Post Panic Rocks for MTV

news: MTV Rocks! - Deployment Ident, Wednesday 10 March

Post Panic - MTV Networks

As from March 2010, MTV is re-branding its 6 specialist music channels – MTV Rocks (formely MTV2), MTV Classic (formely VH1 Classic), MTV Dance, MTV Base, MTV Hits and MTV Shows. Launching first in the UK with international roll-out to follow, this project is a continuation of the July 2009 MTV’s first international rebrand. In total 32 TV idents have been commissioned to span all these 6 MTV ‘sister channels’ with the MTV World Design Studio drawing together the cream of international motion and audio-design talent.


Individual studios were asked to take on each channel look/feel with PostPanic creating the channel idents for MTV Rocks. PostPanic co-founder Mischa Rozema took on the role as director with music and sound production by Massive Music, Amsterdam.

MTV Rocks, formely MTV2 in the UK and currently MTV Brand New in the Netherlands, showcases the best in international alternative music, spanning genres such as new wave, punk, rock, indie and rap. MTV Rocks is about celebrating rock attitude and associated subcultures.

MTV’s aim was to appoint one studio per channel – identifying studios whose outlook and style complimented the music and shows featured on the specific channels. The brief for PostPanic was to encapsulate the mood and emotion associated with alternative music and create a series of five 12 second idents (with more to follow) to serve the MTV Rocks branding established by the MTV World Design Studio. Director Mischa Rozema developed a central theme and wrote a set of scripts based in an imaginary landscape populated with surreal characters and situations. A visually stunning mix of live action and visual effects, the idents kept PostPanic busy for nearly 5 months.

Mischa Rozema explains further, ‘My main idea was to create the opposite of what you would expect on a music channel. MTV has always been about extreme visual and musical diversity – it’s a constant change in pace. I wanted to create idents that did the opposite, that literally formed an underlying ‘film’, something you might stumble across while channel hopping. When you come across this reoccurring film, it should evoke questions, just as if you found it while flicking the remote. What is this film? What’s happening in it? What’s the relationship between the scenes? And before you can answer anything, it changes but the viewer wants to know what’s going on and they continue watching and waiting for the next one. So basically it’s about filling the screen with as many unanswered questions as possible within 12, 10, 5 and 3 seconds, as long as it was visually stunning and conveyed the energy that’s attached to MTV Rocks.’ 

Director: Mischa Rozema
Production: PostPanic