Studio Brief 1 - Play-Doh experiment

Play-Doh

Researching into Sledgehammer and the music video, there were a lot of aspects within the video which made it unique, fun and energetic. One of the biggest features i saw was the use of Play-Doh. It was used throughout the video to reference all kinds of sexual gestures. They used Play-Doh to make sperm, bumper cars, babies, roller coaster & blood. In my opinion I think they use Play-Doh to lessen the gruesome effect and also make the explicit stuff look less of a shock mainly due to Play-Doh being connected with children. With Play-Doh you can be as graphic as you want without coming across weird or insulting to anyone due to the childish nature of Play-Doh.

With this in mind, I came up with a few ideas based around Play-Doh. Below are some ideas and development using Play-Doh.

Moulding the Play-Doh to make a vibrant red background, then moving on to make sperm shapes to reflect the sexual nature of the music video. The sperm stand out well enough but may be hard to visually see against such a strong background. Colours contrast & work well together making it visually pleasing to the eye.

In Peter Gabriele's music video he uses a lot of colours. In all shades and tones, what i wanted to capture with this was the randomisation of colours by using Play-Doh instead of experimenting with random blocks of shapes on illustrator, which wouldnt have to same effect or message as Play-Doh is more relevant to the video and concept. In the end the Play-Doh works but it looks a bit forces and unnatural. I wanted the blocks of colours to come across random, which this isn't communicating.

I came up with this idea by accident. After breaking apart the Play-Doh to be put away, It beautifully wrapped around 2 of my fingers. As it did, it reminded me of an sexual gesture, which perfectly fits the concept. It's also playing around with sexual subtlety as to some people it may look like the peace sign but to others a dirty gesture. I think this idea works perfectly, the variety of colours pop which makes it more visually appealing to the users eye. The use of Play-Doh softens the blow of the dirty gesture due to the link with Play-Doh.