The in-house creative team at Ancestry.com presented us with a unique opportunity of creating a short documentary film set against the backdrop of the American Civil War.

Learning more about their site and the billions of records it offered, it was fascinating to imagine what you could discover about your own personal history. With a script inspired by actual records living at Ancestry.com, we were tasked in telling the tale of three soldiers who bravely fought in the war.

Ancestry.com opened its doors to a mass of photographs and documents pulled from the Civil War archives. Combing through the images, we carefully assembled an edit breathing life into the three stories. Our process focused on evoking humanity, individuality and personal spirit through the assortment of historical material. Ultimately, each scene was constructed from photography dating back to the 1800 along with live action of re-enactments.

Tying our work together was an original score composed and produced by Sean Holt and Hugh Barton of Glue Audio.

The short film now lives on Ancestry.com, during a week long tribute to the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. A :30 sec TV spot was also created to promote the event.