Cereal Offenders Sound Research: The Mighty Boosh

As the script for Cereal Offenders contained various strange and required a lot of experimentation, especially in the sound department, I decided that I should try and research some shows and other media that have a similar style in order to gain a better understanding of how to implement and work with the more experimental aspects of this production.

'The Mighty Boosh' is a comedy television series which ran between 2004 and 2007 and was created by comedians Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding. The two also star as Howard Moon and Vincent Noir respectively. The show (during season 1) follows the everyday adventures of Howard and Vince as Zookeepers who find themselves in various strange situations.

The characters consistently break the fourth wall and appear to be aware that they are characters in a television show. Many conventions of television are broken such as the characters standing in front of the camera and personally addressing the audience, introducing them to the show. I feel that this is the kind of style that our script is trying to emulate to an extent, where certain conventions must be broken to create a more experimental experience, particularly in the scenes involving various hallucinations.

In terms of sound, the music is typical of popular music during the late 1990s and early 2000s. For example, the music for the title sequence is a slow-paced rock tune featuring heavily distorted guitars and layered synthesizers reminiscent of the style of bands such as Blur and other popular rock bands from that era as well as some psychedelic influences from bands such as The Beatles, later popularised again by Oasis. Already, this is the kind of style in which I feel I could try and emulate as the show does bear thematic similarity to our own project.

Here are the opening titles for 'The Mighty Boosh' for reference:

This style of music is common with comedy shows such as this, with a small rock or jazz instrumental that plays when transitioning into another scene. As our project is supposed to be a comedy, I feel that it is important to try and emulate this in order to show and understanding of the style and conventions of a comedy drama.

In terms of other areas of sound, the sound effects are usually over the top and often not representative of the practical diegetic sound that would usually be heard within the scenes. This use of sound effects creates comedy by almost taking the audience out of the program with a sound that really shouldn't belong within a scene. I want to emulate this in order to create more comedy through sound which would hopefully add to what should be already comedic scenes. I also noticed there appeared to be a theme of mysticism within the sound design due to the otherworldly nature of some of the characters present in the show. I feel this could work well for our project due to similar themes if I cant correctly emulate this consistently throughout the sound design.