D-Day: As it Happens – turning Second Screen on its head

D-Day has just been commemorated in a new live television and ‘second screen’ experiment on Channel 4 with a unique, real-time event played out over 24 hours. D-Day: As it Happens brought to life the experiences of seven real people through a clever mix of digital and traditional mediums. Here, one of the show’s creators, Adam Lawrenson of Digit, explains how this could be a pivotal moment in the evolution of how content is disseminated.

It’s now 69 years since the Normandy landings, the largest amphibious invasion in human history and the catalyst for restoring a world peace that has remained unbroken ever since.

However, nearly seven decades on, we’re beginning to reach a tipping point, where one of the most important events in our history is about to transition out of living memory.

With fewer people who experienced D-Day here to relay their tales, new generations are becoming increasingly removed from the events of World War II.

So this year, Channel 4 commissioned us at Digit, alongside Windfall Films, to commemorate D-Day in a way that had never been attempted. The result was a unique real-time history event across 24 hours, recreating and bringing to life the experiences of seven real people like never before.

For the project, unpublished research from historian Colin Henderson was used to assemble archive film, photographs, radio reports and other records of D-Day on a time-line that could play out in parallel with the present, so that each element was replicated at the precise minute it happened in 1944.

The experience began with an hour-long TV show on Channel 4 hosted by Peter Snow and Arthur Williams, before transitioning onto digital channels.

Updates from the ‘D-Day Seven’ were delivered through a microsite featuring live maps, blog posts, tweets and imagery. This culminated in a second show the following evening, recapping the day’s events.

What unfolded over those 24 hours far exceeded all of our expectations. Engagement across the entire experience was incredible and the response from the British public (and beyond) to the stories of the seven participating in the invasion was genuinely moving.

This was highlighted by the way in which viewers reacted to the death of Dixie Dean, one of the featured soldiers we were following. Hundreds of people tweeted their sadness and respect, with many sharing stories and pictures of their own relatives. It was a remarkable, at times surreal, but ultimately an unforgettable moment to be a part of.

There’s something about experiencing an event in real-time that makes you feel it, and connect with it, in a new way. The initial premise for D-Day: As It Happens was to deliver the past in the way that many of us experience news in the present-day.

As a result, the engagement was particularly noteworthy, with over 100,000 visitors in the 24-hour span, an average dwell time of over five minutes on the D-Day live page, and 40,000 twitter followers across all characters.

But over and above the hard numbers, experiencing D-Day in real time provided a new perspective on an event that has been in danger of becoming normalised. Because it is not until you realise, and reflect upon the fact that as you are preparing to go to bed, Bob, 69 years ago to the very moment, is about to jump out of his glider to be one of the first men to land in enemy occupied France.

It’s that as you are enjoying your breakfast, George was four miles under the channel in a midget submarine hoping his oxygen would last. Or, as many people were shocked to find out, at precisely 4pm in the afternoon, Ronald ‘Dixie’ Dean was lying dead in his best friend Scotty Scott’s arms.

Outside of the immediate experience it is interesting to note that the peak in social activity occurred in the afternoon of the timeline, between rather than simply during the two TV shows which aired at 9pm.

‘Second-screen’ as we know it, was genuinely flipped on its head as television became the medium which summarised events that had already played out, in real-time, online and on multiple devices.

D-Day: As It Happens was an ambitious project, but what’s truly significant is how it demonstrates the extent to which we no longer ‘consume’ or ‘experience’ a platform. Instead, we experience stories. It might begin on a smartphone, continue on TV and finish via a PC on-demand, but the channel is fast becoming ancillary.

By turning second-screen on its head, this could be a pivotal moment in the evolution of how content is disseminated across media, unlocking brand new ways in which we can bring stories to life.