Drew and Jonathan Scott, the multitalented familial duo at the core of HGTV’s “Brother vs. Brother,” have turned the competitive home renovation series into the network’s highest-rated show. So to promote the season premiere of Season 2, coming up on June 8, HGTV looked to create a spot with a vibe befitting its most valuable talent.

For Season 1, the network had released a promo positing the brothers as action heroes, squaring off for a fun but intense rivalry.

For Season 2, “they really wanted to go all out with these guys,” said Neil Berkeley, whose design company BRKLY produced the Season 2 promo.

“When they called they said, ‘hey we want to do something similar to what we did last season but we want to do it times 10.’ And then in the next sentence they said, ‘but our most important goal is, we want [the brothers] to land at the end [of the spot] in a three-point stance like Iron Man. You know, when he falls from the sky, lands and pops up slowly.’”

Though his company hadn’t won the job yet, Berkeley happened to have a friend who worked with Scarlett Johansson, and therefore was connected to people who work on Marvel films.

“I called him up and said, ‘hey man, can you put me in touch with the guys who do stunts for the Marvel movies?’ An hour later, I was talking to them on the phone. They said, ‘yeah, this is what we do. We got a whole team of guys that train and execute these stunts. So I called HGTV and said, ‘I got the guys who invented that [Iron Man] three-point landing. A week later, [HGTV] called and said, ‘you got the job.’”

Having show great resourcefulness in landing the job, Berkeley now had to deliver. Though BRKLY has created great work in promo, he largely considers himself a documentary filmmaker, where “the most intense it gets is sometimes the lighting is bad.”

To avoid overextending himself, Berkeley surrounded the production with “A-list, top-tier people and let them do their job,” including action director John Bonito (“The Marine”) and director of photography Theo Van De Sande (“Blade”). Together, they engaged in elaborate pre-planning. Action and stunts were so important to HGTV that they were planned first, with a story tied in after the fact. The team began the process by consulting a “Rolodex of action movies,” Berkeley said, developing a long list of ideas for stunts. They then took those ideas to the Marvel stunt team’s action laboratory/warehouse near LAX, where the experts worked to turn them into six tightly choreographed sequences that would be part of the final spot – including the “Iron Man”-style landing.

“From there it was breaking it down and asking, ‘Why are they doing all that?’” said Berkeley. “Well, they’re racing to get this hammer. It’s funny because this big, huge stunt sequence revolves around two guys just trying to get this hammer. It’s a little tongue in cheek.”

For HGTV, that slightly jokey feeling was vital to the success of the spot. “HGTV is a G-rated network,” said Todd Troop, the network’s creative director of design on the spot. “We’re family friendly, so we want drama but we always want to put a positive spin on it. There’s a difference between competition and conflict. We wanted this to play out like a good sibling rivalry. They’re just in good competition.”

For all the spot’s breathtaking thrills, the brothers are also “always smiling, always laughing” said Berkeley. “HGTV didn’t want their fans to feel like they were fighting each other or hurting each other… Even if they were jumping off something and smashing a table they wanted the next shot to be a smile or a grin. It’s like two brothers horsing around in a warehouse.”

Horsing around, of course, on wires that enabled Drew and Jonathan to roll down ramps, leap-run through the air like track stars, and jump to earth off of 30-foot scaffolds. Berkeley said that while “safety was a big deal” given the brothers are HGTV’s highest rated talent, the duo was also “game for whatever… they know martial arts, they’ve been trained in a theater, they know drama, how to play to a camera. They’re just really talented guys. [Our stunt coordinator] Jim Guthrie said that if HGTV doesn’t work out, they have a career in stunts.”

Adding to the element of danger was the authenticity of the surrounding environment. Shot in a massive, 30,000-square-foot warehouse in Los Angeles, the kinetic energy of the action fills every corner of the screen.

“We wanted it to feel very busy, very active,” said Berkeley. “Every time we shot there was a grinder shooting sparks, metal I-beams in the foreground, always something between you and the action. Dolly trucks racing across in the background. Every time we said ‘action’ 10 different things would start happening as the brothers did their work. It feels dangerous. It feels like the kind of place where you could be on something but it could easily snap and fall to the ground. We wanted this feeling that something could go wrong.”

That palpable yet lighthearted feeling of danger, infusing HGTV’s biggest spot of the year for its biggest show of the year, is the clearest statement yet of its brand’s evolution. The network may still be family-friendly to the core, but we’ve come a long way since the days of “Interiors by Design” and “Kitty Bartholomew: You’re Home.”

“We’re not your grandmother’s HGTV anymore,” said Troop. “We actually have very energetic and very entertaining shows that a lot of times people just aren’t aware of. When people see this spot… hopefully it catches their attention, makes them say, ‘Oh that’s HGTV. They are exciting to watch.’”

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