THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!

Special Project

Special Project
From the 16th Annual Shorty Awards

Yellowjackets - MTV News Kurt Loder Deepfake

Entered in Creative Use of Technology

Objectives

SHOWTIME®’s hit series YELLOWJACKETS introduced us to wildly talented high school girls' soccer players who descend into savage clans after their plane crashes in 1996. This genre-crossing phenomenon spans survival thriller, supernatural horror, and dark comedy, all served up with a heaping scoop of 90s nostalgia.

With our eye on the target of an earned-media moment to expand Season Two’s reach to broad audiences, who better to present a 1996-accurate news segment on the search for these missing teens than the defining journalist of that generation — MTV’s Kurt Loder?
 

Strategy and Execution

Legion Creative utilized AI deepfake/de-aging technology to bring audiences (and our on-screen talent) back to 1996 via a classic MTV News segment, complete with era-accurate graphic package elements, VHS-retro distressing, and some select Yellowjackets Easter Eggs for the super fans.

Our de-aged Kurt was shot in New York on greenscreen for maximum authenticity and teases era-appropriate stories about mad cow disease and Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill Tour before tossing to a pitch-perfect mid-90’s aesthetic “Where are the Yellowjackets” website, drawing fans deeper and deeper into Yellowjackets’ cross-platform experience where they can leave tips with information on the missing Yellowjackets.

Anyone who submits a tip discovers a rabbit hole leading only to more mysteries, via both an in-world Reddit account and an exclusive Instagram Close Friends list.
 

Results

Achieving our goal of earned media, this stunt drove headlines on Promax HotSpots, Business Insider, Rolling Stone, JoBlo, Bloody Disgusting, Yahoo News, Uproxx, Screenrant, IMDB, Comicbook.com, and many more .
 

Media

Video for Yellowjackets - MTV News Kurt Loder Deepfake

Entrant Company / Organization Name

Legion Creative, Showtime

Links

Entry Credits