E4 and the Brief

 

E4 is a British television channel that is owned by Channel Four Television Corporation. Channel Four's other television services include 4seven, Film4, More4, 4Music and bought 50% of Box Television Ltd which operates music channels like Kerrang! and Magic. E4 has existed for a very long time now which launched on 18th January 2001 by channel Four. E4 has shown some very popular programmes on the channel, the most popular one was The Inbetweeners which got over 3 million viewers on each episode. In 1996 Channel Four bought the broadcast rights to Friends on E4 which was extremely popular at the time amongst the UK audience. Popular programmes shown regular now on E4 are Hollyoaks, The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother and Rules of Engagement.

E4's primary target audience demographically is lucrative 15-35 year old males and females as there are quite a few comedy programmes with adult humor like How I Met Your Mother, The Inbetweeners and Big Bang Theory appealing to both teenagers and middle aged males and female. Psycho-graphically I think it's targeted at people who like to have a laugh, go out with friends and maybe unemployed in education. I think programmes like The Inbetweeners pulls in more male teenagers as it's about four teenage lads partying and trying to get lucky with the ladies. While programmes like Rules of Engagement attract females as it's about modern relationships seen through the eyes of two very different couples and their single friends.

An E String is an ident which is a short sequence shown on television between programmes to identify the programme. In this case an E String is used to keep reminding their audience they are watching the channel E4. They are usually played right before the programmes comes back on after an ad break and right when an advert begins.

Here are three examples of an E String:

Must Troy Harder is a stop motion animation, historical and action genre as it's an adaptation of Troy and the Greek forces sneaking into the city inside the Trojan horse. I think the audience this E String is targeted at is history fans and appeal to mainly a male audience who enjoy Greek mythology films such as Troy and Hercules as they are action packed and contain violence appealing to males. I like this E-Sting because it's a historical, action and mythology film which are my favorite genre of films.  The production of this E Sting is very creative and a well made stop motion which plays smoothly. I can tell the creator has spent a lot of timing making this stop motion as the castle, soldiers and E4 shaped Trojan Horse are all crafted out of cardboard.

E4 Dino is a computer generated animation. I think the genre of this E4 ident is a comedy aimed at children. This dinosaur doesn't look like a typical realistic scary T-Rex with razor sharp teeth as that would scare children, instead it's a purple dinosaur who looks like a funny children's cartoon character with different size eyes as if it was hand drawn by a child to appeal to them. The  bright purple dinosaur also pops the screen in contrasts with the black and white dull background which will attract children to look at the video. I like this E Sting because I like the purple dinosaur contrasting with the black and while background. I also liked the idea of the Dinosaur licking the window and the dripping drool looking like the E4 logo which I thought was cleaver and creative.

The Midnight Beats is computer animated. The genre of this E sting is a comedy because there are two strange but funny looking tribal characters doing a kind of rain dance around a cauldron but instead of getting rain a huge E4 logo crashes down from the sky and crushes them. I think the content in this animation is aimed and appeals to children as the animation is silly which children will enjoy. The visual style on this animation also looks quite simple and childlike. I like this E Sting because it's funny and unexpected when the E4 falls down and crushes the characters. The animation is also well made.

Planning and Preparation

Thaumatrope

This is a Thaumatrope I made. A Thaumatrope is a disc with two different pictures on each side and when the disc is rapidly rotated the two pictures will merge together to create one image. In this case I drew a man getting kicked by a spartan which was inspired by the movie 300. I could have improved this by lining up the two images on each side more accurately as the Spartans leg is overlapping with the image on the other side when the Thaumatrope is spinning rapidly.

Live Action SMA

For the Live Action Animation we were given a brief to create an animation which had a race in it. The animation could be any genre and contain whatever we want as long as it's Live Action and contains a race. We decided to show off live action animation by doing impossible activities that can't be done unless it's an animation. To show this off we had one of the actors ride on a wet floor sign like a skateboard which is impossible to do in reality while getting chased by the antagonist with a clown mask and a bat.