Imagine. March 1917 - Russian Tsar Nicholas II has just signed his own abdication, and instead of his usual cigarette, he first reaches for… his iPhone.

The #1917LIVE promo series consists of 4 online teaser videos featuring historical figures – Russia’s last Emperor Nicholas Romanov, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, a Petrograd student and an Army captain. The teasers recreate the events and atmosphere of 1917: the Tsar’s abdication from a train carriage, times of hunger in Petrograd, soldiers returning from the front, Vladimir Lenin’s career-defining speech.

Once viewers are immersed into the intrigue of 1917 – a sudden twist occurs: all historic characters grab their mobile devices and casually log onto Twitter.

#1917LIVE aims to tell the story of the Russian Revolution through real-time tweeting from a network of linked accounts. The #1917LIVE hashtag brings together up to 50 accounts representing key historical characters of the time, uniting them into it’s own Twitter universe.

Key objectives: to educate and inspire the audience to learn, and set new best-in-class Twitter standards.

Our task is not only to retell historic events in Twitter’s dynamic style, but to spark global interest in one of the biggest geo-political events of the 20th century. To promote the project we sought to animate the idea on screen with a series of teasers. Our biggest challenge was to make the videos historically realistic, to portray Russia and the events exactly as they occurred 100 years ago. So we filmed in authentic locations, props, details and overall entourage