Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

What is 'Your Somme'?

Each user will get a geographically and gender informed experience chart of how they might have been asked to contribute to the war effort. It also tells them as to which battalion / regiment they or their loved ones may have served in. It draws upon appropriate accents, language, letters and testimony from the time. Your Somme is designed as an immersive experience, and exploits all broadcast media; radio, film, TV graphics, digital narrative, melding them into one experience.

Why have you made Your Somme?
The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ is keen to deliver more personal experiences to its audience. Key to this is explaining how large events are likely to, or in the case of Your Somme, would have been likely to affect the user, had they lived in 1916. Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Rewind, which exposes the archive to the public, decided to place Your Somme visitors in the heat of battle, while giving context to events leading up to the conflict, in France and at home. The question we posed was ‘what would YOU have done.’ To that end we paid particular attention to the often over-looked role played by women in keeping Britain running, while so many men were sent to the front. The incredible bravery of those working in heavy industry and munitions factories, and the toll it took upon them. Inevitably, there is huge focus on the battle itself, the regiments involved and what they did, and on the information that was filtering home.

How was it made?

This is another iteration of one of the first pilots on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Taster, Your Story. The key elements are the same; a parallax scrolling site with information and links out to Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ archive. It's a great way to merge TV, graphics, text and audio together to create one immersive and personalised story.