Twitter Halloween: Everyday Hauntings

With many Halloween events and activities on hold due to Covid-19, we helped Twitter and Flying Object project some of Twitters users funniest halloween posts to outdoor locations around London.

Working with Manual Cinema, we dressed up users "eerie realisations, mortifying moments and awkward encounters" in creepy costumes, to take over after various London locations after dark as part of a wider Twitter campaign to bring users terror filled tweets to life in the Clink Street Tunnel and Southwark Bridge Tunnel. The campaign continues Twitter's strategy of bringing tweets to life in the real world.

Tweets were grouped into categories including "Everyday Hauntings" - awkward moments and comical incidents of everyday life in which we created a host of ghostly tweets to float up and scare/entertain passers by with glowing street art and artistic projections in creative and unusual ways, with those moments of modern life that fill you with dread.

Further down the Thames, we worked with Manual Cinema to haunt underneath Southwark Bridge by projecting zombie hands bursting from the earth and holding up the scariest and spookiest of Tweets. This was one part of a wider campaign illuminating the streets and tunnels across the capital with Tweets that included a glow in the dark monstrously absorbent paper towel and an embarrassed hipster retweeted by a ghosts.

Working under COVID-19 safety provisions, Mesmer 3D scanned and mapped both tunnels, building a virtual surface to trial the project. This meant that timing and frequency of tweets could all be worked out remotely, in advance. As Tweets were approved and permissions granted by the client, we turned them into spooky content, trialling various ways in which they could appear, float around and disappear, along with an accompanying sound design. On site, the Mesmer team provided all video and sound equipment, as well as an install and operation team to run the show every evening of Halloween week.

Client:
Flying Object
Twitter UK

Location:
South Bank, London, 2020

Services:
Video & Projection Design
Technical Consultancy
Content Creation
Equipment Hire

Team:
Video Designer: Ian William Galloway
Technical Consultant: Dick Straker
Technical Consultant: John O’Connell
Systems Designer: Salvador Bettencourt Ávila
Animator: Letty Fox
Video Technician: Tom Bushell
Video Technician: Marvin Onyekaba

Photos:
© Flying Object