Channel 4 commemorates D-Day anniversary with real time multiplatform event
Today, 6 June, marks the 69th anniversary of D-Day, and Channel 4 is commemorating it by re-enacting the events in real time for a large-scale multiplatform event.
Having launched last night the second-screen project, highlighted by two hour-long live programmes, recreates the experiences of seven real people in real-time.
In between the shows, users will be able to keep up with the progress of the characters - including a paratrooper, a submariner, a nurse and a military cameraman - online via Twitter and through regular short-form updates on the channel.
Digit created the website for the 24 hour experience, while Windfall Films made D-Day: As It Happens.
Channel 4 specialist factual commissioning editor John Hay said: "Channel 4 has a mission to try new things, and this feels like innovation with a real purpose - there's something about experiencing an event in real time that makes you feel it, and connect with it, in a new way. We're trying to make the first TV programme that delivers the past in the way that many of us experience news in the present. I hope it'll be emotional as well as illuminating."
Film, photographs, radio reports and other records of D-Day were used to create the 24 hour timeline.