Inside Abbey Road
Digital Experience
For decades, music fans from across the globe have made a pilgrimage to Abbey Road Studios, to sign the wall outside, and maybe catch a glimpse through the doors of what is possibly the world’s most famous recording studios.
But they’d never been able to actually step inside the studios. With Inside Abbey Road, we helped to change that.
Employing key features of Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Play, the Inside Abbey Road site gave you the keys to the studios, so you could wander around and learn all about the history, technology, and culture of the studios.
There were two ways to do this: Free Roam, where you could explore the studios at your own pace...
…and Tour Mode, where you were led around the studios by one of three Abbey Road luminaries – Giles Martin, Lauren Laverne, or Mirek Stiles. Along the way, you were given personal insights into the myths and legends of Abbey Road, as well as all the technological advances pioneered there.
To create the site, we captured over 150 panoramic photos throughout the three studios, and used Lidar scanning to create a volumetric model of the entire complex.
This gave us an incredible amount of freedom to tell the story of Abbey Road in innovative ways – for example, placing archival images in the exact position they were originally captured.
And our 3D scans of historic audio recording equipment gave people the chance to get up close with vintage studio equipment, much of which was prototyped and developed right there in the studios.
We launched the experience with a film directed by Rob Blishen – a ‘one take’ masterclass in freezing a moment in time, and a fitting companion to the site. Check it out below.
And in collaboration with NME, we distributed 80,000 Google Cardboard viewers across the UK, so that people could experience what it felt like to step Inside Abbey Road in VR.
We also created a special build in Kings Cross Station. Nothing like a massive Google Cardboard viewer to get people’s attention.
Overall, Inside Abbey Road presented us with many challenges. But the biggest was making sure that we did justice to an icon of British culture. Hopefully we rose to that challenge.
For a bit more insight into the project, have a look at the following film.
Executive Creative Director: Steve Vranakis
Creative Directors: Graeme Hall, Tom Seymour, Joao Wilbert
UK Marketing Lead: James Howard
Production: Stink Digital, RSA, Amplify
Agency: Google Creative Lab