- Product/Brand - Channel 4 : Born Risky
- Spot - Prototype
- Song Title - Prototype
- Composer - Modesta, Kerr, Hero
- Publisher - Copyright Control
- Artist - Viktoria Modesta
- Master Rights - Viktoria Modesta / Pitch & Sync
- Music Supervisor - Pitch & Sync
- Ad Agency - Channel 4Creative
- Creatives - Chris Bovill, John Allison
- Film Company - Channel 4Creative
- Film Director - Saam Farahmand
- Air Date - 14/12/14
Ben Haenow may have taken his place in the pop history books as 2014’s X Factor winner – but for many viewers of Sunday’s final it will be Viktoria Modesta who stole the show during the commercial breaks.
Billed as the world’s first Bionic Pop Artist, Modesta is the girl with the prosthetic leg who wrote, sang and starred in Prototype, the challenging 40 second spot which debuted on December 14 as part of Channel 4’s long-running Born Risky campaign.
The TV broadcaster has always tried to reach those places other terrestrial stations fear to tread.
After breaking new ground with its coverage of the 2012 Paralympics (and the subsequent Winter Games in Sochi), Channel 4Creative Heads Chris Bovill and John Allison asked themselves the question ‘Why are there no disabled pop artists?’
According to Bovill, 26 year old Latvian-born model, dancer and alt-cabaret artiste Modesta ticked all the Born Risky boxes.
“She is inspiring, unique, very hot and perfectly embodies our remit of championing alternative voices and establishing new talent,” he says.
When music supervisors Pitch and Sync (P&S) came on board to A&R the project in December of last year, the as yet unsigned and unpublished Modesta already had a raw version of Prototype to play them.
“We knew that we’d need something with a more cinematic quality so we bought in London Grammar’s producer Roy Kerr and top line specialist Hero (aka Natasha Baldwin) to rework the song and to make sure Viktoria delivered a really magical vocal performance,” says P&S Creative Director Alex Lavery.
Video director’s Saam Farahmand’s final film, which nods towards Madonna and Lady Gaga as well as a number of iconic Hollywood blockbusters, is surprisingly adult in tone and tries, he says, to “engage the physical reality of amputation as a poetic concept rather than a medical procedure, shine a light on stigma and question normal ideas of sex and beauty.”
It all fits with Modesta’s stated desire to “rip up the rule book” surrounding the depiction of disability in popular culture.
Whether popular culture is quite ready for her remains to be seen!
