Reel Dealer
Fuse TV's Heavy Agenda
Words: Sandy Hunter
Fuse, a cable music video station risen from the ashes of muchmusic USA earlier this year, is all about the music videos, a distinction staunchly adhered to as the channel's key counterpoint to the pervasive cache of MTV.
But branding Fuse as something more than anti-MTV didn't just mean simply taking pot shots at the "leading brand," and led the channel to create TV identity and packaging surpassing the already established rebellious and hip status quo in favor of some truly out- there stuff. So, New York's TeamHeavy, the channel's defacto on-air creative department, tossed the broadcast branding manual out the window, opting not to work with a static logo or image. Instead the station's logo treatments and indeed, all the broadcast visuals, change their design and flavor from one interstitial or promo spot to the next. The logo itself takes myriad form, with "the four letter word they don't want you to hear" spelled out in at least 30 different executions, including classic coats of arms, tag letters and the tape from a broken cassette, to name a few.
TeamHeavy worked with a number of studios, directors and designers to come up with more than 20 promo spots encompassing animated illustrations, low- to high-end motion graphics, shiny CGI and down and dirty video game spoofs. Much of the work was produced internally under the supervision of creative director David Carson, but various spots were created by designer/studios 3:AM Design, Chokolat, Helios, Transfatty, Joost Korngold and G-Munk.
"Shave the Children" combines cleanly animated electric razors
that shave the Fuse name into the hair of an ape-man drawn in black
and white textbook style illustration. "Super Stylin" advises Cheese Is
Not For Wearing after a mixed media tour through three pre-fab instant
looks which receive ample representation on a certain other music
station. "Super Mullet Chop" is an eBoy style fake video game with a fey
action hero who scores mega bonus points by chopping the rat tails off
unsuspecting rednecks.
Colorful design pieces, grainy bunny on carrot snuff films, ironic riffs on design and animation styles ranging from Soviet propaganda to anime and a faux show opener for an unlikely family sitcom titled the "Shuttlecocks" further plant the Fuse flag in the visually hip and uncontrived territory the channel claims.
Nearly two dozen unique branding bits were cooked up and the final entry on the promotional DVD readily sums up both Heavy and Fuse's disregard for the tenants of traditional advertising. A rounded, brightly colored assembly line transporting an unidentified product quickly gives way to popping graphics and swirling text bubbles in orbit around an easily identifiable brown substance -- a cartoonish lump of "poo." This unlikely branding base envelops the Fuse tag at the end of the spot, along with the line "Poo It Up." Rarely, if ever, have excrement and advertising so intentionally occupied the same space.
Without having watched Fuse, it's impossible to say whether or not it delivers on the music video-led salvation it promises, but the promos alone are, for the most part, worth repeated watching and go a long way towards validating the upstart channel's harder, faster, fresher, edgier agenda.
