Ollie Hosier's BTEC Media Blog: Research and Planning: E4 and the Brief

Introduction To E4

On 18th January 2001, Channel 4 launched a pay-TV companion called E4 ('E' stands for entertainment). It popular for the shows 'Friends', 'The Cleveland Show', 'The O.C', 'The Big Bang Theory', and The Inbetweeners.

E4's primary target demographic are mainly situated around the age group of 15-35. The demographic changes at different times of the day. Around six o'clock programmes like Hollyoaks and Friends are shown which attract the older audiences. The psychographic for E4 are people who find serious issues that tackle the world humorous. Because E4 is based around sitcoms there are going to be a lot of humorous behavior, depending on the shown broadcasting. For shows like the Inbetweeners, geodemographic is very important as a show like that represents the UK and is relate able to a lot of audiences living in the UK making it enjoyable to watch.

I believe that the secondary demographic for E4 would be a more mature audience as E4 can be accessed through 'Free-view' which opens up the programmes to a wider audience as 'Free-view' is free with most new TV's. A secondary psychographic for E4 could be people who enjoyed watching the programmes like 'Friends' and are known as mainstreamers, as 'Friends' they are classics that most people love. A secondary geodemographic would be people who like programmes out of their region. For example, most British audiences enjoy watching 'Friends' as well as some Americans enjoying British programmes like 'Inbetweeners'.

E-Stings

An E-Sting is a competition set up by Channel 4 to promote new and creative talent. It involves sending in short videos to E4 that would promote their TV channel, between programmes and in ad breaks. The videos have to be 10 seconds long and involve some sort of music that E4 provide. Some E-Stings are unique in their own way and, as said before, promote new and creative talent. First place will receive a £5000 reward and runner up will receive a £500 reward.

Example One

In this example I believe the primary target audience is Syfy lovers and the secondary target audience is teenagers both male and female. I think this because the spaceships and the destruction of a city links to aliens taking over the Earth which is linked to Syfy and would appeal to mostly Syfy lovers. With the E4 spaceship landing also links to this. I believe the secondary target audience is teenagers because the way the colours are laid out and how rigged and untidy the image is gives the impression that it would only appeal to teens and not an mature audience. The one thing I like about this E-Sting is that is tires to capture the boys fantasy of aliens which can appeal to many male audiences, old and young.

Example Two

The primary target demographic for this E4 E-Sting is again young people, aged around 15 - 18. This is because of the child like blobs that shout "E" as the jump in the air. This shows that it wouldn't appeal to a demographic of people aged 30+. The primary physcographic would be people who enjoy child like humor. This is again due to the blobs that are seen to look like they have been drawn by a young child. The genre of this E-Sting is comedy, and again is due to the blobs and what they say. The content involves loads of purple blobs jumping and shouting the word "E". At the end a group of blobs jump and shape the E4 logo and shout "four!". The thing I like about this example is the child like behavior because I find it humorous and enjoyable to look at.

Example Three

The primary physcographic for this example is people who enjoy stop-motion and claymation. This is because the whole advert involves claymation which creates an incredible visual experience. We see a group of objects morphing into other different things like sheep and trains. It then ends with a whole city of clay moving on its own and are of famous landmarks like London. We then see a big clay logo of E4, which obviously promotes the TV channel. The word "E4" is continuously said throughout the E-Sting which again promotes the channel. The demographic age group for this E-Sting would probably be young people and specifically females. I think this because of the colours used like purple (can be a girls colour), and the claymation (clay associated with young children). The genre of this E-Sting is animation as it is all creative through claymation. The one thing I like about this E-Sting is how the clay starts as two small balls and ends up being this huge clay miniature of a city.

What I Have Done

The things that I have already done to respond to the brief is created a series of illusion structures. These are:

Thaumatropes:

In this task we were asked to create two circles, and draw two pictures on each side. We then attached them to a piece of string and spun them creating the illusion that the two pictures were one.

Praxinoscope:

On this one we drew a series of pictures doing an action an placed them on a circle pallet. A mirror would them be placed onto of this pallet and the whole structure would spin. As the viewer looks through the mirror, it creates the illusion of movement.

Zoetrope:

This one is similar to the praxinoscope where we draw a set of pictures doing an action. This is them placed into a cylinder with slits in them. As the viewer looks through the slits, the illusion of movement is created.

With claymation we created small miniature figures out of clay which would have their own biography and movement. When creating the illusion of movement, we would take pictures after every movement of the miniature. From there we would put all of the pictures together in Adobe Premier Pro and exported it as a movie file. Once played back, it gave the illusion that the miniatures moved by themselves.

We also created a claymation which has the character biography below:

NAME: RALPH THE DINO
AGE: 100
OCCUPATION: PREDATOR / VEGETARIAN
MOTIVATION: LACK OF FOOD
NTERESTING TRAITS: WALKS SLOW TO SEEM LESS SCARY
NATIONALITY / RELIGION: 1000 BC

SHORT BIO: RALPH IS ALONE AS HE WAS BANISHED BY HIS T-REX FRIENDS FOR BEING A VEGETARIAN. HE NOW LIVES IN A LIFE OF EXILE AND EATS TREES TO STAY ALIVE. HE WALKS SLOW AND HAS A FRIENDLY LOOK ABOUT HIM. BECAUSE OF THE LONG TIME IN EXILE HE NOW HAS ADAPTED TO GROW FACIAL AND BODY HAIR DUE TO EATING TREES.

The finale preparation we did for the brief was a live stop-motion animation (SMA):

This one is similar to the claymation, where a series of pictures were taken and put together in Premier Pro to give the illusion of movement. In this one we give the illusion that we are flying. In every movement a picture was taken.

What Will I Do As A Final Project?

I think that I will do a live action stop-motion animation for my finale project due to many reasons. One reason is that I thought claymation was really long and so many things could go wrong like the miniatures falling apart, ruining the whole sequence. Also through live animation there are more opportunities to be creative. Also seeing how the human body can morph into different things interests me. I will be using a soundtrack provided by E4 as it is a requirement for the E4 E-Sting Competition. It states that "You HAVE to use one of the 10-second audio beds supplied". I choose the 'Brazilian' soundtrack from the E4 E-Sting competition website because it was fast paced and the energetic camera movement complemented the soundtrack.

I will be using this track: