The Romanovs were photography pioneers — in the early 1900s they owned the world's first portable cameras, capturing almost every meaningful event in their lives.

On July 17, 1918, Nicholas Romanov, his wife and five children were executed by the Bolsheviks. To pay tribute to the family, we merged a large set of visual data with transmedia storytelling to piece out the big picture of a "lost Russia": for decades this part of Russian history was eradicated from school-books and kept in the dark during Soviet rule.

Through mixing thousands of archive photos with immersive media formats, the project breaks traditional documentary genre boundaries to create a new kind of history narrative that is multi-angle, informative, but mainly engaging and interactive, designed to inspire future self-learners. It creates a "living picture" of the last ruling Royals, giving photographs, once kept in family albums, a second, digital life in social networks.

Running for 100 days in 2018, the project features multiple digital formats to engage the audience like 100-year-old shots turned into 3D & 180-degree Facebook experiences, short snappy documentary-style YouTube cuts, real-time Twitter blog-posts by historical characters, POV Instagram perspective by the Romanov's dog, digital colorization contest judged by renowned artist Marina Amaral, original soundtrack composed by Russia's famous musician Peter Nalitch and more.

#Romanovs100 culminated in AR photo album which enhances this experience of history learning. The purpose of AR is to extend the storytelling through limitations implied by print & social media, and to allow readers become active co-creators of the unfolding story. The app offers an immersive journey into history triggering multiple interactions: 3D animation-models, swipeable galleries, AR infographic, short video documentaries rolling inside photos.

Another immersive approach is a 360-degree adventure into a dream of young Tsarevich: VR animation where reality is augmented with fantasy.