My ESting will meet the requirements of the brief because:
It will be a stop motion animation, which is something that is required for the brief.
It will be a claymation, which is a form of animation that you can use for the ESting competition.
My animation will include the E4 logo and use the music that is allowed for the ESting.
When I do my piece, I won't to change any of my ideas as I know what the requirements are, and I've made sure that I've followed them all. For my piece the only legal and health issues I have to be aware of is copyright for the music and sounds, but all the music is already sorted for us so that isn't a problem, and the location release, being permission to film where we are filming. However this isn't a problem because mine is set in my classroom. So I won't face any legal or health issues. I am the only person in my team as I'm doing my animation by myself so I will be directing, shooting, and doing all the planning and editing for my piece. The deadline for all the pieces is the 30th of October - 22nd of November.
A brief is something giving to somebody as a guideline or set of instructions about a task or job they have to complete.
A commission is an instruction, command or role given to someone or a group of people.
The term tender is used to describe a situation where a client will advertise their brief and production companies will pitch ideas and proposals. The client can then decide who want to do the brief.
You can respond to a brief by setting a theme, maintain credibility and also leave out weak arguments.
Reading a Brief:
When following the brief for our Esting, we had set guidelines that we had to follow for our animation to be viable for the Esting competition. Some of things that we had to follow were:
The animation had to be 10 seconds exactly
We had to use the E4 logo
We had to use soundtracks that E4 use for their Estings
It had to be stop motion
These things were part of the nature of the brief that we had to follow.
Negotiating a brief:
When we had the brief, we didn't have many things to negotiate in the fact that most things were already set for us, being the things that I listed above. If we didn't follow the brief, our entry wouldn't have been taken into consideration.
When you take on a brief from a client or employer, both parties have to come to an agreement about the brief before it can go ahead. If you don't understand the brief, the product can end up being wrong and you could end up not getting paid.
The constraints that we faced were only to do with copyright for sound affects and the things that the brief had that weren't up for negotiation, being time limit, and it having to be a stop motion. Constraints that you could face when responding to a brief re things that are pre-set, like soundtracks and and things like copyright issues, similar to the constraints that we faced.
The only amendments that I had to make to my Esting was something to do with the sound being out of time on a certain point, other than that, there wasn't anything.
There may be amendments to be made to the budge if there isn't enough money for the production to be made or if the production takes longer than expected. There may be amendments needed to the outlines in the contract depending time, being if enough time is given, or if the money in enough for the amount of work. One final thing there may need to be amendments needed for are personal fees. This can be discussed because of equipment used, travel and crew members. The fees can be made more if the production company feels that the fees are to low.
Opportunities:
Somebody might respond to a brief to negotiate certain parts of a brief, or to get a better understanding of what the brief wants so that they can get the production done right.
Opportunities that i had for self-improvement were for me, the camera working section. I've previously not had much experience with camera, so I can say that I've definitely improved in my camera skills.
New skills that I learnt were to do with the camera and lighting. I also created new skills in clay modeling and building a set. I also developed my editing skills as i had to do colour grading as my camera skills still aren't the best and because shots were taken in different parts of the day.
At some points I had to multi-skill with sorting out the camera, being lighting or moving it around and moving the clay around, and adjusting it.
The thing that I contributed to the brief is my bowling animation/ESting. It was a stop motion animation where the bowling ball was rolled down an alley and hit the pins and bounced back off the pins and splatted, turning into the E4 logo.
Step One: All the people that filled out my survey were between the ages of 15-19 which was the age for my intended target audience, 80% of the people were male and 90% were students. out of all the people most said that they like animation as a whole and all the people said that they enjoyed my animation. For the improvements that could've been made, most people said "n/a" and a few made comments of the claymation which is something to think more about if I make another claymation. For what people would've done differently, most people replied "n/a", one person said "use a tripod" which I did so that isn't a valid comment, and another one said sort out the set walls which is fair enough as I didn't have enough time to do so. If I did I would've addressed this. For the genre most people said they thought it was a comedy, which was the genre I was aiming for, which is shown when the ball bounces off of the bowling pins. All of the feedback that I got for my animation was taken from a survey. Step Two: For my animation, I am doing a written report and it can be structured a lot better and in some ways is seen as more professional. To widen the audience of people that saw my animation, I could've shared it to Facebook, and sent it to people and asked them what they thought of the animation afterwards. With the Facebook post, I could've linked the survey so I could've got more responses. All my feedback that i got was from my survey that is linked at the top of the page, and also there is a Flipsnack of the results I received. Throughout my Esting, I didn't face any issues, we had guidelines to follow and we weren't allowed to use copyrighted things, which is set up by the law but that didn't affect my animation as we had all the soundtracks provided for us. For the sound affects, I used a website called freesound.org. For my animation. Step Three: When making my animation, the only constraints that we really faced were copyright which I mentioned in step two and what I did to get around this, being that I usedfreesound.orgfor sound affects and all the soundtracks were provided for us. This was another constraint as we had to use one, however there was multiple ones so we had quite a few to choose from. Also if we wanted to film in certain locations, we had to get a location recce giving us permission to use the area. I managed my time quite well, I finished the filming in the time that I wanted to and the whole piece was finished before the deadline. The bit that took the longest was making the clay figures, mainly the bowling pins because of the smaller details. One thing that did take longer than I expected was the pre-production, however I think this is because I was ill for a day, however the whole piece was done before the deadline. Overall I think that I managed myself quite well, however I didn't really feel the need to have a sheet planned out with what days I was going to shoot and edit because it puts more pressure and makes it a lot more rushed. Because of this I mostly ignored the sheet and did it in my own time and not planned out lesson by lesson and it came out exactly how I wanted it to. For the requirements for the brief, I did meet them as I had to make it a ten second animation, which I did, and used no copyrighted pieces. My animation met the guidance set-up of E4 because of it being ten seconds, using the E4 soundtracks, has no copyright, includes the E4 logo and is an type of animation. My type of animation that I used is stop motion.
