Analysing My Chemical Romance's Posters

A lot of the promotional posters featured on My Chemical Romances website and promo website are bright and colourful, gearing away from previous ideologies of the band and moving in a new direction. They seem to be exploring the freedom of their art form more and this is definitely visible in their products.

Above is my favourite poster of their new collection, I like the mixed signals you get from the poster, rather than being cold and unattractive vivid colours are used which also are used in the bands music videos.

Red is an important colour featured in this poster, this is reinforced by the word 'exterminate,' giving a visible and verbal reasoning for the posters layout and colours. The shots of each band member I find attractive because they resemble head shots taken by police, as if their convicts and in the story of the CD; runaways trying to fight against evil.

The animated feeling of the poster, the exaggerated hair and costume, though minimal adds a lot of body and meaning to the images, showing messed up hair and dishevelled appearances, something if involved with the CD's storyline, you would expect.

The elements of obvious colour choices against a storyline is something I'd really like to incorporate into my music video, by doing this a simple poster becomes a connection between fans, the work and product and the band, giving the music a personal, relatable feeling.

I love this poster so much! I love the way it looks like part of a scrap wall on a bedroom, a collection of images all related to the band, I like the way each persons personality is involved in the over all image and how I immediately feel a connect toward the poster and band.

I like the use of minimal colour involved and how the images though black and white really stand out, possibly because of the almost tactile looking staples and tape making the poster look as if it would have a texture if you were to touch it.

Though spurs and not presented in the traditional way expected each band member does have a vertical section of the poster, each member have a series of images that show their personality, horizontally all the images connect, the top line are all face on smirking shots. This both shows the relationships between band members and gives their audience an insight into their personal lives without words or moving images. Another small detail I really like about the poster is the way the pictures aren’t perfectly aligned or positioned, again giving a personal, tactile feeling to the poster.

Looking at Media Packs For CDs

My Chemical Romances most resent CD came in a variety of Media packs, a couple consisting of coming in a special edition box that either came with an exclusive bandana all featured in their latest music videos or the newest tshirt design. In the UK the CD by it's self was £9.99, the exclusive special edition packs were £18.99. I bought a special edition myself and got a blue badana the colour Gerard Way was featured wearing, I wore this to their concert on the 12th February 2011. The box the Cd came in featured the same artword as the CD cover and have a cut out area where the design form the cd underneath came out, this really gives the media pack a special quality to it and made myself want to buy it evenmore, it felt worth it paying the extra for a well presented product rather than just a plain CD.

All the colours in this media pack reflect the music and the statement the band are trying to make. Bright and cohessive colours are used throughout giving the CD an appeal to a wide audience as the imagery used doesn't seem to target a single audience, instead it seems to be created to appeal to everyone. It does have an element of dark imagery, but the spider isn't an expected coloured which would be a dark omminose colour.

Other Animated Music Videos

OKAY GO, is a band well known for electro pop music as well as their creative music videos. These videos really have inspired my own music video and the process that I want to follow to create my music video. Below are two examples of their music videos and how stop motion animation can be used in a music video. I also really like all the bright colours, the contrast between foreground and background as well the lack of relevance between the lyrics and the images the audience watch. These music videos are individual and have a sense of style and creativity, I personally really enjoy creating stop motion animation with card and paper images, perhaps showing a link between music videos and the animations shown in South Park.