MTV Gets Comfy in Its Skins
A Wild House Party in Reverse, Shot with the ARRI Alexa
MTV wanted to show that it’s serious about this weekend’s launch of its new series, Skins, a stateside remake of the popular Brit teen-life drama, with one of the biggest campaigns in the channel’s history. It trusted promo duties to writer-director Evan Silver, a veteran of the MTV on-air promo department who made a splash last year with a campaign promoting the MTV Movie Awards. This time around, he’s used the super-hot ARRI Alexa to shoot a two-and-a-half minute reversed-motion short full of half-dressed, booze-guzzling high-schoolers and set to the grinding, swaggering beats of “Kids” by Sleigh Bells.
A “clean” version was provided to air on some channels, but here’s the full clip released this week, designed to attract the maximum number of eyeballs online - and on MTV, but only after 10 p.m. According to ETonline.com, the stateside version of Skins has now been named “the most dangerous show for teens” by a group called the Parents Television Council. Mission accomplished? “As long as we showed some repercussions from [the lead actress'] actions, falling down the stairs or passing out, for example, we were allowed to show teen partying as it is,” Silver said in a prepared statement.
The choreographed house party, which was staged to subtly highlight character notes that will become apparent as the show airs, was shot in reverse over two days with a Steadicam rig on a carefully lit location in Toronto. Editor Nathan Byrne at Post Millennium in New York says he and Byrne sorted footage by the level of drunkenness on display in a given shot but tried to rely on performances, rather than “drug and sex imagery,” to set the tone for a party that gets progressively wilder as the night goes on - and, thus, less wild as the spot progresses. The final piece was colored by Micah Kirz at Out of the Blue, whose work on a campaign for Cointreau was recently featured at StudioDaily.
Skins premieres Monday, January 17, on MTV.
The choreographed house party, which was staged to subtly highlight character notes that will become apparent as the show airs, was shot in reverse over two days with a Steadicam rig on a carefully lit location in Toronto. Editor Nathan Byrne at Post Millennium in New York says he and Byrne sorted footage by the level of drunkenness on display in a given shot but tried to rely on performances, rather than “drug and sex imagery,” to set the tone for a party that gets progressively wilder as the night goes on - and, thus, less wild as the spot progresses. The final piece was colored by Micah Kirz at Out of the Blue, whose work on a campaign for Cointreau was recently featured at StudioDaily.
Skins premieres Monday, January 17, on MTV.
Credits:
Client: MTV
Show: Skins
Title: “Reverse Party” 2:30
Airdate: 1/10/11
Director/Writer: Evan Silver (www.evansilverps.com)
Executive Producer: Carlo Trulli, SPY FILMS Producer: Caroline O’Hare
VP Creative Director: Joe Ortiz
MTV Brand Manager: Jill Crawford
Director of Photography: Carlos Veron
Production Company: Spy Films, Toronto
Producers: Shannon Brand, Richard Cureton
Production Manager: Pete Vanstone
Editorial: Post Millennium, NY (www.postmillennium.com)
Editor: Nathan Byrne
Post Executive Producer: Adam Soutar
Post Producer: Thomas Maiorino
Music Supervisor/Sound Designer: Dave Hnatiuk
Music: Sleigh Bells “Kids”
Color Correct: Micah Kirz, Out of the Blue (www.outoftheblueny.com)
Visual Effects: Alien Kung Fu, NY (www.alienkungfu.com)
VFX Compositing: Marco Ruesta
VFX Design: James Gunderson
VFX Roto: Akira Uchinokura
VFX Creative Director: Charlie No
VFX EP: Brandon Litman
Title Design/Producer: Oren Kaunfer, MTV on-air design
Client: MTV
Show: Skins
Title: “Reverse Party” 2:30
Airdate: 1/10/11
Director/Writer: Evan Silver (www.evansilverps.com)
Executive Producer: Carlo Trulli, SPY FILMS Producer: Caroline O’Hare
VP Creative Director: Joe Ortiz
MTV Brand Manager: Jill Crawford
Director of Photography: Carlos Veron
Production Company: Spy Films, Toronto
Producers: Shannon Brand, Richard Cureton
Production Manager: Pete Vanstone
Editorial: Post Millennium, NY (www.postmillennium.com)
Editor: Nathan Byrne
Post Executive Producer: Adam Soutar
Post Producer: Thomas Maiorino
Music Supervisor/Sound Designer: Dave Hnatiuk
Music: Sleigh Bells “Kids”
Color Correct: Micah Kirz, Out of the Blue (www.outoftheblueny.com)
Visual Effects: Alien Kung Fu, NY (www.alienkungfu.com)
VFX Compositing: Marco Ruesta
VFX Design: James Gunderson
VFX Roto: Akira Uchinokura
VFX Creative Director: Charlie No
VFX EP: Brandon Litman
Title Design/Producer: Oren Kaunfer, MTV on-air design
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