We asked ourselves what would be the best new way to teach history in the social media era? How can we engage an audience used to snaps, tweets, developing situations and breaking news? So we decided to create a large-scale Twitter role-play that re-enacts history, in real time.

#1917LIVE is a Twitter time-machine which takes you 100 years back to relive the Russian Revolution. Dozens of historical accounts from Tsar Nicholas II to Vladimir Lenin live-tweet events day-by-day, as if Twitter existed a century ago.

With #1917LIVE we attempted to create an alternate reality online, so that our historic role play would make you feel that you are actually there. But how do you create an alternate reality on social media? How do you make it look like it is all happening now? And the answer was - video.

Our biggest challenge was to make the videos historically realistic, to portray Russia and the historic events exactly as they occurred 100 years ago. So we filmed authentic locations, props, details and overall entourage.

Among the project’s key visual elements:

- 360 VR-series. The eight episodes, featuring prominent Russian actors in key roles, place the viewer in the middle of dramatic scenes: immerse yourself in the trenches of WW1, visit a revolutionary printing house, sneak into Lenin’s hideout apartment or experience Petrograd train station in a time of chaos. “Revolution in 360” videos gained almost 1 million video views on Facebook and YouTube, and thousands of interactions.

- Teaser-trailers. Online promos recreate the events and atmosphere of 1917: the day the Tsar abdicated on a train; times of hunger in Petrograd; soldiers returning from the battlefront; Vladimir Lenin’s defining speech. Once the viewer is immersed into the intrigue of 1917 a sudden twist occurs: all historic characters grab their mobile devices and casually log into Twitter.

- use of rare archive images and footage as just-in Breaking News videos

- LIVE Periscope stream from Lenin’s secret hideout (we built an exact copy of the original hut, and filmed a first-person view experience)

- mock-up CCTV footage depicting a revolutionary raid during November uprising

- online map under #LeninTracker which followed Vladimir Lenin’s 7-day-trip from Switzerland to Russia in real time

Each #1917LIVE online video is a detailed reconstruction of the life of 1917 Russia. All scenes unfold in locations almost unchanged over one hundred years. We have tried to treat the era we were recreating with extreme care; to convey the general atmosphere of 1917 as accurately as possible.