The prototypes from POV Hackathon 2 are online »

POV Hackathon 2 took over the Huge, Inc. offices in Brooklyn, New York, this weekend, challenging eight teams of developers, filmmakers and designers to create web documentary prototypes over two days. At our Sunday evening reception and screening, the hackers pitched their prototypes to a panel of judges – Ingrid Kopp from the Tribeca Film Institute, Terry Bryant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Paco de Onís of Skylight Pictures and Brian Storm of MediaStorm – as well as their fellow participants. Three teams received awards for Participants’ Choice, Best Prototype and Best Pitch. And the winners are…

Participants’ Choice: Empire

Empire consists of five documentary installations that tell stories about people and communities whose lives are still in some ways defined by the Dutch colonial endeavor of the 17th-20th century. Team members Clint Beharry, Eline Jongsma, Claire Mitchell and Kel O’Neill’s pitch prototype uses a diptych platform that allows the viewer to push and pull the screen’s boundaries to decide which installation and story they want to follow. Learn more.

 

Best Prototype: The Human Experiment

Christopher Castiglione, Mimi Flynn, Cameron Hickey, Chelsea Matter and Dana Nachman presented Stop the Experiment, an app connected to The Human Experiment, a documentary about the high-stakes battle to protect our health from the thousands of untested chemicals found in our everyday products.  The app encourages users to go beyond the film to consider their day-to-day interactions with untested products and chemicals and take action. Learn more.

 

Best Pitch: The Whiteness Project

The Whiteness Project is a cross-platform investigation into how white Americans experience their ethnicity. Their project will live primarily on the Internet and contain film and art-installation components. Team members include Dante Chinni, Whitney Dow, Chithra Jeyaram, John Kudos and Sumit Paul.  Learn more.

Congratulations to the award winners, and thanks to everyone who came out this weekend!

Follow the POV Hackathon 2 on the POV Blog. Get more documentary film news and features: Subscribe to POV’s blog, like POV on Facebook or follow us on Twitter @povdocs!

Published by

Emma Dessau
Emma is the Senior Producer of POV Digital. Since joining POV in 2012, she has produced new media and interactive projects including Whiteness Project and the Emmy-nominated Empire. In addition to helping to launch new storytelling initiatives for the series, Emma leads digital production and online outreach for POV’s documentaries on PBS. She helped grow the POV Digital Lab (formerly POV Hackathon), which is now a signature POV event. Prior to her work at POV, Emma helped develop an interactive city and community planning game platform ‘Community Plan-It’ with Emerson College’s Engagement Game Lab. She has contributed to several alt-weeklies and online publications as a freelance videographer and writer, and co-produced two digital documentary projects, Folk to Folk and The Story Store.