EL 405: Flash français
... the Tour de France. Across more than 2,000 miles in twenty-three days, punishing mountain climbs, sprints, and team and solo time trials grip the entire nation of France and cycling fans around the world. In 2001, Agence France-Presse (AFP) attempted to pack the entire event into a database-driven Flash application with live updates during each stage of the race. ... With some luck and the right people in the right places, AFP pulled it off. (Mindy McAdams, Flash Journalism; links my own)
I'm quite impressed by the Flash packages that AFP and Art Movies produced. (The Art Movies website is only available in French.) Only after reading through the history of the Tour de France package, however, did I really begin to understand how much work and effort went into its creation. The sheer number of facts, photos, animations, and other components that had to be managed in order to make the package is staggering; it's no surprise that the two teams had to work together in order to build and maintain it.
Integrating a database into a Flash package certainly sounds complicated, what with all the scripting and testing required, but after everything is set up and ready to go, the producers were able to update the Tour de France package in real time as the event went on, adding up-to-the-minute information and statistics about the cyclists and the results of each leg of the race.
The interactive map enabled users to find information based on location and quickly reference it as they liked, without the need to navigate through search engines or browse through chunks of text in news or magazine articles to find it--and the constantly updated Flash package certainly provided that information much faster than regular newspapers or magazines. One of Flash's major advantages is the very fact that it fits perfectly into the structure of the Internet, giving the public easy access to content that can be produced and delivered to them in minutes or even seconds (the Tour de France package was updated every 30 seconds during certain parts of the race).
The teams that produced the package mentioned that it took two to three times longer than they expected, mostly because they had to spend a lot of time ensuring high quality for the interface design. While that may have been bad news for them as they tried to meet their strict two-month deadline, it sounds like good news to me now because--as a student who spends his time working simultaneously in the disciplines of journalism and graphic design--I have a combination of skills that would prove perfect for applications such as the development of Flash journalism packages. Even better, French is also a part of my repertoire, so I would also have the skills necessary for translating such a package into that and (perhaps someday) other languages, too. Who knows, maybe I could end up working on a Flash package for the Tour de France in the future.
"This job is about 40 percent editing, 30 percent writing, 30 percent translation--preparing French text for the English market--rather than being a reporter," [Damian McCall, english-language writer for AFP] said. "We really enjoy it."
Sounds like a dream job to me.
[Check out the archived non-live version of the 2004 Tour de France Flash package. Also, check out Karissa's blog entry on the case study I examined here--she provides some good insights of her own.]