The 2012 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) hit screens worldwide, featuring the best in pop music and a fresh new design centered around the beauty of being different. Our 2012 MTV VMA design team explored the concepts of space, time, and place whilst the footage was distressed with a visual "grenade", contrasting the isolation and disquiet of the photography with a highly stylized digital imperfection.

The direction for the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards was born from a desire to capture the alternating beauty and desolation of the American landscape in contrasting urban and natural spaces. Delving deep into the digital abyss, viewers were presented with explosions of brilliant color and electronic mayhem that were juxtaposed against the muted tones of natural and urban environments, as well as the videos of the nominees themselves.

Process One of the first challenges was coordinating the shoot for necessary scenic imagery. Locations were varied and remote and included a diverse spectrum of landscapes from areas that include Hawaii, Alaska, California, Georgia and Minnesota. A large team of photographers with only the barest necessities were dispatched nationwide to better gain access to these environments and their unusual scenery. The project's success hinged on collecting captivating, surreal imagery that without we could not have succeeded.

Whilst photography went on in earnest, look development began with extensive experimentation in techniques. The primary software tools utilized were Adobe After Effects and Maxon Cinema 4D for graphics production. Transitioning from one shot to another and combining worlds convincingly was the primary VFX objective, but creating a digital tear was one of the first VFX milestones and the production implemented a system of organized procedural chaos within our tight production schedule. Early tests were altered to an extreme leaving very little original footage untouched. This provided opportunity to dial back and make further refinements. As we progressed, we tuned displacements and offsets were employed with captured scenics as the leading force behind the look. It was a painstaking process of selecting shots through trial and error in order to achieve the desired effects. No plugins were used and instead a series of proprietary techniques and effects were developed in-house in order to tweak the look and retain it case-by-case for each moment.

Driving the displacements were individual color channels selected from the footage before and after each shot and mixed back in through displacement maps to manage tearing and offsets. One of the greatest challenges was going against some natural instincts as designers. Perfecting the look was a matter of approaching the task in reverse-- first destroying the shot and then refining it to achieve a fine balance of chaos, beauty and an explosive effect required to define an iconic look for the 2012 VMAs.