A transmedia documentary in motion
From 2010 through 2014, the legacy Lunch Love Community project became a web-based path-breaking documentary short film series for “watch and share” online distribution, focusing on new and classic forms of public engagement.
We started with a simple, user-friendly website to invite viewers in and make them comfortable. We focused on luscious and bold imagery and clear descriptors with a minimum of visual clutter. The shorts could be watched on the website or on our You Tube channel. With the programming code available, we offered the films to anyone who wanted to download them – “watch and share” was our way to offer our media to anyone who wanted to share it in their world.
In these early years, we anticipated and experimented with bringing the films to audiences in a variety of viewing platforms – in theatrical venues, our community-based “media socials,” on laptops, phones and tablets.
This awareness of media mobility led us to experiment with creation, sequencing and the interrelationships among the short films – telling the story with a mosaic approach. Our participatory approach brought in thousands of viewers from around the world, and by engaging with people in a personal way, the open-ended story evolved into several unique directions.
By 2014, the series was completed with twelve short episodes that tell the story of Lunch Love Community from a variety of vantage points.
To release the final project in an archival form, we designed an interactive DVD in which the viewer could choose how to watch the films: in curated programs of four shorts around the themes of heart, body and mind; or individually and all together continuously. We also designed a discussion guide with questions to spark dialogue around the questions the project deals with.
In 2015, the original “watch and share” project site has become a “legacy site.” We think it is an important historic document of a time and place in documentary history. You may visit the archived original site HERE.
