Research and planning: E4 and the brief.

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E4 is a British digital television channel, launched as a pay-TV companion to Channel 4 on 18 January 2001. The channel is therefore owned by Channel 4 and aimed at the 15-35 age group, and perhaps ranging from E to certain members of the C1 demographic socials classes, with being students being their primary target audience and the rest of the classes being the secondary audience.


E4 airs American programmes like, The Cleveland Show, Desperate House Wives, Scrubs and formerly Friends; and also British shows such as Skins, Made in Chelsea and The Inbetweeners. Its most successful broadcast to date was on 11 October 2010 when an episode of The Inbetweeners pulled in over 3.7 million viewers.

The channel also owns E4+1 a duplicate of E4 which is 1 hour behind, More4, Film4, 4seven, 4 music and Shorts all of which are aimed at similar audiences to E4 apart from Film 4 which shows a variety of classic and old films appealing to a wider demographic.


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E4 sting is similar to a channel ident appearing before and after TV shows to remind viewers of the brand forming brand association with the popular television programmes they show.

Duck hunting E-sting.
This E-sting is very comical with striking visuals such as the overtly stereotypical features of the farmer and the humorous ending. The surreal visuals help gain the audiences attention in the first place. Using humour associates the channel with lightheartedness and not taking it's self to seriously, which the target audience being students may find attractive. The E4 logo also makes an entrance towards the end for the purpose of identifying to the audience that you are watching E4.
I like the humorous content of this E-sting as it represents what the channel is about and who its for giving it identity.


Singing horse.

The singing horse is part of a series of E-stings featuring him. Again like before we have a very odd, humorous narrative with striking visuals attempting to identify the channel as a sort of joker which may appeal to the target audience, which i would say was in between the 15-30 age range and particularly constituting of students. The use of animation allows for the surreal look of the sting and again emits the idea that the channel doesn't take its self to seriously.
I personally don't like this E-sting because of it's random and frankly stupid nature and it doesn't appeal to me personally.


Drums.

This sting uses black and white animation on a purple background, and again is humorous with the cartoons and surreal visuals. The use of the purple also identifies it as belonging to E4 as this shade of purple is used both by E4 and channel 4 for their logos and features in most programmes. We also have the repetition of "E4" again reminding the audience what channel they are on and who the content belongs to and is associated with.


To practice utilising the stop motion animation we made a live action stop motion short. The basic premise of the the short was a man skating on a wet floor sign. This gave us an insight to just how precise the incremental movements have to be as well as how many photos are required to produce a fluid enough motion picture. We also learnt about how camera positioning can affect the flow off movement and that the position of the camera is just as important as the slow and precise movements that are required. Here is our practice attempt at live stop motion animation:

We also designed and made basic animation devices that had been used in the early stages of animation. These devices included the thaumatrope, praxinoscope and zoetrope and work because of the basic concept of persistence of vision. The idea being to create images of the same thing in slightly different positions, placing them in a certain order and displaying them all separately but in quick succession to create a fluid movement.

We then used Lego to create a ten second short. Again this required moving a figure in incremental movement and taking pictures of each placement. Here we also learn of how precise and minute the movements must be in order to create a fluid image once the pictures are put together. Working with Lego makes for an easy and if done properly efficient way of creating stop motion animation, however the more complex and realistic movements are obviously harder to create due to the nature and lack of malleability of the material.


















Having looked at already existing E-stings and seen that all are surreal and humorous, I have chosen to produce an E-sting using a Lego figurine, as for an E-sting realistic movement isn't vital and it offers an easier way to produce an quality stop motion animation. Although the other methods are all viable, I feel they are easier to get wrong than using Lego, which offers greater control.