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Main Interface with all link & text types

Interface of default menu index (and lots of cars - don't ask me why)

Interface of map menu index

Cannot wait to see it live now…

Rapporteur de crise player - navigation by tag cloud

Synopsis

Since the global financial breakdown, the EU has to tackle the consequences of a crisis that is far from over and that puts the political and social cohesion of Member States and the currency union at risk.

Faced with this emergency, what can MEPs do to reverse the trend?

This web documentary is an insight into the European parliament, behind closed doors. From Brussels to Strasbourg, from informal meetings to plenary sessions, we follow MEP Pervenche Berès, rapporteur of the 
special committee on the financial, economic and social crisis. Her goal: to reach a compromise between the different political groups all the while finding a sustainable recovery plan.

During these days, we accompany her and try to understand the work of European deputies. We share their reactions as well as the negotiations in “off camera” moments right up to the plenary vote of the final report.

This interactive documentary invites the audience to think about the existing political power of the European parliament and its role in the construction of a social and stable European democracy.

Credits

More information: download Press kit (pdf)

Rapporteur de Crise - inside video clip

Klynt Editor Graphic Design Revamp Proposal by Brieuc Dupont - september 2010

I remember back in 2007, while working on Journey to The End of Coal i-doc (aka Voyage au bout du charbon), how cool it would be to allow anybody to create his own interactive documentary, and that it would make sense to create a “platform” for that (yeah, well the whole there-is-an-app-for-that-too did not exist yet). I guess this is what we have achieved today. Pushing the whole idea further actually.

What we came up with is kind of something hard to describe in words – excuse my french. The whole app is a mash-up in itself. Both in terms of interface design, features and distribution model.

About the interface

Colors, size, access, we have spent a lot of efforts on ergonomics. With Brieuc Dupont, our lead interface and graphic designer on Klynt, we tried to stay focused on not trying to reinvent the wheel. In other terms, if you know the basics of Final Cut, Photoshop and WordPress (or any blog publishing platform), it takes you about a couple of minutes to see how the interface basically works. I mean, we can certainly improve a lot of things (and we will in the next coming weeks), but let’s say it: the interface is quite user-friendly and fun to play with.

About the features

This is where we have been spending most of our time. The whole concept of mixing video, photo, sound, text and hyperlink editing features in one app is something huge. Still, it has always been clear, Klynt is no video editing nor audio mixing app or text editor. It will not replace any of these great tools we already have. Still, it should offer the minimum set of editing to make it powerful and creative enough. It does.

But not only. What makes it unique now is really the mix of such features with external media and platforms like Google Maps, YouTube videos, Flickr images, Facebook and Twitter to start with. We believe it really opens a whole new space of creativity. It is not just about making hypervideo (which is nice enough) but it is about curating the internet. Making something valuable with something else. DIY and Remix culture united.

About our distribution model

Well, as you can read in our pricing section, things are pretty straight forward. What we do now is Premium licensing for organizations. Why? Because it makes sense as we have been historically a production company working on ideas, authors, and users and storytelling altogether and that we want to keep it this way.

To some extent, what we have been doing with WWF, Terre-Net Media, TV5 Monde, EMI or CUEJ (the last two being journalism training schools in France) or L’Equipe is quite similar to what we have been doing and will continue to do with authors and journalists we work with for our own productions. What we do is opening our tool box and know-how and mentoring them in creating their own project, using their own voice, creating their own interactive formula. This is actualy a quite rewarding experience and we still love it so far.

Now, making Klynt available to freelance and students and a broader community of user is only a step away. Stay tuned!

First Klynt 2009 prototype (extract from notice created for Lord Chris Marker...)

So here we are with Klynt official V1 realease, almost a year ago after we launched the revamp of the app, from an in-house prototype tool to a versatile, professional app.

We have worked hard – almost 4500 hours to be precise in 2010 alone – to reach this first release that is loaded with creative features and a  brand new interface design.

When I say hard, I mean it. I still have a limited experience in software development but I have witnessed that when you mix the whole idea of agile development with documentary production stuff and fluctuent realities,  you can create a quiet extraordinary working environment. To say the least.

So I would first like to thank both the engineers, the authors, friends, partners, interns, consultants, institutions and clients who had faith in the project from the beginning. We have definitely come a long way already. And, well, we would like to thank you in public (private party coming soon too…stay tuned) with our deepest regards.

To Faith!

Cheers,

Arnaud

At Honkytonk (Klynt’s young mother), we have always liked to get our hands on new creative and productive tools. For me, it all started a couple of years ago with cubase, photoshop, finalcut, Indesign, flash and so on. I also remember a quite recent time when I would spend hours testing new software / engines for building websites (wordpress, joomla, drupal…), managing and creating communities (myspace, secondlife, facebook, ning, twitter…), hosting videos (daily, youtube, videoegg – remember ?, vimeo…).

Yet nothing about interactive storytelling (I mean using Keynote to build Journey to the End of Coal narrative was fun but, well… not a thrill).

So here we are with Klynt, a software in between Clint Eastwood and Klimt, Final Cut and the world wide web. A flash application we have been dreaming from the start to create interactive storytelling.

Now, we are anxious to tell you more. We certainly will. There is nothing more than making a long story short they say.

Arnaud
@ArnaudDressen @HonkytonkFilms