Behind the music video ‘mods’ MTV doesn’t want you to see (legally)

4 days earlier than the episode was supposed to air on MTV2, there was an unprecedented rejection: SpongeBob wasn’t allowed to sing in anyone else’s voice.

THQ, the writer behind the video recreation SpongeBob SquarePants: Lights, Digital camera, Pants!, had accredited the closing lower. Blink-182 had given MTV the inexperienced gentle to use “All the Small Things.” However SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg didn’t want to see his creations performing the tune nearly — regardless of the incontrovertible fact that, by 2005, SpongeBob had already sung in two different episodes of the present.

“This isn’t even someone that we usually have to get an approval from,” Frank Drucker, former producer at animation manufacturing firm IBC Digital, instructed Polygon in a current interview. “This is a whole third party, and it’s Nickelodeon. You’re the same company as MTV. In your own house, you got a rejection four days before it was supposed to air! I’m like, This is nuts.”

In the unique rough cut, Sandy Cheeks performed bass, Patrick Star stomped the kick pedal of a seashell-shaped drum set, and SpongeBob shredded a flying-V guitar whereas singing. After the rejection, IBC switched the idea from a band efficiency to a dance contest. This allowed the group to hold roughly half of what it had made and exchange the instrument segments with extra dancing photographs. “It was, like, no sleep for four days to remake the video,” Drucker stated. “Sometimes we hit hurdles in not the most expected places.”

Airing for 2 seasons on MTV2 from 2004 to 2005, Video Mods married licensed songs with video video games, making recreation characters carry out the tracks as in the event that they have been a part of fictional bands. Handled as actual music performances, the movies featured a number of cameras and lightweight reveals. Bands comparable to The Killers, Outkast, and Evanescence have been paired up with recreation franchises comparable to Silent Hill, Star Wars, and The Sims.

At the time of this story going dwell, most Video Mods episodes from season 1 and season 2 can be found to watch on YouTube. Prior to that, the occasional person would add low-quality variations obtained from TV recordings virtually twenty years outdated, and they’d typically obtain copyright strikes. It wasn’t till just a few years in the past that former workers started a correct preservation effort of what they described throughout interviews with Polygon as a fancy and creatively fulfilling present that was forward of its time.

Polygon not too long ago spoke to 14 individuals who labored on the present — starting from those that got here up with the idea to former workers throughout MTV and the animation studios Massive Bear Leisure and IBC Digital — to discover out about how the present was made, the obstacles of making an attempt to match movement seize with recreation belongings, the way it went collaborating with folks comparable to George Lucas and the Beastie Boys, and concepts for a season that by no means occurred.

The idea

Picture: Michael Maglio/IBC Digital

Picture: Michael Maglio/IBC Digital

It began with Tony Shiff and Kris Renkewitz. Shiff, a music video producer who had labored on a whole lot of movies for artists like Madonna and Michael Jackson, was effectively acquainted with the business. He additionally had expertise in early 3D animation for the likes of Def Leppard and Peter Gabriel, and in full-motion video for Digital Arts. These experiences led him to meet the supervisor of Home of Strikes, a movement seize studio in Los Angeles, in addition to former MTV head of programming Alex Coletti, with whom he labored on a sequence known as Revue that consisted of interviews with artists like Ozzy Osbourne.

Renkewitz had years of expertise as a penciller and colorist at Marvel Comics and DC Comics, and as an artist and designer for video games like Diablo 2 and 007: Tomorrow By no means Dies. In accordance to Renkewitz, prior to presenting the concept to MTV, the duo had began work on a “game version” of Revue the place you made music movies, known as DIReCTOR, together with a programmer good friend of his. The sport received picked up by Atari, in accordance to Shiff, but when Infogrames acquired the firm quickly afterward, it shut down the undertaking earlier than the duo may assemble a crew. This, alongside a pitch for a Comedy Central present primarily based on video recreation characters about their “life after work” named GAMERS, which was accredited after which canceled after the head of programming was changed, impressed the pair to mix components of each ideas and consider a present for a 3rd pitch.

