Documentaries and Their Companions

August 12, 2021 4:32 PM

You've watched/listened to a documentary which makes artful use of archival and contemporary materials. This documentary also has a companion web site which highlights many of the materials in question. The site's design/organization makes these things accessible to both existing fans and neophytes. As someone currently working on a major doc project, please recommend your favorite site(s) along those lines for inspiration!
posted by mykescipark to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

Hart Island, an American Cemetery, and the website of The Hart Island Project. The website is a thorough and accessible introduction to this potter's field near City Island in NYC. (Note: mass graves and hard stories; Hart Island Project previously.)
posted by miles per flower at 5:23 PM on August 12, 2021

The 99% Invisible site does a great job of this. It's a podcast about design, then does blog posts based on the episode with the visual element highlighted.
posted by General Malaise at 5:47 PM on August 12, 2021

A podcast called "Cold" by Dave Cawley at KSL radio. Cawley covers the Susan Powell cold case murder. There is a staggering amount of audio and visual information on this horrific case. Cawley manages to weave contemporaneous interviews with his own journalistic research to tell the complex story from a very cogent and compassionate viewpoint. The podcast is available on YouTube and other audio formats. There is also a companion website where Cawley makes case information available for those interested in obtaining additional information not included in the podcast. He does a masterful job of making the story very vivid with his writing and narration, and weaves in the interviews and phone calls effectively. I don't usually even like podcasts that much, and I have binge listened to the whole series twice now.
posted by effluvia at 6:34 PM on August 12, 2021

frontline is really good at this, with news links, supplemental articles, outtakes, and mini vids.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:48 PM on August 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

I was recently impressed by the WTTW Ida B. Wells documentary site.

Edit: the one place where they fail is making it obvious what to click on to watch the actual documentary.
posted by eotvos at 5:02 AM on August 13, 2021