Research and Planning: E4 and the Brief

E4 is a sub channel of Channel 4, for which the E stands for entertainment. Channel 4 first launch E4 in 2001 and has been going strong since then. The channel also pulls in over two millions views a month, with people watching popular shows like The Big Bang Theory or How I Met Your Mother, which ended in  2014. But also the shows also gets over 900,000 views from the show Hollyoaks which is mainly played on E4. But like any other show or channel they have a primary target audience that they want to watch the shows they provide for them. So the primary target for E4, which I found out is between the ages of 16 and 24, making the audience quite young, with the gender target being both males and females with them being most likely being from a white ethnicity due to shows on the channel having the same similar ethnic as well, they also are working middle class demographic from when the more popular show are put on, which is when people get back from work or when they back from school or college. With that demographic that means that the primary target audience would most likely be either "Aspirers" or "Explorer" pyschographics, of these are more common with young audiences an are both seem to want to seek something and in the case of E4, its to seek for something entertaining to watch. But for the secondary target audience for E4, it would between the ages of 25 to 34, so the people beginning to start to settle down and maybe start a family. The reason for that is that E4 has started to show programs like "The Goldbergs" or "Kevin Can Wait", which show of a family lifestyle and also have comedic and entertaining values so it appeals both the secondary audience and also the primary one as well. The gender would still be same as well the ethnic of the people of the primary target audiences, but the pyschographic would be "Explorers" again, but also "Succeeders" also due to fact that the goal is to start a family and have some what stability in life, but also be able to enjoy things as well. But Channel 4 doesn't just have E4 as a sub channel to it's self, with channels like 4Music which is mostly targeted at younger audience like E4 but ones with a love of music and there is also Film 4 which could be targeted at any audience with a passion for films or an audience with the older generations as old classic films are shown during the day, as the more younger audience are at school or at work and it allows the older generation be able to feel nostalgia.

But what E4 are best known for, except the shows they present, but their little weird clips in between the TV programs, or what E4 like to call it, their "EStings" and like I said before they are little clips that E4 puts in between programs and adverts to be able to show what their channel is about and how it is fun, weird and entertaining. E4 also uses the EStings to show off their connections with their viewer, allowing them to be able to make the EStings, in which if they won, then it would end up being played on TV. Some examples are below.




This ESting is one of my favorites as it sort of relates to me and that was what it was meant to do as the intended audience for this was mostly 16-24 year olds, which is when mostly people are students, it shows of the fact of coming home from school or college or even work and are being nagged at by the rest of your family and making the seem like aliens from what they do like the baby being a robot program to cry all the time or the sister who's an alien who is always on the phone, making it have also an comedic effect in this comedy targeted genre ESting.
I also like this ESting as well because like most of E4's ESting it falls under the genre of comedy. This ESting consist of a animated old man, duck shooting, until one of the birds that he shot, that looks like the E4, falls on him and most likely kills him. This ESting I believe is targeted towards both younger and older audiences, especially does in middle class demograpahic and below as it makes fun of the more privilege people of society and makes it seem like E4 isn't a place for them or what E4 is targted towards.

The last ESting I will talk about is the one of above which is very comedic like almost all of the EStings that E4 show. With the audience of this ESting would probably be different and mainly target males in the target age of 16-24 due to humor that is involved with the video. As the video consistent of a man with a horse head singing a short rhyme, with it seeming like he is trying to pick up the horse which is shown towards the end of the ESting. The reason for me liking this is because of song  is because I fall under the targeted audience for this as well and it does make me laugh and also has a catchy tune which makes me and the audience remember it more.

When we try our luck on creating an ESting for E4, we first had to go back to originality of the stop motion animation, to some of the first device that showed off stop motion animation, firstly witht the three main and well known devices; the zoetrope, the thumatrope and the parxinoscope. knowing these devices helped get a better idea of what stop motion animation is by learning where it first started.


We also were given the chance to try three different methods of stop motion animation as well to see what one we liked and could use for our ESting, the methods were the inanimate object animation, live action animation or human animation and lastly a Lego animation which we tried lip syncing  with as well.


With the Lego animation, we were assigned to make a short video of Lego stop motion animation, it could be any idea or narrative but one of the characters in the video has to say "Lego of me" and of course everything that being animated must be made out of Lego. The reason we did was be able to know what stop motion animation with Lego is like and how we could use it and found out it's limitation and the creative potential with it. The potential with it, is that you can create nearly anything with Lego, but a limitation is if you don't have the right pieces and if you don't have the money to buy the pieces you require for your build. Another thing when animating with Lego is somewhat the level of detail you can go to, for instance a Lego wall breaking can be split into piece by piece and just one shot of the wall being fine and then the next it being broken, with Lego you can take more pictures of it falling making the shot look much better and more realistic. But one more limitation is the face of limit movement of the character you create based on how you make, which is something you have to take into consideration when creating them.

With the last two stop motion animation methods, live action and inanimate objects, we wanted to show off the different possibilities you can do with animation, for instance in the live action we make it so that one of the character is sliding on a wet flor sign which in normal film making would be impossible without spending quite a bit of money on rigging to make it move with the actor, where as with stop motion animation, we just took loads of pictures with small movements and it makes it look like the character is sliding on the wet floor sign like you would with a skateboard or surf board. This also goes for the inanimate object as we wanted to show off what objects with real emotion like humans could do with stop motion animation, in our video we used legos again and you can see in the video that the Lego character body language does show some concern when he sees the plane following him.


With the E4 Esting I want to create a mix between live action and clay stop motion animation. The reason for this is because you can show a lot of emotion with human animation even if it is just body language that is shown that can be useful for ESting and with clay you can create much for unique characters with it, for instance like Wallace and Gromit, but the only issue with it is the structure of the clay which could fall apart which is fixable with a skeletal structure that's is made before and the clay is molded around making it more stable and better for the animation. With these put together I believe that the ESting will turn out really good and make a great addition to E4's arsenal.