Behind the music video ‘mods’ MTV doesn’t want you to see (legally)
polygon.comFour days before the episode was supposed to air on MTV2, there was an unprecedented rejection: SpongeBob wasn’t allowed to sing in somebody else’s voice.
THQ, the publisher behind the video game SpongeBob SquarePants: Lights, Camera, Pants!, had approved the final cut. Blink-182 had given MTV the green light to use “All the Small Things.” But SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg didn’t want to see his creations performing the song virtually — despite the fact that, by 2005, SpongeBob had already sung in two other episodes of the show.
“This isn’t even someone that we usually have to get an approval from,” Frank Drucker, former producer at animation production company IBC Digital, told Polygon in a recent interview. “This is a whole third party, and it’s Nickelodeon. You’re the same company as MTV. In your own house, you got a rejection four days before it was supposed to air! I’m like, This is nuts.”
In the original rough cut, Sandy Cheeks played bass, Patrick Star stomped the kick pedal of a seashell-shaped drum set, and SpongeBob shredded a flying-V guitar while singing. After the rejection, IBC switched the concept from a band performance to a dance contest. This allowed the team to keep roughly half of what it had made and replace the instrument segments with more dancing shots. “It was, like, no sleep for four days to remake the video,” Drucker said. “Sometimes we hit hurdles in not the most expected places.”
Airing for two seasons on MTV2 from 2004 to 2005, Video Mods married licensed songs with video games, making game characters perform the tracks as if they were part of fictional bands. Treated as real music performances, the videos featured multiple cameras and light shows. Bands such as The Killers, Outkast, and Evanescence were paired up with game franchises such as Silent Hill, Star Wars, and The Sims.
At the time of this story going live, most Video Mods episodes from season 1 and season 2 are available to watch on YouTube. Prior to that, the
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