,it's something else.
it works really well on a tablet. so well that it could inducean economic change... caused by a growing audience? no, because in terms of audience size,the effect was completely reverse. today's tablet audience figuresare very small. to be honest, i checked the figuresa year ago... it's rather complicatedto follow tablet audience figures. thank you, apple! we don't care about mass audience.
anyway, 1 million on the net, some tens of thousands on the tablets. that's roughly the ratio. maybe i didn't succeedin promoting the tablet versionof the program properly. what's more, the word "documentary" is practically unknown in the app store. that'll change.but when you typed in "documentary", only two programs appeared:prison valley and alma.
a clear response. quite normal, since it'sstill rather new territory. the app store still remains a placewhere you acquire services, my itinerary, my booking... or reading material, games... or films, but this type of hybrid work has not yet made it to there. it appears with children's books, slightly interactive children's books.
can you tell usabout your current project? a web documentary, without details, but just what you're up to right now. we've been working on a program which is a bit different in terms of its format. a two-screen programcalled "24 hours jerusalem". it derives from a tv documentaryproduced by the germans and coproduced by serge gordetof the french company alegria. the film length is 24 hours.
the broadcast starts on saturday at 6 and ends the next day at 6. not only netflixbroadcasts such programs! this film portrays the lives of severalprotagonists in jerusalem over 24 hours. there is a rather surprisingcollusion of content and form. only arte is capable of rearranging itsprogram schedule to incorporate it. so we felt it could be interesting to create a kind of documentary event. we're interested in exploring
something new like thatin the audiovisual media. it's a difficult long-term project, entailing international coproductions. we'll create a second-screenexperience in real time. this is very labor-intensive:preparing in real time, live. it can be watched on pc, on tablet,on cell phones. there will be contentthat will reflect what goes on live. this content can be rather protean: information on what you see,on the protagonists, maybe maps...
maybe quotes, geopolitical, historical, economic and geographic information... most importantly,it will be produced real time, with a crew of photo-journalistsand maybe philippe brault. a kind of direct cinema experience,with very short formats appearing, specifically with vine, the softwarethat makes 6-second videos on twitter. the crew on site in jerusalemwill make little films in real time during the broadcast itself.a completely hybrid program. that's one of our new projects.
another, very different oneis called "do not track". when you surf on the net you leavetiny traces without realizing. lots of tiny data points, which end up as a huge database called big data. some call it the oil of the 21stcentury. i wouldn't use that expression. i'm interested in understanding it from the viewpoint of the public,not the nsa's. how will it affect our daily life? we want to least tryto make people aware of it
and tell a beautiful story around it. how come google tells a father beforehis daughter that she is pregnant? stacks of anecdotes like that. we're are permanently showeredwith information. we're working withthe canadian author brett gaylor, who recently worked on the remix culture with the film "rip the remix manifesto", a sort of pro remix pamphlet. he's at home in the digital culture andhas a knack for telling a great story.
the format will be really great.another form and content collusion. telling a story is a classic thing. but telling a story direct, to you,the net surfer watching me... how to play with story telling thatcombines one to many and one to one? and does the reflection aroundhow to adapt it to tablets continue? or is this no longer considered,alma having been an "accident"? we strive to make all our contentaccessible on any type of machine. it depends on the program, though. if we get a story that can be completely
adapted to tablets, we'll do it. but it's not a dogma,not an overall direction. it will always depend on the story. but we will try to adapt it to any type of machineto read the content. these are issues that are extremelydifficult to manage, technological challenges which require a lot of work on a daily basis to guarantee a quality experiencebecause this is what we want to offer.
take "matignon" - maybe you'll indicatethe link - which is a photo report: how does matignon,a place of political heritage, work? we're doing this project with agence vu and with two photographers,paolo verzone and stephen dock. we're explaining in a slightlyamusing style what matignon is, but exclusively with photos,a very dynamic way of presenting things. it won't work on smartphones, though. but we've found a little a fun thing that makes people want to go and see it.
but sometimes it just doesn't workon a small screen. so our programs are always custom-built,depending on the story. one last question. can you explain to the photographers watching us what they need to consider if they want to submit a multimedia project to you? their story. their photos, and especiallya great desire to be on the net. it's more about agreeing withthe principles of broadcasting,
the wish to learn,the wish to be creative than story-telling solutions. interactivity and formatting solutions,split screens, clicks, no clicks... are defined together. what we're really expecting, butthat's my personal opinion at upian, are authors with good stories and a great desire to adopt internet values. that's the most important.is this specific enough? i certainly don't want any geeks!
no way! we want a viewpoint and authors. in the long term, i'm hoping for upianto bring out authors on the net. thank you for this adviceand the interview.
