ARTIFACTUALITY HITS HOME WITH BROADCAST DESIGN PACKAGE FOR MTV’S ‘THE REAL WORLD: KEY WEST REUNION’

NEW YORK: Like good manners, inspiration for a standout promo package starts in the home. That’s the way it was for the elite East Coast broadcast design firm Artifactuality, that made the famously high-style houses of MTV’s “The Real World” series the jumping-off point for “Fun, Sun & Now Totally Done: The Real World Key West Reunion”.

As the wrap-up episode to one of America’s favorite shows about beautiful but highly confrontational housemates, the always-anticipated “Reunion” episode requires a distinctive graphic package of opens, tags, bumpers and transitions. Artifactuality delivered with an eye-catching set of illustrative elements that make the famous “The Real World: Key West” house the star, guiding the viewer on a colorful, fun and fast-paced virtual tour of the cast’s glamorous on-camera home.

In the :15 open, a whimsical artistic rendering of the “The Real World: Key West” house’s pool area springs up, then transforms quickly into a piece-by-piece layout of the game room, followed by the dining room, the bedroom, and then back out to the expansive living room, complete with wraparound couch and colorful interior decorations. Throughout, the rectangular pool, walls, and windows serve as portals for video clips of each “The Real World: Key West” cast member to appear, while bubbly circles and spheres move subtly through the frames to bring dynamic rhythm to the action.

Artifactuality Co-Founders/Creative Directors Christine Moh and Bob Mickens devised the concept after examining the signature elements of “The Real World”

“In ‘The Real World’, the house that the cast lives in is always an extremely important component, with state-of-the-art architecture and interior design,” says Mickens. “These are sexy, cool spaces that draw people in by making them say, ‘Wouldn’t this be a great place to live?’ Besides providing great artistic inspiration for the package, this approach also had a lot of logistical advantages, since it presented the opportunity to do an efficient, completely graphic project.”

“An important part of being designer and animator on the job is to determine the story line and how the sequence unfolds,” Moh adds. “I started with the pool because that felt to me like how a real-life house tour would unfold. From there, you go into the billiards room and play games, eat in the dining room, and then things get hot in the bedroom. When you want to interact with other people later, you go back out into the living room.”

With the course of action set, Moh obtained detailed photographs of the luxurious “The Real World: Key West” house from MTV producer Scooter Alpert, to use as a basis for playfully stylistic illustrations that put an artistic spin on the famous domicile.

We simplified the photographs down to their most appealing shapes and colors,” Moh explains. “Remember, we’re talking about an open that’s only :15 long, so the amount of space and time available to communicate something to the viewer’s eye is short. We’ve designed dozens of graphic packages for MTV and other networks, and our experience tells us that for television, the flat shape of an illustration with large patches of color makes a bigger impact than a finely shot photograph.”

The open set the pace for a comprehensive package of elements that included bumpers, transitions, and lower third ID tags for each of the scintillating “The Real World: Key West” cast members. Moh points to the ID tags, where more circles and spheres bounce energetically but subtly around each person’s name. “The design focus is always on the open, and from there everything – the timing, music, colors, typeface, the bumpers, lower thirds, -- comes from that creative,” she says. “Once we’ve made the critical choices for that piece, we have a palette and clear direction that drives the project, even for elements like the lower thirds where the art and detail is small, but beautiful.”

Artifactuality also doubled as music supervisors for the package, picking the perfect high-energy rock guitar track for the channel that wrote the book on combining music and picture.

“It’s our responsibility to select licensable music and make the elements work with it,” notes Mickens. “We like to experiment by putting together a combination of tracks and do an audio mix. The right music for ‘The Real World’ is something rock and roll, positive, and fast-paced.”

For Artifactuality, “The Real World: Key West Reunion” was the opportunity to unite their commitment to efficient onscreen design logistics and understanding of MTV’s audience with their own artistic instincts.

“MTV and the whole ‘The Real World’ team is an ideal client, because their look and branding is very important to them,” Bob Mickens concludes. “Everything they air has to have a unique edge, but still be identifiable as MTV. Knowing that the client is confident that you can communicate that to the viewing audience is a great feeling. We were very glad to take on that responsibility for an onscreen icon.”

Finally, MTV Series Producer – Scott ‘Scooter’ Alpert quotes:

"Christine and Bob can read my mind. Before I can suggest a concept - there it is - Just like I pictured… I'm totally spoilt; they make my life much much easier as I never have to worry about how great my graphics will be. In fact, usually the graphics are my favorite part of my shows."

About Artifactuality

Artifactuality is an award-winning graphic and broadcast design team based in New York City. Founded by Christine Moh and Bob Mickens, Artifactuality takes a multidisciplinary approach to creating effective and motivating onscreen campaigns, film titles, broadcast mapping and more. For more information, please visit: www.artifactuality.com .