Ward Thomas

We developed a novel concept for a website to bring to life the incredible harmonies of twin sister duo Ward Thomas.

The idea was that users would be able to switch between the girls' vocals - isolating either Lizzie or Catherine's voices, or combining them. To do that, we stitched together three separately shot videos that users can slide between to watch the sisters singing either solo or together.

The contrast between each voice and the harmony demonstrates how well the voices blend together in a way that wouldn't have been obvious without this online, interactive deconstruction.

We worked with our internal video team to come up with a video treatment that would work perfectly with the idea. We shot Lizzie and Catherine separately so the user could watch either singer in full screen, but those videos would also need to be edited together for the harmonies.

Additionally, for the periods in the song when there was only one singer, we decided to add ambient sounds for user's who opted to listen to the non-singer, e.g. a TV in the background and tweeting birds outside.

We were slightly concerned fans might not understand what to do if placed too quickly into the experience, so we decided to split out the intro copy and instructions into two screens before any videos were shown to ease the user in before the experience starts. This also allows time for the video and audio to do some pre-loading in the background.

We shot over two days: an ambitious deadline given we had to build a custom set in that time. Two different sets had been designed, one for each singer, and large sections of it were being built and torn down as the shoot happened. The set was hand built and placed on a rotating stage to give the sense of constant change around the singers. The song, Material, talks about the material distractions of modern life, and the constant building and expiring of the set - the transient nature of it - got the song's message across really well.