The Wrong Crowd - Theory and Practice in Producing Documentary Online

In late 2000 the Australian Film Commission Documentary Online initiative commenced with a call for documentary projects that would explore the online environment in innovative, challenging and original ways. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation then provided the delivery mechanism via its ABC Online portal, www.abc.net.au/wrong crowd. The Wrong Crowd: Inside the Family, Outside the Law is a public history recounted through the prism of a bildungsromannarrative. Theoretical issues emerged around the nature of the documentary form and its inherent truth-claim as the work traversed the intersections between documentary evidence, history in the public domain and personal memory. This book recounts in three major chapters the theory and practice of producing one of the world first online documentaries. Beginning with a discussion of the form of the history-documentary and issues of history and cultural memory, the second chapter is devoted to building an understanding of the digital revolution in the moving image and its impact on the documentary form, with the final chapter being a case-study of the creative work www.abc.net.au/ wrongcrowd.