Lauren Reid // Digital Producer & Content Strategist

In the fall of 2016, we brought music back to MTV!

MTV and Done+Dusted launched a show that re-imagined live music programming. Each week, we brought together the best new music, ground-breaking live performances and young comedic talent under one roof in a highly curated and truly innovative multi-platform viewing experience. It was a miniature VMAs every Thursday night at 11.

Each week, we produced a mountain of content that was usedacross social, digital, and linear — in the spirit of Wonderland being EVERYWHERE. Content included:

+ Several different livestreams, including straight performances and a mesmerizing “artist follow” camera which allowed you to be a fly on the wall during authentic moments with the musicians

+ Quick-turnaround VOD production

+ 360 video and photos

+ Instagram stories to pre-promote the show, and Snapchat stories to cover it live

+ Much, much more

MTV Wonderland was something completely different — a fast-paced show taking place across an entire complex of old warehouses (and even a vintage brothel!). We not only had technical problems to solve (hello, livestreaming in a place not wired for power let alone internet), but also needed to build a linear and digital audience from scratch with limited resources.

We came up with innovative content distribution methods, including gaining access to artists’ own social accounts (and fanbases!) to share and stream directly to the fans who want it most.

On the linear broadcast, viewers could 1-2 songs per artist — but on digital, we were able to expand and give fans more. We streamed exclusive, not-for-broadcast performance sets for each episode’s artists on Facebook Live so viewers to get their fill of non­stop music.

Fans could shadow each of our three performers through their night at Wonderland on the Artist Follow livestream. Our roaming cameraman was a fly on the wall as he made his way through Wonderland and caught authentic moments with talent right before and/or after their onair segments.

We streamed on MTV.com, @WonderlandMTV Facebook, and, in an innovative distribution play, directly to the artists’ own Facebook pages.

I worked with our 360° video production team to plot good opportunities at Wonderland, and coordinated with Music & Talent to make it happen. Here was one of my favorites: Flatbush Zombies’ performances of their hit “This Is It” in 360°. Includes a crowd-surfing view (in which our operator maaaaay have been dropped).

Many of the emerging artists featured on Wonderland were born & bred on SoundCloud — so of course we wanted to use the space to promote our show. Each week we created an episodic playlist around the week’s artists, with a custom track intro by cast member Matt FX. And at the end of the season, Matt FX wrapped it all up with a “Best Of” recap:

Our Snapchat Discover team produced “Inside The Track” pop-up video versions of Wonderland performances with supporting annotation content that revealed fun facts about the artists and deeper meanings behind their song.

For our Episode 109 artists (Sleigh Bells, D.R.A.M. & Kehlani), we extended distribution to our O&O player and partnered with Genius to give these an even bigger promotional boost.

Talent loved getting 3D scans of themselves, and we loved using these quick and easy pieces of snackable content to promote the show.

Didn’t catch @steveaoki‘s epic show at #WonderlandMTV last night? I’ve got the hook-up: https://t.co/CXifOlkAMe https://t.co/zf7twoabdo

— Wonderland (@WonderlandMTV) October 14, 2016

We took Matt FX’s popular music discovery segment straight to the fans! Our resident Wonderland music expert hosted a weekly show on Facebook Live (from the Wonderland account) that introduced viewers to Wonderland’s upcoming artists, and teased them as to what they would be hearing in the week’s episode. By streaming to the Wonderland Facebook page, he can interact with commenters by taking questions and provide direct recommendations from his huge musical knowledge base as Resident Wonderland Music Expert. The segment served as pre-promotion and tune-in for Thursday’s show. The stream was also be shared to MTV’s Facebook account to boost reach.

Our audience of voracious music fans dressed to the nines for each week’s party. As they waited to get into the venue, we profiled some of our favorites with a couple questions about what music meant to them. Not only did it give us some fun, lightweight content, but it excited our audience to have their own little feature on MTV.

“Music is my whole life…” https://t.co/5NSMEcf4sO #wonderlust pic.twitter.com/AhsMtADkYn — Wonderland (@WonderlandMTV) October 18, 2016

We created custom assets for each performer and gave them to talent to share on their accounts and promote their appearance.

STREAMING LIVE via @WonderlandMTV on Facebook. https://t.co/FUsFgB1pf7 pic.twitter.com/ljnBjvtRvc

— blink-182 (@blink182) October 14, 2016

Viewers could experience an on-the-ground fan’s perspective while exploring Wonderland through the interactive live streaming app Livel.y. This roving, hosted stream traveled through the venue while revealing performance spaces, interacting with party goers, and providing fans at home a first-person perspective of Wonderland. Select fans at home could “enter” Wonderland through Live.ly’s guesting feature, or simply react and ask questions that our host would interact with in real time. We used the Live.ly platform to pioneer ground for our account as well as take advantage of MTV’s already thriving Musical.ly presence

 

tune in 😉💜   A post shared by Alli Fitz (@allicatttx) on Oct 27, 2016 at 2:31pm PDT

We created Twitter Moments to gather talent’s tweets and tell the story of each episode.

Check them out here

A running Spotify playlist was updated weekly to include:

+ All Wonderland performance songs from each artist (both from the broadcast and the digital livestream)
+ All “editorial” songs — those which hosts/guests discussed in interviews and segments
+ The occasional host or DJ song — i.e. Lizzo’s new single
+ Occasional theme/bumper songs, when significant

+ Lizzo “FAB.”
+ JoJo “No Apologies.”
+ Judah & the Lion “Take It All Back 2.0”
+ ILOVEMAKONNEN “Who Be Lovin Me”
+ Hayley Kiyoko “Gravel To Tempo”
+ SWMRS “Miley”
+ Tove Lo “Habits (Stay High)”
+ Gallant “Weight in Gold (Ekali Remix)”
+ Lizzo “Phone”
+ Kehlani “CRZY”