Sky reinvented long-form viewing with an ambitious 12-hour activation

Created by Felix Barrett and Dennis Kelly and directed by Barrett and Marc Munden, featuring Jude Law in the lead role, the program invited viewers deeper into the suspenseful world of the series as the events of a single day unfolded in real time. Filmed in one continuous take, ’The Third Day: Autumn’ was watched by over 1.4 million viewers on Sky Arts (linear TV channel) in the UK and over 500,000 people around the world on Facebook (Sky’s largest ever audience for a Facebook Live).

At a particularly challenging time for television production and live theater, the program involved a team of over 350 people and succeeded in creating a television moment which immersed audiences in something new and unexpected, defying genres and offering a truly communal experience.

Objectives

• Redefine the way in which long form, high production content can be distributed within a live environment.

• Gauge the interest in long-form live content amongst our @SkyTV, Facebook following.

• Create a workflow to support these types of large scale activations to roll out across other priorities.-

• Generate buzz and awareness around ‘The Third Day’ drama.

The Third Day: Autumn was a co-production for Sky Studios, Sky Arts and HBO, created by theatre company Punchdrunk, The Third Day Productions team and cast, and live broadcast specialists Nineteen Fifteen.

Driven by the Covid-19 pandemic and a need to respond creatively and safely ’Autumn’ was event television, and its innovation lay in bringing the disciplines of quality theater, high-end television drama and outside live broadcast production together to create and deliver something truly unique.

The Third Day was conceived as the world’s first immersive television series and was originally to have a live event halfway through the project, in which a limited audience would be invited enter the world of the show. The event was due to be produced by immersive theatre pioneers Punchdrunk, who had created the series with writer Dennis Kelly. It was due to take place on Osea Island, where the series is set, and was to be a fully immersive environment. The the audience would even participate in a key narrative lynchpin of the series.

With the Covid-19 pandemic, a large event for the general public was not possible so Punchdrunk’s creative and production team needed to design a new approach to this element of the project, whilst retaining the ambition of its immersive nature. Punchdrunk then reimagined this element of the project as a 12-hour live theatrical broadcast filmed in one continuous shot, that would blend slow cinema with theatre, transporting audiences from the episodic drama series to a long-form durational and immersive viewing experience.

As the project would be told through the medium of television, Punchdrunk approached the creative and production team from the drama series to ensure the narrative content and aesthetic tone of Autumn were in keeping with The Third Day as a whole. Having seen Nineteen Fifteen’s Lost in London (the world’s first live, 90-minute single-shot film broadcast to cinemas in 2017), Punchdrunk felt that they would bring their innovative spirit and technical experience to the project and so they approached the company to oversee and deliver the live broadcast elements.

While the theater-makers on the project had to learn quite swiftly the nature of shooting for television, the filmmakers had to adapt to working with devised theatre makers with a framework script that allowed for improvisation. In addition, they were working live, having to be immediately responsive without the benefit of multiple takes or the facility of post-production.

Overall the collaboration between these disciplines was challenging and delivered under difficult circumstances. However truly created a hybrid, a new and innovative experiment that captured the imagination of audiences. At a particularly challenging time for television production and live theatre, the program involved a team of over 350 people.

Results

The program found a home on Sky Arts and on Facebook Live (which we felt were appropriate stages for this unique creative endeavor) enabling it to reach a much wider global audience than could have originally been achieved.

'Autumn' was watched by over one million viewers on Sky Arts in the UK and over 500,000 people around the world on Facebook (Sky’s largest ever audience for Facebook Live). Online, audiences embraced the project and the conversation ignited on Facebook and Twitter giving people a more interactive and communal experience more akin to live theatre than traditional broadcast.

This campaign was a winner at The Drum Awards for Social Media. To find out more, including which competitions are currently open for entry, visit The Drum Awards website.