A set of sophisticated tools to create, manage and publish interactive documentaries on The Web. A free-to-use desktop app built on top of an open-source framework for developing sophisticated iDocs. An author’s project launched with the generous support of the Google DNI Fund.
Fruit of years of experience in the storytelling field—a pet project brought to life with help of my dear colleagues and generous support of the Google Digital News Initiative Fund.
Storycopter enables journalists and storytellers beyond the newsroom to easily create, publish and share interactive documentaries rich in, mainly, new types of media (interactive video, word-level aligned interactive transcripts and silent-video w/ transcripts) but also well-established components (data visualizations, interactive maps). There are two main parts to this project:
- Documentary composer, a desktop app, an editor to create, manage and export idocs
- Idoc framework — interactive documentary template exposed and made editable in the composer
Storycopter hopes to establish interactive documentary as a new content type and create a custom-built management system for it. As such, it’s a tool that allows to compose, edit and publish web-based idocs as you’d normally do with a blog post.
The composer allows for creation of stories that depict chronology of events or geo-spatial locations and a combination of the two. All in form of pre-defined but flexible enough template.
The desktop app is a WYSIWYG editor that allows a great amount of customization of the idocs to cater for publisher’s specific branding requirements. Idocs created with the app are exported as cross-device and cross-browser responsive mini web sites that can be further forked and customised outside of the app.
By opening access to such a tool free of any charge we wish to attract storytellers not only from well-established publishing houses but also from small NGOs and news cooperatives from developing countries. As such, we hope to impact on the amount and quality of stories told in the form of interactive documents.
Selected coverage
- Storycopter App Preview — Youtube
- LEAKED: Early Storycopter sketches anticipate industry shake-up — Storycopter News
- First confirmed sightings of Storycopter provoke an outbreak of indifference — Storycopter News
- Google DNI Fund round 5 announcement — Google DNI Site