Shiff, having saved in contact with Coletti, proposed a gathering to pitch MTV, by which he talked about how video recreation corporations would spend thousands and thousands of {dollars} creating belongings, comparable to for characters and environments, then not do anything with them. Utilizing BloodRayne for example, Shiff created a pitch video that featured the characters taking part in “Chop Suey” by System of a Down to illustrate the potential for a present, and confirmed it to MTV.

“It was pre-Twitch,” Coletti stated. “No one was smart enough to think you can just actually stream video games and people would watch. But we thought, Hey, if we could marry music, which is our bread and butter, with video games, which our audience loves in a unique way, then this is a no-brainer.”

Shiff and Coletti each sat down with David Cohn, former basic supervisor at MTV2, who purchased the concept for Video Mods. Then EA sponsored a pilot that includes Missy Elliott and Outkast paired up with SSX 3 and The Sims Bustin’ Out, respectively.

The pilot, which was 22 minutes lengthy, was accomplished in three weeks in Renkewitz’s storage. He produced most of the animation, with some assist from buddies, whereas Shiff did the closing edit. “I literally stayed up 48 hours at a time,” Renkewitz stated. “I created a render farm from old machines. It was a ton of work, and some of the videos were kind of meh, but it was 22 minutes of animation by one person in three weeks. The pilot aired a gazillion times and it got us a four-episode order, where [Shiff] and I assembled a team in San Francisco that could now help me build the show.”

Season 1

Shiff and Renkewitz then began Massive Bear Leisure, constructing a group of round eight folks. A partnership with Nvidia helped the firm safe gear to render movies with dozens of frames, photographs, and characters in a means that hadn’t been carried out earlier than. This was particularly vital for a small group who had a month to work on every episode, juggling a number of movies concurrently.

“The day-to-day was a lot of firefighting,” stated former Massive Bear character modeler/rigger and texture artist Lisette Titre-Montgomery. “We had to take all these assets in from a game engine, convert them, set them up, and have something hot within a week or two, which is… when you think about how long an actual music video takes, that’s a lot of work.”

Maya Zuckerman, former movement seize technical director and compositor, described her time at Massive Bear as the de facto startup expertise of the early 2000s. The group would do 12- to 14-hour days, six to seven days per week, to sustain with the tight schedule. Securing and clearing the licenses, which MTV2’s Cohn described as a “swamp of rights” between report labels and recreation corporations, would typically delay the work on a particular video. As soon as the belongings have been in and the tune licenses have been cleared, it might be a rush to get issues arrange.

“We had, like, 20 or 30 Nvidia towers rendering all of those videos,” Zuckerman stated. “We actually had a render farm, and it was hot, because we were hosting it in an office in downtown San Francisco. Summer there isn’t so bad, but we would get a few days where we couldn’t even sit in the rooms because of [the heat].”

As the first 12 months of Video Mods — which featured pairings like “Shut Up” by the Black Eyed Peas and Leisure Go well with Larry: Magna Cum Laude — was winding down, many have been conscious that the present was overly complicated to make, particularly for a small group. And there weren’t indications that MTV would improve the funds.

The present received consideration in Los Angeles, and Shiff stated that, thanks to sure relationships, Tom Petty’s supervisor related Shiff with a “high-profile and powerful music lawyer” (whom he declined to title) who had represented artists like Justin Timberlake and Patrick Stewart, alongside Petty. The lawyer supplied to enhance Shiff’s cope with MTV, saying that he needs to be getting extra money. The issue, Shiff added — which he stated he wasn’t conscious of at the time — was that MTV “hated” the lawyer.

