Research and Planning: E4 and the brief

"E4" is a British digital television channel owned by channel four television which was launched as a pay-TV companion to "Channel 4"; it was released on 18 January 2001 and has continued to run ever since hosting a variety of different programmes, British and American. The "E" stands for entertainment, and the channel is mainly aimed at older teenagers with the shows being comedies, general knowledge and a lot of re-runs, like "Friends", "How I met Your Mother" and "Made in Chelsea". "E4" released on the 10th of December 2007 a brand new ident so the channel can be identified easily with its target audience as this fits with the age range demographics and geographics; American and British audiences. The Idents are claymation's and through this we can see the age range that is targeted; the ident is some-what cartoon like so that covers the younger end of the spectrum while the complexity of it may impress the older audience. The secondary Target audience is older people at the age of about 25-35 with its shows like "Health Freaks" and "Tool Academy". Some of the other channels owned by channel four is film four which targets all types of audiences with old films, new films, foreign films, kids film and all genres. There is "more 4" which programmes are aimed at older audiences and "4music" which is a music channel for younger people.

An E sting (ident) is a way that a channel can identify itself, for example the "BBC" has their idents, like the hippos swimming in circles or the guys in wheelchairs playing basketball, this channel shows more adult interest programmes like "Antiques road show", "Eastenders" and of course the "News"; This channel is more for grown up audiences. Other easily analysed E stings or idents are the "Three" channel owned by the "BBC's "is basically there version of "E4", re-running lots programmes that have been on "BBC" channels and new comedy's and mick take reality programmes. The ident's are all animated but are all different like one is a man jumping to grab a light bulb pull cord while another is a group of people trying to move a huge box with flamingo legs. These idents are too silly to for adults but too strange for young children, so the channel is aimed at a younger demographic. Another channel with an ident is "Film 4" which is very simple and easy which goes with the target audience which is anyone who is easy going and just want to watch movies. So the ident goes with that as it doesn't try to go over the top and doesn't try to be complicated with it. This channel shows any and all types of movies so this channel is for one of the most widest target audiences. I like all the idents Have chosen because they all respond to their target audience's but my favourite one is probably the film 4 one because it covers such a wide demographic and geographic.

To prepare for the next brief we have all practised with live-action animation and we have also practiced with Claymation's and we also created old devices used many years ago to create the first animations just like the thaumatrope, praxinoscope and zoetrope.

My Praxinoscope was a man who was raising his hat to say hello, 

this is a movement that could easily be repeated.

My zoetrope was a spider crawling; this was something easy to do and it took advantage of the way the device moved but the device did make the animations look different. For example mine looked liked it was moving in a wave while others looked as if they where standing still and actually animating.

The aim of the thaumatrope was to put two separate images into the same frame to make one image. For mine I simply put two words together to make the title of a film I like; "Kill Bill".

This claymation was about a superhero called grease-man but he seems to have uncounted problems with his grease as it falls from his body but that doesn't stop him popping up to say hello.

This video was about experimenting with what you can do with movements of a claymation and even what you could do to the exterior of the figure to make it morph. 

It was also an opportunity to make the claymation's exoskeleton to take part as well.

With a group I was also part of the creation of a live action SMA which the intention was to create a sort of race inspired by the cartoon from "Looney Toons" character Speedy Gonzales but we encountered problems getting the legs to move super quick and then we encountered continuity problems and were unable to even make it look like a race but it did come out looking quite entertaining.

I am going to do a claymation because I think it gives you more control over your own project and how you animate your ident; this also means you have more freedom with what you can do to your characters or items in your ident which gains you the ability to be more hands on and give you a better chance of coming out with a final product that you intended; I will aim to make it stylized and probably unusual.