VICE Labs Department

VICE Labs began as an experiment to repackage content from the Vice archive, and we evolved it into an incubator for experimental content for VICELAND – a (mostly) unsupervised content incubator, creating everything from interstitials to pilots to internal communications, live event coverage and brand partnerships. We had the opportunity to play with all kinds of unconventional ways to share the humanity, empathy and curiosity that drive the brand.
I joined the small team working out of an attic in the old N 10th Vice building in early in 2015 to prepare for launching the channel, and started running the department in 2016.  
We won an Emmy award for our coverage of the 2017 Women’s March, took home several ProMax, Webby, Clio awards, and our interstitial work garnered VICELAND the highest viewer engagement with a 93.96% completion rate, outperforming competitors’ audience retention during ad breaks.

Interstitials + Promos

A small selection of the 100’s of pieces we created for the channel

Messiah Rhodes is on a mission to show how things should’ve been documented, one Photoshop Masterpiece at a time.

Taking viewers behind the scenes of the inner workings of VICELAND, Action Bronson and Standards and Practices Director Fatima discuss the language on his shows.

Our job was not only to create vibrant interstitials showing the heartbeat of VICELAND, but also test out new ideas and proof of concepts. Channel Surfing was one of our 30 minute specials for “Weed Week”, comprised of repurposed previously shot materials and new spots and sketches to mimic the experience of impatiently scrolling through cable tv channels.

The brain of animator Luke Maroldi created this exploration into all of the “things with faces” in the world for Weed Week 2018.

Our series “Performances” showcased locked off one-minute shots of singers we love, providing a powerful moment of stillness airing between VICELAND shows and other commercials.

At Labs flexibility and working with what you’ve got were our words to live by. Taji Ameen and I flew up to Canada for a day for Rogers New Fronts, and went with the flow to make this series of runners with Matty.

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We turned Tom Arnold’s Los Angeles living room into the office of a crazed man for this spot I directed promoting his series, Trump Tapes.

Journalist Ben Makuch shares cyber security tips and info that were not widely known about in 2017/2018 to accompany and promote his series, Cyber War.

Weed Week Specials & Interstitials

We took River L. Ramirez to get an entire town in Colorado high for Weed Week on Viceland.

Part of running an experimental department at a brand new cable channel is being resourceful. After a promo shoot for weed week, there was a huge pile of leftover props aka weed that we needed to make use of. So I wrote, directed and cast an overly dramatic comedy about it in under a month, winning us a ProMax award and creating a series of interstitials and a webisode.

A Quiz Show is a Game Show – the product of a very simple, very repeatable premise: Find three awkward strangers, put them in a room with nothing but a TV, and ask them questions to which there are no right answers. 
The pilot/special was made in two weeks, from pre-production to post. It was made entirely in-house and shot in the VICELAND studio
With only 24 hours of promotion, A Quiz Show increased viewership in it’s timeslot by over 50%, surpassing many of the Prime Time series on the channel.

The Hood Incubator is building a movement for cannabis justice that ultimately seeks to create a world where every Black person can generate wealth, health, political power, and prosperity for their families and communities. We wanted their mission to be showcased as a crucial element in creating equity in industy.

A collection of repurposed anti-cannabis PSAs from the mid-20th Century sheds light on changing attitudes over time (and how silly some of those campaigns seem now.