I obtained my feedback from the other students in my class and also one of my tutors. We filled out feedback on sheets and our teacher scanned them and emailed them around our class. We then also created surveys, which is linked at the top of my page, and then sent them round our class for people to answer, and then took this feedback and made it into a flipsnack which is at the top of the page. I feel that I have learnt more about animation and more about editing, but also more about how to use a camera. My skills for all of these have developed well as we had to do the project by ourselves. I didn't find working to the brief hard as it was quite open in some ways as we were able to create any sort of animation we wanted as long as it was 10 seconds long, and also that it included the E4 logo. I don't think the brief meant that I couldn't be more creative as I feel that it was quite open, as I mentioned and gave us a numerous amount of options. If I wanted to go into the media industry, I think that I would be a suitable candidate as I can follow a brief well and get the work done on time. This is a valuable skill I can take into the workplace, and if I do decide to go into the media industry, I believe that I will be able to as I can follow a brief well and get it done how it wants i, and also get it done for the deadline which has been set. For me, I don't feel that I would go into animation and don't see it as viable career for me personally. I really like certain types of animation, being computerized animation, however, I don't feel that I would want to take it further.
E4 is a channel that leads off of Channel 4. So E4 is owned by Channel 4. Channel 4 is mostly publicly owned, however they do a lot of commercial self funding. Channel 4 was previously owned by the IBA (Independent Broadcasting Authority), however is now owned and operated by the Channel 4 television corporation. E4 was first launched on January 18th, 2001. It was aired as a pay-TV companion to Channel 4, however on the 16th of December 2004, they announced that the subscription channel would become a digital terrestrial television channel.
E4 is primarily targeted to 16-34 year olds and most of the shows that are shown are US sitcoms. From the shows that are on E4, you can see that they are mostly aimed at young females, but young people in general. This is shown in the graph below, look at the typical audience profile. With social groups, E4 is targeted at at C2DE, which is more middle class and working class.
The secondary audience for E4 as it says in the typical audience profile is ABC1, which is the upper middle class, and the upper class, but these are mostly housewives. 4seven, Film4, E4, More4, 4Music Box Upfront,The Box, Box Hits, Kerrang!, Kiss Magic. These are all known as sister channels. Most of these are music channels which look show a wide range of music types. Film 4 is a film channel and E4 is channel aimed at people between the ages of 16-34.
Paragraph 2:
An ESting is something created by E4 which is most typically an animation used as an advert type thing before a TV show starts on E4. Every year there is EStings created by students.
City Wanderer:
This ESting fits into the comedy genre as it shows the monster playing in London looking particularly bored and then ends up sitting on the houses of parliament using them as a sofa to watch TV on. The audience would be children and young people because of the friendly nature and the bright colours.
Woolly Package: This ESting fits into the comedy genre perfectly because of the ending. Because of the ending, the audience would be a more mature audience, being 16 +. The ending is very comedic, however is more of a mature humor so would not be suited fro a younger audience.
Sheep Sucking: As the other to are, the genre for this would be comedy. Because E4 mostly shows TV shows that are comedic, most of their EStings would be of the comedy genre. The ESting consist of sheep getting sucked up by a big hoover that appears from the ground and then spits them back out in the sign of the E4 logo. The audience for this would be 10+ as there is a child friendly vibe with the sheep and the bright colours and the background. Paragraph 3: Zoetrope:
Thaumatrope:
Praxinoscope:
We created an animation with a Lego frog however i can't find it on any of the computers so can't embed the video onto my blog.
