On October 19th and 20th, our Honkytonk Films + Klynt team joined the Popathon a hackathon organized in Mozilla’s Paris offices. These were two days of intense brainstorming and #DIY about interactivity and storytelling. The purpose of this gathering was to create an interactive video prototype of an original idea thanks to code.
First of all, we were welcomed by organizers Gilles Pradeau and Philo van Kemenade into a wonderful and very comfortable place: Mozilla’s offices. An ideal place to stimulate creativity :).
Each participant introduced himself to the rest of the group, which was a good idea in order to know each other before starting the collective work. Afterwards, we were splited into 3 teams of 4 or 5 people. Usually, working on week ends is a pain in the neck. But this week end was a real enjoyment! Since groups were composed of people with various skills such as designers, coders, film makers, we all expanded our knowledge in a relaxed atmosphere…
Concentration ruled the place despite the magnificent decor which could have distracted us easily.
Well, we were quite stressed out 10 minutes before the final presentation of our project, but the rest of the time was really cool.
Three projects were presented. Perspectives is a device using the webcam in order to learn the user to take distances over what he can see on the screen.
Watch Perspectives presentation below
Livre-moi (literally “Book me”, a french pun-on-word which would also mean: “give me” in many ways 
was about assigning a random GIF to each sentence of a book.
Watch Livre-moi presentation below
Last but not least, was a project called Eyes on Syria It deals with the many points of view adopted by several international TV channels on the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Indeed, we saw the Popathon as an opportunity to make progress on one of our Honkytonk Films projects called On Screen Off Record. Even Rami Farah, the film director, was here to guide the whole project. The webdocumentary is about the Syrian revolution, taken from the point of view of five citizen journalists living in Deraa, starting at the very beginning of the revolution.
Presentation of Eyes on Syria by film director Rami Farah and the other members of the team.
Watch Eyes on Syria presentation below
Every project was very different. Having a prototype gave us pride on our work and faith in our various projects: it wasn’t just a “on the paper project”. The Popathon definitely reached its true purpose: work with different creative profiles and the desire to go further on our projects !
Perspectives and Eyes on Syria‘s codes are available in open source here and here. Stay tuned to KlyntLab to know about more hackatons we’ll be part of!
