TORONTO, Oct. 28 /CNW/ – PTV Productions and TVO are proud to announce the release of their hotly-anticipated interactive website Inside Disaster and Inside the Haiti Earthquake a first-person simulation about the Haiti earthquake and humanitarian work.

The Inside Disaster team is also celebrating two Canadian New Media Award nominations for their work, for Best Cross-Platform Project and Best Web-Based Game.

The website and simulation are companions to the upcoming documentary series Inside Disaster, which follows the Red Cross response to the January 2010 Haiti earthquake.  The web-based projects are based on footage and themes from the documentary series. The series premieres on TVO on the first anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, January 12, 2011 and continues January 19 and 26 at 9 pm.

With today’s launch, InsideDisaster.com becomes the premiere online destination for interactive and educational content about the Haiti earthquake and humanitarian work.  The website and simulation are produced by PTV’s new interactive department, headed by Web Director Katie McKenna:

“Canadians are deeply invested in Haiti’s recovery from the earthquake.  We wanted to create content that would help them understand why the devastation was so great in Haiti, how Haitians survived, and the specific challenges that are still hampering the aid rollout and reconstruction today.  Our website and simulation allow them to experience that complexity first-hand.

“There’s an increasing interest in humanitarian work around the world, and many people want to know how to get involved in the field.  Donors are also asking who is accountable when things go wrong.  The goal of our work is to help answer all of these questions, and more.”

Inside the Haiti Earthquake is a cinematic web-based simulation that allows users to experience the aftermath of the earthquake as a survivor, aid worker, or journalist.  It combines a provocative script from award-winning “serious gaming” expert and Co-Director Michael Gibson with real-world documentary footage to help users experience the complexities of humanitarian work in Haiti for themselves.

Co-director, cinematographer, editor and composer Nicolas Jolliet travelled to Haiti in January and August 2010 to capture original footage, photos and music for the simulation. Jolliet used inconspicuous camera equipment and his fluency in French and Creole to reach stories and locations unavailable to other filmmakers.

The Inside Disaster website was produced by a dynamic sixteen-person team, anchored by Technical Lead Spencer Saunders and Creative Lead Kirk Clyne.  The site also features a world-class advisory board, including humanitarian academics Mareike Schomerus and Tim Allen of the Development Studies Institute (DESTIN) of the London School of Economics; aid professionals Patrick Crowley (Tearfund), Carol Devine (Dignitas International), and Shelley Gornall (UNHCR); and innovation leaders Mark Greenspan (Achilles Media) and Morgan Clendaniel (Deputy Editor, GOOD Magazine).

InsideDisaster.com and Inside the Haiti Earthquake were funded by TVO, the Canada Media Fund, the Bell Broadcast and New Media fund, and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

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TVO is Ontario’s public educational media organization and a trusted source of interactive educational content that informs, inspires and stimulates curiosity and thought. Celebrating 40 years in 2010, TVO’s vision is to empower people to be engaged citizens of Ontario through educational media. TVO is funded primarily by the Province of Ontario and supported by thousands of donors. For more information, visit tvo.org.

PTV Productions Inc. is an established, diverse & innovative producer of multi-platfrom documentaries, lifestyle and factual series.  It is owned and operated by Andrea Nemtin and Ian Dunbar. PTV Productions works with broadcasters and co-producers in Canada and around the world, and owns a growing library of over 60 hours of award-winning and award-nominated documentaries and series.

For more information:

Inside Disaster: http://insidedisaster.com/haiti/
Inside the Haiti Earthquake: http://insidethehaitiearthquake.com/

For further information:
Katie Jeffs, Development and Communications, PTV Productions
416-531-0100 x 228 / kjeffs@ptvproductions.ca

Paul Ginis ,TVO Marketing and Communications
P: 416-484-2600 x2445 / pginis@tvo.org

Toronto – The nominees for the 2010 Canadian New Media Awards were announced yesterday in Toronto, and Inside Disaster is proud to share the news that we’ve been honoured in two categories: Best Cross-Platform Project for Inside Disaster: Haiti, and Best Web-Based Game for Experience the Haiti Earthquake.

A year in production, Inside Disaster: Haiti and Experience the Haiti Earthquake are interactive educational properties designed to deepen users’ understanding of the Haiti earthquake and humanitarian work in general.

