Everyone is quiet in a dressing room at MTV headquarters. It's just minutes from a Scream livestream; There will be clips from Season 2, an appearance by star Tom Maden, and then it will all be interrupted by a 15-minute "murder spree."
The anticipation among producers assembled feels – appropriately – akin to the building tension in a horror movie.
And then a voice cuts through it: "Boo!"
That's project manager Jill Crawford's 8-year-old daughter, who's along for the ride and clearly understands both horror and comedy better than any of us ever will. Laughter breaks out and the nerves dissipate as the team settles in to watch.
SEE ALSO:MTV's new 'Scream' series is death in the digital ageOn Friday, May 13, Scream fans tuned into the show's social channels expecting a Q&A with Maden and a clip of Season 2. Before the clip, however, a masked murderer ran loose, spilling (fake) blood all over MTV's beloved TRL studio while fans commented and interacted live on Facebook and Periscope.
Scream LIVE! promised viewers an interactive teaser over Facebook Live, YouTube and Periscope, but the creative minds behind the show's marketing always had more in store.
Director of digital strategy and fan engagement Matt McDonough and supervising producer of video/digital production Kim Thai spoke to Mashable about the genesis of this inventive social integration. They were inspired by the MTV audience's new media presence, and by the resurgence of live television on networks like NBC and FOX. They had The Sound of Music Live! and Grease: Live – so why couldn't Scream try what McDonough called "murder live?"
"Last season, our whole promo campaign was centered around killing all of the MTV celebrities, and the idea of killing MTV as you know it," McDonough said. "This campaign theme is more along the lines of ‘You can’t trust anybody, even our own marketing.’ We wanted the audience...we wanted to trick them everywhere they go. We want to be able to make them question who they can trust on air, when they see ads on the sides of buses, and when they log into their Twitter and Facebook accounts."
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"From a visual culture perspective, we’re always trying to look for that thing to engage with our audience," Thai said, specifically referring to MTV's younger demographic. "We wanted to play with them, we wanted to trick them a little bit, and it was all us leaning into knowing the user behavior and knowing the specifics that came from that actual fan base."
Thai's and McDonough's teams partnered with CS Global to script and choreograph a production with TV-level quality -- but live on mobile devices.
McDonough pointed out that using TRL's studio was no coincidence. "We’re still the same old MTV that’s doing things that are exciting and new and appeal to our audience, in the same physical space as we were doing them 20 years ago."
The team behind 'Scream LIVE!' assembled at MTV's New York headquarters to watch the bloody bloody murders.Credit: mashable/proma khosla"I love what they're doing, they're trying to be different," said Scream star Tom Maden, who spoke with Mashable just moments after the live stream. "They're trying to have interaction with people, which is where I think the future of TV and movies is."
That interaction, Maden said, added a new dimension to the story, as the other actors started taking cues from the comments pouring in.
"[The other actors] had some funny moments, and they wouldn't have said those things if they hadn't read what people were writing," Maden said. "A team of writers can sit down for three months and nail all those different moments eventually, but because there's a live interaction these are new ideas from totally different people."
Credit: mashable/proma khoslaThe live stream was successful, and in true Scream fashion was equal parts campy and sinister. At the end, the murderer gets ahold of the streaming device and makes herself known to the Internet. "I'm the first social serial killer," she declares. "Every single one of you out there, you're part of this."
"With the anonymity of the internet, people are very bold and willing to show their darker side," said Maden, who likened the dark side of social media to Lord of the Flies. "Things can turn pretty quickly, people can do some dark things. Are we inherently good people or are we just necessarily good because it's maintained and patrolled by society? Are we on our best behavior because we want to be or are we on our best behavior because we have to be?"
Those deeper questions may pervade Season 2, but MTV's number one priority is and always has been pure entertainment.
McDonough said the team focused on "making this just as bloody and surprising and creative [as Season 1], just from a horror perspective."
"With last season we kind of proved to our audience and to the horror genre fans in general that you could come to MTV and it would be a reliable source for thrilling horror. And we have to not only remind them of that, but up our game in terms of creativity and scares."
Scream Season 2 premieres on MTV Monday, May 30.
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