TNT has taken the opportunity to bring their addictive programming to screens big and small, and Grey NY chose director Bryan Buckley and The Mill to deliver the message. In this promo for TNT, 'Don't Miss A Second,' we see how just how engrossing a TV show can be when two policemen completely miss a bank robbery, a man's dog is devoured by an alien and a coroner's "dead" patient rises from a gurney and walks out of the room.
Mill Designer Bryce Wymer, creator of the dog-eating alien they affectionately named 'Thelonious Monk,' explains of the creative process, "The original look and feel of the alien was inspired by crustaceans and other lesser forms of sea life. Ultimately, the alien had taken on slightly more human characteristics. Some of the references we used for inspiration were the praying mantis, sea crabs and Steve Buscemi."
Wymer adds, "The most important part of the design was that Monk had to be able to capture and digest a small animal within his body. We discussed having him swallow the dog, but ultimately we decided he would grasp the dog within his stomach cavity, where he would then digest the animal."
The team ran through a broad gamut of designs before they landed on 'Thelonious Monk.' All the iterations of the characters were named after Wymer's favorite jazz musicians.
Leading the design of the end tag pneumonic was Art Director Bowe King. He explains his team's inspiration: "We wanted to compliment the amazing work done by The Mill team on the main body of this campaign - and what better way to do that than to have a slick punctuation at the end? First, we had to make sure it fit within TNT's established branding, which meant incorporating the TNT "branded magic" and clean studio environment."
"Then, we had to find a creative yet natural way to show that TNT is available on three types of portable technologies. All of this had to make sense within a few seconds, but not feel like one technology was more important than another. Finally, we wanted to make it our own. We didn't want to merely replicate what else had been done for TNT by other post-production houses. In the end, it's subtle but we managed to fit our own flare into it and the message comes across very cleanly."
Agency: Grey NY
Producer: Nicole Hasse
Creative Director: ECD: Eric Segal
Creatives: Zack Menna, Richard Singer
Account Director: Maximilian Kislevitz
Production Company: Hungry Man
Director: Bryan Buckley
Executive Producer: Mino Jarjoura
Editing Company: Big Sky
Editor: Chris Franklin
Edit Assist: Cristna Rackoff
VFX & Design: The Mill
Executive Producer: Adam Isidore
VFX Producer: Carl Walters
Shoot Supervisor: Michael Panov
2D Lead Artists: Keith Sullivan, Dexter Davey
3D Lead Artist: Ben Smith
3D Artists: Tom Cushwa, Stan Ilin, Josh Merck, Sam Crees, Naotaka Minami, Yong Kim
Assist: Jade Kim
Motion Graphics: Bowe King, John Koltai
Designer: Bryce Wymer