AFP wins top videographic award

Twenty-one newspapers, magazines and television stations won awards in categories including: best Internet site, video, cross-media, cross-media advertising, best publication for mobile and tablet computer, best use of social media and best animated graphic, the category in which AFP won first prize with a 3D videographic featuring a reconstitution of the crash of an Air France flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, produced by Stephane Koguc and edited by Elise d'Epenoux and Volkmar Meier.

At around 2am on the morning of 1 June 2009, all 228 passengers on board an overnight Air France flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris lost their lives when the plane crashed in mid-Atlantic. It took just three minutes from the first sign of trouble as the air speed dropped, until the Airbus 330 went down in the sea after falling from a cruising altitude of about 35 000 feet.

Second-by-second account

The 3D videographic created in Paris showed how the catastrophe unfolded, second by second, highlighting the technical and human failings at the origin of the tragedy.

The graphic was a realistic recreation of the final exchanges between the flight crew, as revealed by the black box flight recorder, and a commentary based on objective facts drawn from the French Civil Aviation Bureau of Inquiry report. The result was a virtual reportage which captured the full drama and extent of the catastrophe, as well as the speed with which it unfolded

Part of the AFP Graphics service, the Animation department produces daily graphic animations in Flash and video formats, and since February 2011 is producing an animation in 3D once a week. Subjects in the news are presented in a clear, lively and informative fashion, producing a reconstitution of the facts or an illustrated chronology, for example, available to clients in audiovisual, digital and mobile formats.

The videographic