The company responsible for a contentious video that promoted a series of boozy Private Frosh week events is back at it again, except this time everything is a little more PG-13.
Aficionado Studios came under fire late last month after releasing a trailer for Ottawa Frosh 2014 — a series of parties not affiliated with any post-secondary institution in Ottawa.
The video seemed to depict young men and women drinking and smoking marijuana, despite a disclaimer to the contrary. There was also shots of women in their underwear engaging in pillow fights. Critics complained the video was sending the wrong message to Ottawa students. The company was also accused of lifting clips from Internet footage of an Alberta school’s frosh event, which was, ironically, non-alcoholic.
The video has since been removed from YouTube.
The company released a new promotional video this week:
In a statement posted to his Facebook page, Jarett Lopez, the executive director of Aficionado Studios, said the second video has a different message from first video, which was meant to shock.
“While our first trailer focused primarily on partying and night time activities intended to get attention and shock, our second trailer depicts more of our day time activities in a simple, straight forward way,” he wrote.
In his statement, Lopez said Aficionado Studios will not be releasing any more videos, nor will they be speaking with the media, because “we need to focus on producing Frosh Week to the best of our ability and not on more promotional videos and interviews.”
The second video is much tamer than the original. While there are still clips of young people drinking, a woman in a white T-shirt being sprayed with a water gun, and whole lot of twerkin’, there’s much less controversial content. (Many of the party scenes are just recycled clips from the original video.)
The video includes pizza, people playing Cards Against Humanity, men chugging what appears to be energy drinks, people playing with toy swords, and so forth.
