El Helicoide
El Helicoide: From shopping mall to torture prison
El Helicoide: From shopping mall to torture prison is an interactive documentary investigating alleged human rights abuses at Venezuela's most notorious political prison.
Produced alongside journalist Karenina Velandia, the project combines traditional documentary media with immersive 3D virtual reality reconstructions.
View the interactive story here.
Find out more about El Helicoide here.
A downward spiral
The project is the combination of a long-read article, a documentary film, and a point-and-click adventure game.
Each chapter is an immersive 360° scene to explore by clicking, swiping, or using your phone’s gyroscope to open a window into the jail.
Immersive 360° dioramas
Creating immersive 3D environments allowed us to dive into each scene with a virtual camera to ‘film’ video sequences.
This meant we could create cinematic reconstructions to illustrate the events described to us in interviews with former prisoners and prison guards.
Multi-platform storytelling
This approach meant it was possible to edit a traditional broadcast documentary for BBC TV and Digital platforms, using the same 3D content created for the interactive story.
I created the 3D reconstructions, filmed the main interviews and edited all video content for both the interactive and broadcast documentaries.
Rebuilding El Helicoide
Testimony and material was gathered from as many sources as possible to put together an accurate picture of conditions inside the jail.
Working with our contributors: Rosmit Mantilla, a Venezuelan Congressman and former prisoner; and two former prison guards, we were able to draw floor plans and build 3D environments.
Material was also gathered from former guards, detainees, their family members, solicitors, NGOs, academics and social media posts.
An extensive historical archive was kindly shared with us by Proyecto Helicoide, an organisation dedicated to promoting the architectural, cultural and social history of the building.
Digital innovation
The project won 'Best Use of Digital Media' in the 2020 Amnesty Media Awards, and won both the Human Rights Best Graphic, and Silver Award for Innovation at the 2019 Malofiej Infographic World Summit, the ‘Pulitzer for infographics’.
El Helicoide was also a finalist in the ‘Best Individual Editorial Feature’ category at the 2019 Webby Awards.
Global reach
El Helicoide was published in four languages and has received more than 5.5 million views, more than 2 million of these within its first week of publication.
The project was widely shared on social media, notably by the British Foreign Secretary, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, and the former President of Colombia.