The two projects are based on footage from the three-part documentary series about the Red Cross response in Haiti, Inside Disaster, original research, and photo and video shot by Nicolas Jolliet in Haiti in January and August 2010.

Both projects build off the success of Phase I of Inside Disaster online, a blog with original photo, video and written reports from Haiti that launched the same day as the earthquake, and continues to this day under the title Haiti Today.

Inside Disaster online is produced by PTV Productions, and funded by TVO, the CMF, the Bell New Media Fund, CIDA, and the OMDC tax credit.  You can learn more about the team behind the project in our site credits and advisory board.

The Canadian New Media Awards will be presented December 1, 2010 at the Design Exchange in Toronto, Canada.

Getting inside Haiti was the preliminary hurdle the team anticipated. From mosquito repellents to meal replacement units, sanitation tools to technical equipment, the team members prepared themselves for all possibilities. They also arrived with a week’s supply of food. “We were very conscious of not wanting to tax the aid resources and rescue efforts. We had to be completely self-sufficient,” says Nemtin.

Mahreen also covers the extensive use of blogs and social media to increase awareness of the documentary series Inside Disaster.

Back in Toronto, McKenna was busy uploading Jolliet’s blogs, photos and video footage to the documentary website. Since Jolliet couldn’t respond to people’s comments on Facebook and Twitter, McKenna became the messenger. Under her management the Facebook fan page, Inside Disaster, grew to nearly 4,000 fans.

Social media sites including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube presented a truly multi-platform experience allowing the re-purposing of content for a larger number of viewers. After an exhausting workday in Haiti, Jolliet would bring his daily experiences to the many people following his blog. “He would leave in the morning, go out, shoot all day, come back just as the sun was going down,” says McKenna. “Occasionally he was shooting at night, and rather than sitting down before a warm meal, he would be editing and writing all night long. Some days he would be working 20 hours.” Jolliet, sandaled and scurrying in filth, mud, and rubble, got footage and shot pictures.

You can read the full article here on the Fine Cut website, or learn more about the Inside Disaster filmmakers here.

Toronto - Guy Dixon of the Globe & Mail profiled Inside Disaster and the series’ director, Nadine Pequeneza, in this weekend’s Arts section.

The wide-ranging piece describes some of the background of the documentary, and how the team managed to arrive in-country in Haiti 48 hours after the earthquake:

“Pequeneza had initially approached the Red Cross’ Geneva headquarters and Ottawa office two years ago with the idea of filming disaster response. She secured an arrangement in which the filmmakers could get information from the organization when it would be sending out a disaster assessment team immediately following a major disaster hit.

That at least was the plan. But when the earthquake struck on Jan. 12, there was no time for confirmation. “After watching the news for about half an hour, we were, like, ‘I think we should book some tickets.’ We figured that even though they don’t know whether they are going yet, they’ll know in the next couple of hours. And these tickets are going to book up, because all CNN was talking about was how they were going to get their people in there,” Pequeneza said.

She and her film crew from Toronto left the next day for Santo Domingo in the neighbouring Dominican Republic. The crew crossed into Haiti by road, seven hours with a hired car and driver, which was pure luck, Pequeneza said. They hired one of the last cars available. A second crew departed Canada two days after Pequeneza, bringing such crucial equipment as a generator and emergency meal packets.

The director is now in Toronto editing hundreds of hours of footage for Inside Disaster, a look at how the Red Cross directs aid in conditions of total calamity”.

The piece also details how Nadine’s approach differed from that of some of the other news media in Haiti after the disaster:

[...] Pequeneza, who was a news producer for CBC and CTV before becoming a filmmaker a decade ago, says she is less interested in recording the devastation and more focused on the relief effort and the kaleidoscope of survivors and their stories amid the wreckage. She and her crew, including a producer who has been generating web-based content, sought to capture the unseen sides of the crisis.

“All the news media portrays is the fighting and people jumping over each other to get food. But I saw a tremendous amount of sharing,” Pequeneza says. “Communities share everything. The women would go out during the day, and the men too, and they’d have some people designated to look after the children in the camp [as] they all went out looking for food or whatever they could bring back, and then they’d share it.”

You can read the full article here on the Globe and Mail website, or learn more about the Inside Disaster filmmakers here.

http://www.cbc.ca/video/popup_audio.html?http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/8752/toronto/ondemand/audio/jan22hd_TOR.wma