Research and Planning - E4 and the Brief

WHAT IS E4?

E4 is a sub-channel owned by Channel 4, which is in turn publically owned and governed by a board of independently appointed directors. Channel 4 also own a number of other channels such as More4, Film4, 4Music, and 4Seven. There is also their online services such as 4oD. Channel 4 started in the late 80's, but E4 in particular started in 2001 and has been going strong ever since.

Programmes typically shown on the channel are sitcoms such as the Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Phoneshop, Suburgatory, Drifters, Almost Royal, Franklin & Bash, and Melissa & Joey. Aside from this there are a few reality shows (My Fair Wedding, Tattoos After Dark, Paternity Court, Bad Robots), and dramas such as Hollyoaks, Charmed and One Tree Hill.

As we can see from that list, we can quite confidently state that comedy is this channel's main mission.

From that, and their general branding, we can assume their primary target audience is young adults/teenagers who may be embracing more 'adult' comedy for the first time in their lives. So, their 'demographic' would make them aged, let's say, 15-23; probably male; living in more urban areas; and middle-to-lower class (C1).

Their psychographic profile would probably fall under 'individuals' or 'mainstreamers'.

Their secondary target audience is most likely females around a similar age bracket. I see them being interested in shows such as Tattoos After Dark, Hollyoaks, Charmed and My Fair Wedding.

Channel 4 itself is definitely aimed at older audiences as they show a lot more factual programming such as Grand Designs.

More4 started out as a more 'intelligent' channel, promoting documentaries and arts programming to compete with channels like BBC Four and Sky Arts. However, the last couple of years has seen the channel refocus to more 'lifestyle' programming.

Film4 is a channel that aptly screens films. It also functions as an outreach funding and production studio, giving independent filmmakers the chance to make more feature-length films.

4Music is similar, except it shows music instead. It is mostly mainstream pop, but has been known to showcase independent artists too.

4Seven simply aggregates all the most popular programming from the other channels in the last 7 days and shows them all in one place.

Back to E4, an 'E-sting' is a short, 10-second bookend 'ident' that is placed on either end of a programme in order to keep up brand awareness with the viewer and make sure they know what channel they're watching.



Here's a finalist in the E-stings competition last year. Watching it one can tell that it was animated using 3D software, and rendered out on a computer. It certainly fulfils its purpose of being an E-sting since it is well aware of its brand - that particular shade of purple and the eponymous E4 logo both featuring heavily. As far as audience is concerned, it serves this purpose quite well, too - aside from the almost overbearing purple there are plenty of bright colours and various things like a toy train moving about go to highlight the general playfulness of the whole thing. Someone watching would be able to tell that this channel doesn't deal with serious subject matter too often.



Here's the winning entry from 2009. This was animated in 2D on a computer, probably with Flash or another piece of software. Going off what I said for the last one, this one too is indicative of the channel's humorous nature - yet this one goes a little more into that 'edgy' or 'shock' humour that I mentioned in another post. It also goes a long way to highlight what the viewer is supposed to be looking at by having most of it in greyscale except for the bright purple E4 logo.

We did a few things to warm ourselves up to the topic of animation. First we took a look at the history of animation, and made ourselves some old-fashioned animations:

Our aim with these was to gain a more comprehensive understanding of how animation works at its most basic level.

After we were sufficiently well-versed in the old ways, we turned to Lego to make a short video with characters we created. Unfortunately mine and my classmate Duncan's Lego animation never saw the light of day and will probably remain forever in development hell.

After Lego we tried making a live-action stop-motion animation. We actually finished that one, kinda. Here it is:



This was more about understanding movement during animation, and making sure we can get something looking somewhat natural in a way that really isn't that intuitive to start with.

My Esting will be an object-based stop motion animation, as I believe that object-based stop motion is the bread and butter of the medium, and that given the time and resources we have I wouldn't be able to produce something I was proud of if I used clay.