“Goa Hippy Tribe” follows a young Australian film maker Darius Devas as he uncovers the story behind the global hippy mecca that Goa was in the 70’s given there’s a big reunion of that scene that’s just happened there.

Expanded out over March and April 2010 with a series of video vignettes being released through a Facebook group. This is a new way of story telling that is taking broadcast into new environments where it hasn’t be tested before. For this project it is a documentary format. Traditionally in documentaries there would be a whole lead up research gathering and interview process that would never be seen by an audience. Then this material would all be culled and gathered up into a half hour or hour of television for people to passively experience.

What’s looking to be achived with the “Goa Hippy Tribe” is to allow people to experience and become part of the documentary process as they are seeing Darius as he is travelling through this event on-the-fly making contact with people to be interviewed, hearing new leads, gathering insights and taking on all the highs and low the whole thing entails. By using Facebook people can provide comment and engage in discussion with Darius and the others involved in the Goa reunion. It’s turning the documentary from a passive in to an active experience and building community with our audience.

Video does still form a key part of the event with a series of short form videos from Darius slated to be progressively fed into the Facebook group. But with the build up of audience interaction beforehand by the time video are released the audience will feel a far greater sense of community and involvement with the doco than they could otherwise feel from watching an hour of telly from their couch.

It was commissioned by Australian broadcaster SBS in colaboration with Freehand and part funded by industry body Screen Australia given it’s an innovative take on broadcast and delivering new ways to tell a story and engage with an audience on a far deeper level.

Please feel free to join the group to see how the series unfolded via the Facebook page.