#ROMANOVS100: 4,000 PHOTOS. 4 SOCIAL NETWORKS. 1 FAMILY.
Title | #ROMANOVS100: 4,000 PHOTOS. 4 SOCIAL NETWORKS. 1 FAMILY. |
Brand | RT |
Product/Service | DOCUMENTARY SOCIAL MEDIA PROJECT #ROMANOVS100 |
Category |
D02. Data Storytelling |
Entrant
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RT Moscow, RUSSIA
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Idea Creation
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RT Moscow, RUSSIA
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Media Placement
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RT Moscow, RUSSIA
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PR
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RT Moscow, RUSSIA
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Production
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RT Moscow, RUSSIA
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Credits
Kirill Karnovich-Valua |
RT |
Creative Producer |
Revaz Todua |
RT |
Designer |
Gleb Burashov |
RT |
Producer |
Elena Medvedeva |
RT |
Producer |
Eldar Salamov |
RT |
Producer |
Ania Fedorova |
RT |
Producer |
Ivan Fursov |
RT |
Producer |
Ivor Crotty |
RT |
Producer |
Lilly Kazakova |
RT |
Producer |
Margo Tskhovrebova |
RT |
Producer |
Peter Nalitch |
Peter Nalitch's musical collective |
Musician |
Helen Rappaport |
Helen Rappaport |
Historical Consultant |
Denis Semyonov |
Great Gonzo Studio |
Artist |
Marina Amaral |
Marina Amaral |
Artist |
Aleksandr Skryabin |
RT |
Director |
Ilya Grachev |
RT |
Director of photography |
Victoria Milovanova |
RT |
Producer |
Describe the creative idea
#Romanovs100 is a unique digital storytelling project driven by visual data and built on the analysis of thousands of photos shot by Russia’s last Royal family in the early 20th century.
To make history come to life in the world of social media & digital platforms, we partnered with the Russian State Archive to retrieve over 4,000 actual analogue images once stored in the private family albums.
Our work to digitise and analyse this trove of family photographs helped portray the Romanovs from a new, deeply human perspective, resulting in innovative data-driven educational storytelling on social media platforms.
This vast family chronicle is a detailed first-hand witness account of the early 20th century - for decades this part of Russian history was eradicated from school-books and kept in the dark during the Soviet era. Today, we bring it back to the spotlight.
Describe the execution
The Romanov archive is perhaps the first private photo chronicle in history to boast such detail and scope. With our project we wanted to pay a "live" tribute to the last ruling family, giving these photographs - once kept in family albums - a second, digital life in social networks.
The innovation behind #Romanovs100 lies with integrating complex historical data into real-time publishing mediums. #Romanovs100 is a research into history through the visual language of photography combined with the digital reality of social media.
Identification and tagging the 4,000+ images began several months before the project was launched on April 8, 2018 and continued almost to the last day. Using a special digital asset management tool, we tagged every image: “who, what, where, when”. The cloud of tags involved up to 200 markers and provided us with early clues on possible stories and craft. To link visual data to historical facts and create narratives for social media posts, we used dozens of different sources, ranging from personal diaries and letters by Nicholas II himself, to memoirs written by his contemporaries and extensive work by Russian and foreign historians.
Media planning was among the biggest challenges - the task was to keep the narrative unique and original for every social media account. Guided by the specifics of every particular network and its audience, the team thoroughly selected and distributed the content between YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. This laid ground for creating comprehensive multimedia cross-platform content: more text-sophisticated posts for the Facebook community, snappy visuals for Instagram, real-time first-person storytelling on Twitter, short documentary-style videos on YouTube.
Audience-wise, the project aimed to show that learning history can be compelling and interactive. It targets younger audiences with innovative formats and digital approaches in educational storytelling.