MTV ended up hiring a distinct studio to produce the second season of Video Mods. Shiff stated he was paid throughout the first few weeks of the handover, however that marked the finish of Massive Bear Leisure’s involvement — and the lawyer dropped Shiff as a consumer throughout the transition as effectively. “I created it, I sold it to MTV, and that’s what TV channels do,” Shiff stated. “They can do that. They went for the cheapest solution.” When requested whether or not he thought it was unfair, he stated he’s remained buddies with the MTV workers since. “It’s just business,” he stated.

MTV approached Frank Drucker, a producer and director at IBC Digital who was a former director at the community. Although MTV trusted him, it requested for a take a look at video to see if the group could be an excellent match for what was offered as a fairly uncommon job.

IBC’s idea video, which was accomplished in round two days, featured the sequence Outlaw Golf. “It was a real mad dash to get that test done,” former IBC visible results supervisor Daniel Smith stated. “And then we presented it, and we won the job, basically.”

Season 2

Picture: Daniel Smith/IBC Digital

IBC group members described Video Mods season 2 in a lot of the similar methods Massive Bear described season 1: MTV would acquire the rights from artists and recreation corporations, get the tune pairings and recreation belongings to IBC, after which the group would produce the movies, discovering comparable struggles round software program limitations and mocap not all the time aligning with complicated character fashions. As an alternative of getting an in-house render farm, nevertheless, IBC partnered with the College at Buffalo’s supercomputing middle, which might render movies in round an hour. It will then take a full day to switch all the frames to a conveyable onerous drive, after which an IBC editor would put all the items collectively for an additional rendering go.

Most corporations and artists remained pretty fingers off, solely giving approvals on storyboards and tough cuts, however there was extra direct enter from sure events throughout the second season. Apart from the aforementioned SpongeBob incident, LucasArts had a selected request in change for partnering with MTV and IBC to use footage from Star Wars: Battlefront 2 and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Whereas IBC often had the liberty to resolve the route of every Video Mod, a sure proportion of the LucasArts movies had to function gameplay footage, which the firm offered.

“It was very interesting to know that somewhere in a room at Skywalker Ranch, George Lucas had watched our rough cut and gave it a thumbs-up,” former IBC president Benjamin Porcari stated. There was an identical state of affairs with Marc Ecko round the video for “Mountain Song” by Jane’s Habit, which featured Marc Ecko’s Getting Up: Contents Beneath Strain. The style designer and artist requested that the movement seize be genuine, and invited one among his graffiti artist buddies to the studio for it. “It was incredible meeting him and hearing the stories from him on what it was like in the early days of graffiti culture,” Porcari stated.

As well as, the Beastie Boys have been adamant in directing the Video Mod for “Oh Word?” that includes the avatars of the band that have been unlockable characters in NBA Road V3. They needed to do the movement seize themselves, as the band insisted that nobody was allowed to imitate them. Additionally they requested a fish-eye lens, an impact that wasn’t doable with the software program that IBC was utilizing. The group had to mimic the look by distorting the picture.

The workaround for movement seize proved tougher. IBC labored with Elektrashock in Los Angeles, however the band’s schedule didn’t permit them to fly there. In the meantime, no movement seize studios in New York would hire their areas. As such, IBC had to arrange a mocap room by transport the gear from Los Angeles, and one among the computer systems broke in transit.

All the computer systems had proprietary software program, so the group couldn’t simply exchange the machine with any outdated {hardware}. They received in contact with the software program firm, which was primarily based in Spain, and obtained a short lived license to use after discovering an identical laptop. The Beastie Boys spent most of the time simply speaking and making jokes with one another, ready for the troubleshooting to end. Ultimately, they requested the group if it thought the points could be fastened by the finish of the day; IBC stated it was sure of that. The band stated that it was no drawback, and that they’d return the subsequent day.

The problem was that the short-term license, which had labored simply nice that night, expired at midnight. “They come the next morning and it doesn’t work,” Drucker stated. “I’m like, What the hell? I’m cursed. So we had to get on the phone with the company, and they sent us another demo and we got it done.”

