Guardian Firestorm film about Tasmanian bushfire in competition
Guardian Firestorm film about Tasmanian bushfire in competition
05 June 2013
published by www.guardian.co.uk
Australia — Interactive project about the plight of the Holmes family is in official selection at Sheffield’s Doc/Fest
Firestorm, the Guardian’s groundbreaking multimedia project about a catastrophic bushfire that devastated the small Tasmanian town of Dunalley, has been selected for competition at the prestigious Sheffield documentary festival, Doc/Fest, which runs next week.
The Guardian’s half-hour, online experience, which blends longform writing, video documentary, audio material and interactive elements, will be a permanent installation at the event, one of the world’s top three documentary festivals, and is also in official competition for its Innovation Award.
Produced to coincide with the launch of Guardian Australia, Firestorm was inspired by the now iconic photos taken by Tim Holmes of his wife Tammy and five grandchildren sheltering under a jetty from the flames that destroyed their home.
Telling the story of the family and the town that day, as well as exploring why such disastrous fires happen and how, as the climate changes, they are becoming increasingly difficult to fight, the project has won widespread acclaim from both media professionals and a general audience.
Peter Bale, head of digital at CNN, tweeted that “one day all journalism will look like this”; Jay Rosen, an associate professor of journalism at New York University called it “impressive”; and Jim Roberts, executive editor of Reuters Digital, described it as a “wonderful multimedia piece”. The Firestorm link has been tweeted 2,700 times.
David Sanchirico, a US editorial producer for Major League Baseball called it “an amazing achievement in interactive journalism”. Bryan O’Brien, deputy picture editor of the Irish Times, said it was “just an exquisite piece of storytelling via new media”. Robin Powell, executive director of Ember Television, described it as “a unique and pioneering piece of multimedia journalism”.
The authoritative US Poynter Institute of journalism interviewed Francesca Panetta, the Guardian’s special projects editor of interactive storytelling projects , and Jonathan Richards, its interactive editor, and described Firestorm as “remarkable for a number of reasons”, including “the stellar video images and the subtle way that video is used behind the written story”.
