A&E came to us with a very “now” challenge: how do we stop viewers from using their DVRs to skip commercial breaks or flip off our channel? Our answer was to develop innovative, original “bonus” content from their top-rated shows.

We began by developing ideas for each one of their Real Life series. They settled on our concept for 12 branded shorts that dug into the personal lives of the detectives featured on The First 48. Our goal was to give fans of the show a chance to see these real people in a new way, and to present it in a visually compelling manner different from what they were used to seeing every week on the show.

We shot six detectives in Miami and six in Cincinnati, setting beautifully shot footage of each in their environment against a narrative taken from one on one interviews. The result was a series of short documentaries that took the viewer inside the mind of these detectives while keeping them glued to A&E during commercial breaks.