HISTORY OF VIACOM (2016)

Viacom’s Times Square headquarters serves many roles — as office space, production studios, a tourist destination, and as a cultural organ - a place where thousands of employees and creators from the company’s diverse networks come together and share a common vision and history.

Viacom’s internal production studio, Catalyst , came to Hard Work Party and our strategic partners, Slanted Studios , with a need for communicating Viacom’s rich history to new hires and VIP visitors. They had a large wall space in their soon-to-be-built visitors’ center, a treasure trove of footage spanning decades, and access to Viacom’s networks’ many properties.

At the time, Catalyst knew we had a thing for transparent LCDs, and so of course they made their way into the design. This piece features a custom-made 84” selectively-transparent LCD enclosure with integrated lighting and a 10-point touchscreen.

The enclosure houses a series of modular dioramas, each of which has its own software-controlled lighting and mise en scène including lots of 3D-printed characters highlighting key moments from Viacom’s past. User interaction with the touchscreen reveals the dioramas behind the opaque screen and triggers scene-specific lighting, giving a feeling of mystery to the box interior.

The system was designed from the ground up to take advantage of Catalyst’s in-house animation capabilities — lighting, screen graphics, and dioramas are modular and can but updated on the fly. Plus the box doubles as a tanning booth!

Slanted Studios & Hard Work Party

Executive Creative Director: Michelle Higa Fox

Technical Director: Noah Norman

Producer: Jennifer Vance

Programming: Beau Burroughs, Mary Franck

Production Assistants: Ana Kim, John Hughes

Digital Fabrication: Gamma.NYC

Fabrication Designer: Marcus Swagger

LED and Wiring Specialist: Aaron Lobdell

Transport/Art Handling: Crozier Fine Arts

Viacom Catalyst: Branding & Strategy

SVP, Brand Strategy & Creative: Cheryl Family

VP/Executive Producer: Matt Herron

VP of Brand Strategy: Tori Turner

VP of Design: John Farrar

Director: Matt Hanson

Art Director: Sean McClintock

Animation Lead: Josh Lindo

Animation: Ross McCampbell, James Zanoni

3D Modeling: Scott Denton, Sean McClintock, Michael Berger, Ryan Kittleson, Casey Reuter, Tom Cushwa, Scott Hubbard

Fabrication: Elise Ferguson, Tim McDonald, James Zanoni, Benjamin Kress

3D Printing: Shapeways, New Lab, 3d Hubs, NRI

R&D Design & Animation: Carl Burton

R&D Prototyping: Michael Boczon

Video Editor: Jared Smith, Alex Zagey

Archival Footage Research: Jason Yorke

Copywriter: Tanya Davis Copy

Editor: Tory Mast Research: Jen Li

Case Study

DP: Chris Willmore

Music: Ketsa “Within the Earth”

August 2016