Films of Record is poised to start making content for the Cern YouTube channel, which will ultimately lead to a feature-length documentary similar in scale to Life In A Day.
Broadcast undestands that the Ten Alps-owned indie has gained access to the high-profile scientific research centre, which is home to the Large Hadron Collider. It attempts to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang to help answer questions about the fundamental nature of the universe.
It is understood that the content will be part funded by Google, which confirmed it is supporting the project, as YouTube continues to back innovative methods of film-making in a similar vein to Life in a Day.
The latter was made from a series of user-generated content that was uploaded to YouTube, and which director Kevin Macdonald shaped into a documentary.
But the Films of Record project will embed professional directors at Cern to capture both the top-level work being done there and the human stories behind the scenes.
The project is in its early stages, but it is thought that short-form work will be posted regularly and this will eventually lead to a longer documentary. A channel already exists but is currently populated by corporate videos.
Neither YouTube nor Films of Record would reveal details of the project, but one source said the collaboration between the documentary producer and the web platform was intended to be highly interactive.
It is thought that Films of Record secured access to the facility before taking the idea to YouTube. One director, Liz Mermin, is already based at the lab in Geneva doing development work, and the indie’s chief executive, Roger Graef, is overseeing the project.
Films of Record made the first online documentary series for itv.com, Web Lives, a series of 76 shorts following people whose lives were shaped by the internet, including online daters, Second Lifers and social networkers.
This story was first published by Broadcast.
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