Secret Friend ‘Without My Pr0n’

Secret Friend came to Radar to find visuals to depict its absurd tale of internet browsing and lonely teenage nights? Thanks to Pew36 animation studios, they got a pleasingly naughty video. 

 

Steve from the band talks about why he came to Radar in the first place: "I'm a complete newcomer to the music business, so not knowing anything, I went hunting around Vimeo and Youtube for videos I liked and tracked down the directors. It was a difficult process, and ultimately, I think because I was an unknown artist, there was little interest from these directors, or they were expecting a much bigger budget than I had in mind. When I discovered Radar it was easy to hunt through a lot of videos from young and talented directors. I liked what I saw. Since it was quite painless to create a brief at no cost I thought it wouldn't hurt to see what response I got. I ended up with several treatments, three of which I thought were particularly good."

 

 

Adam Comiskey - lead animator at Pew36 - couldn't resist Steve's brief: "My normal approach to writing treatments is to spend some time carefully considering the client, their fan base and work from there. But this was a song I loved about a subject matter I love, so I pitched a video that I wanted to make, with my cheek and hoped the client ‘got it’. 

 

"He did...although some parts needed to be toned down. One of the first things to get cut was the main characters’ penis. I am passionately against censorship of any form, so once we decided that we were going to have the censored box during every character shot, we lopped off the junk so that it wasn't actually censoring anything."

 

Steve had ear-marked it as his video from the off: "Well the song, lyrically, tells quite an absurd story, so it seemed pretty obvious that the video should be animated. Adam's original treatment was pretty close to the final video, I didn't contribute much other than a little guidance such as considering the subject matter (porn), it was important to me that the video not depict anything too graphic and try to have fun and expand on the subject, rather than take the obvious low road."

 

The video is a one-man trip down the erotic paths of classic films, with some 70's glamour thrown in for good measure. Adam talks about how to keep the obscenity down, whilst maintaining the song's sense of tongue in cheek filth: "It was always meant to be Bond-esque with a pinch of filth, shaken not stirred. Its a worldwide franchise whose title sequences are synonymous with naked chicks so it was a natural fit for an international client. The style of the main character was an intentional attempt to disarm the risqué nature of the video. If they looked too real it would run the risk of turning some audiences away, so we kept it fun."

 

"As a client ‘Secret Friend’ were amazing. They were very trusting in us from day one and this is a massive compliment from another professional creative. "

 

Credits

 

ARTIST/CLIENT: SECRET FRIEND

 

DIRECTOR: ADAM COMISKEY AT PEW36 ANIMATION STUDIOS