Everybody we talked to who labored on season 2 of Video Mods recalled their time fondly, noting the inventive freedom of pitching ideas to MTV, as the firm went with most of the group’s concepts. However as a lot as the course of didn’t change a lot from the first season, neither did the lengthy hours and tight deadlines. “At any time, we were juggling three balls at the same time,” Porcari stated. “We had 80-, 90-hour weeks. We were going home just to sleep, working through weekends. It was pretty intense. But even then, I knew the minute it was over, I’d miss it.”

Unplugged

Picture: Daniel Smith/IBC Digital

Fairly just a few concepts for Video Mods ended up on the chopping room ground. There was supposed to be yet one more episode for the second season, and there had been months of discussions for a 3rd season.

A few of the artists being thought of — the standards being songs that had been in the high 10 most listened record however have been on their means out — included Daddy Yankee, the Dixie Chicks, and 50 Cent. For the latter, Drucker described a gathering with members of G-Unit, who pitched concepts like “two gangs squaring off with machine guns” in addition to a “whorehouse,” each of which might have “never made it past the censors” on TV. Not many recalled the video games in consideration, with the exception of Gears of Battle.

One other query was the place to take the present’s route as soon as the novelty started to put on off. Many individuals talked about the website Machinima as an ongoing affect, notably with having extra user-generated content material on the present. This had already occurred as soon as with the Video Mod for “So Cold” by Breaking Benjamin, that includes Half-Life 2. That video was initially made by Paul Marino, who instructed Polygon that he didn’t obtain compensation, solely publicity, however stated that it helped him showcase the potential of platforms like Machinima to folks exterior the modding neighborhood.

At the finish of the day, Video Mods wasn’t a scores bonanza. “It wasn’t like Cribs, or a show that was getting picked up and talked about in papers or on Entertainment Tonight,” Coletti stated. “It was a decision of where to allocate money, production money. It felt like after two seasons, the show was kind of what it was, and it wasn’t gonna do any better or worse.”

Most individuals who had labored on Video Mods stayed with Massive Bear Leisure and IBC Digital after the offers with MTV had ended; the studios continued working till 2007 and 2013, respectively. Afterward, many went on to pursue jobs in the video games business, whereas others transferred their abilities to TV and movie. Interviewees for this piece went on to work for corporations like HBO, BioWare, and Vice Media; left their contact on video games like Psychonauts 2 and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands; and have been a part of reveals and movies like The Nice North and Insidious: The Purple Door.

Now, twenty years after Video Mods went off the air, Shiff and Renkewitz are engaged on what Shiff considers a “Video Mods reboot,” utilizing the Unreal Engine and Renkewitz’s dwelling movement seize setup. The undertaking consists of two video games, which the duo is hoping to pitch to recreation publishers for funding: Flashmobs and Supergroup. They’re working with skilled dancers for Flashmobs and rock bands for Supergroup to create performances, with a give attention to social media and influencers. Shiff talked about being in talks with a “major metal band,” in addition to working intently with dance influencers — not only for the video games, however to create Video Mods-style clips for his or her TikTok and YouTube channels.

The virality that clips like SpongeBob’s “All the Small Things” have discovered lately offers a glimpse of what the reception may have been. Folks modding characters from different video games, movies, and TV reveals into Guitar Hero, and the idea behind Fortnite Pageant (and its potential for humorous clips), are inherently conserving the Video Mods spirit alive.

“I think, 20 years later, it’s still an innovative concept, even though the graphics have changed and people have a higher fidelity of expectation,” Titre-Montgomery stated. “I still believe that games are the best medium for self-expression, and what was really fun about Video Mods is that it was really positive; there was always something fun going on, and I think we’ve lost that in the video game space. It’s become really toxic and sad, and pockets of fun are found in different places, and I’d love for people to really think about how we can go back to that.”