| Philosophie | The former Tsar, Nicholas Romanov, his wife and their five children were brutally executed by Bolsheviks on July 17th 1918. To pay tribute to the family, we worked on a large set of visual data for a transmedia storytelling experience that pieces out the big picture of a "lost Russia". Over 100 days accounts on four social networks (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter) reviewed the last decades of the Russian Empire, seen through the lenses of the Romanovs’ cameras. Each #Romanovs100 trailer was filmed using early 20th century techniques and features the very photo from the Romanov archive that inspired the storytelling. In using this technique the #Romanovs100 team sought to reconstruct the atmosphere of fin-de-siecle and early 20th century Russia and to share the intimacy of Romanov family life with our audience. We portrayed the Emperor as a family man, focusing on his deep feelings for his wife and his five children. It would help our audience to relate with the Imperial family on a human level. We used retro 8mm & 16mm cameras and Kodak black-and-white film. Our award-winning crew ran a number of filming tests in winter and summer to master the technique. After filming, the challenge was to develop the footage as not many studios work with 8mm & 16mm film. We partnered with Russia’s legendary Mosfilm studio to get our film developed. Each frame of the film was scanned as RAW. We also used DaVinci and AVID in the final editing process. The first trailer recreates a scene from 1916 when Nicholas II and his family built a 10-meter high snow tower in Tsarskoye Selo, their winter residence, near St Petersburg. To bring the original photo to life, we built an exact tower copy outside Moscow and featured authentic costumes and tools. The second trailer was filmed on location at Livadia Palace in Crimea and shows the Romanovs and their close circle enjoying an outdoor meal. The final trailer recreates a 1912 charity event that the Romanov family hosted in Crimea to support TB sanatoria (hospitals). The original image was taken outside the Livadia Palace, allowing production to utilize authentic locations, costumes and props to recreate the atmosphere of the event. |