Our intention when creating out Human figure stop-motion was to create something that was comedic, yet had elements of action with the chase and the gun. We incorporated the comedic effect with the ending and the "skrrt skrrt" sound affect. Overall our intention was to make a good human figure stop-motion that was under 10 seconds that we all found enjoyable. Paragraph 4: For my ESting i will create a Lego and claymation piece with a Lego man rolling a bowling ball down a bowling alley and then have the ball bounce back of the pins and turning into the E4 logo. I've come to this decision because I really like the idea of making the Lego come to life and making the piece like a real life thing. I also want to make it comedic,which is why i want the ball to bounce of the pins because it's something that's out of the ordinary and something that wouldn't happen n real life. Although i want to make it like a real life situation, I want it to also be quite comedic and wacky.
Questions: For my Esting I am planning to do a claymation bowling type thing where the character has a bowling ball, made out of clay, they bowl it and you follow the ball until it reaches the pins which when hit turn into the E4 logo. It will also be a stop frame animation and I plan to have shots where they go 360 degrees around the ball at a freeze frame type thing to make it seem more dramatic. The setting I plan to use is a bowling alley as my idea is about bowling. The only difficulties i could find are if the clay moves when taking the photos, or people knocking the tables, other than that, there is no other things. The target audience for my Esting is anybody that watches E4. Task: The soundtrack I'm using for my Esting is Afro 1 as I believe that it fits best. For sound affects I have a bowling ball rolling down an alley and pins crashing, however I can't upload them to this blog post. I got the two sound affects off of Freesound.org
Human: For our first animation which was the human animation task, we had to make something happen that would never happen. For the one that I was in, we made chairs act as cars, and had somebody following another person with a gun. It was like a less expensive stop motion James Bond car chase seen. We were asked to complete this task as this was our first go at animation to understand how it worked and to get practice for our assessed work, the esting. Three things tat went well in our animation were that all the shots went together smoothly, when we were editing we found sound affects to go well and the fit really well, and also how we took the photos because of the awkward positions we had to be in sometimes because of the shots that we needed. What could've been improved is that we only had 6 seconds of footage, where we needed 10. This is because we didn't have too much time to do our piece as in the previous lesson, we tried to do a different idea to the one we created. This leads me onto another thing we could've improved which was that when we came up with our previous idea, we didn't realise how much time it would take and how realistic it would be. Because of this, we had to rush our other one so we could get it edited in time. So time management is definitely something to take forward into the esting. Inanimate object: Our inanimate object animation was the second one we made. For this we used lego to create a scene where somebody was running away from a plane to then end up getting shot into pieces by the plane. We were asked to complete this task as it gave us another option that we could take into our esting, and also get practice for our esting. The things that went well for the animation is that I feel we made the lego come to life because of the movements we used. The second thing would be that the editing we did on it with the sound affects went quite well, and finally that we kept the continuity really well as we had to do it over two lessons. The first thing that could've been improved was our time management. Because we were focusing on trying to make it look quite realistic, we took quite a bit of time focusing on that. Although its good to focus on making it look good, we could've done a bit less and it would've still looked good, and would've done it within the time frame. I personally don't think anything else that could be improved from my point of view, apart from the timing.
Lip-Synching: For this task we had to take everyday things and make them talk. For our piece we used lego and bits of paper with drawings of mouths on them, mouthing the letters to sat "let go of me". For ours a bull frog jumped onto a guy and then he screamed "let go of me". We were asked to complete this task as it was another way that we could do our esting and also for more practice in stop motion animation. The first thing that went well was the shots as we had to hold the lego in awkward positions without having our hands in the shots. The second thins that went well was the sound affects were really well timed and fit the scene really well. Finally the last thing that went really well was our timing as we finished it within the time frame and did it really well. The first thing that could've been improved was the mouthing scene as for me I wasn't too sure wether it was realistic enough. The second thing I think could've been improved was maybe adding a few more shots from different angles as the shots are mostly all from the same angle, whereas on the other two pieces, there was a bigger variety in shot types. Conclusion: For the assessed esting, I am thinking about doing the human animated one and using clothes to create the E4 logo. I want to use this style as I have an idea where I will use the object like a bowling ball which will turn into a snake type thing, and then form onto the E4.
Joseph Plateu created the phenakistoscope in 1832. The phenakistoscope is a device where you look through a hole in the middle whilst looking into a mirror. You spin the device and a series of images appear to look like a moving image.
Thaumatrope:
John Ayrton Paris created the thaumatrope in 1825. The thaumatrope is an optical toy with 2 pictures on either side. At either side of the paper, there is a piece of string, you twist the string and the images will appear to overlap creating a moving image.
Zoetrope:
William Horner created the zoetrope in 1834 and was based on Joseph Plateu's phenakistoscope. Horner originally called it daedalum which means "wheel of the devil". How the zoetrope works is that you draw on a piece of paper and make sure that the first and last picture are the same, once you've done this, you place it within the zoetrope and spin the zoetrope and look through one of the slits on the zoetrope.
Praxinoscope:
Charles-Émile Reynaud invented the praxinoscope in 1877. The praxinoscope was the evolution of the Zoetrope. You places a strip of paper inside a cylinder. In the middle there is mirror and round the side there is a piece you look through. You look through this piece and see the images moving on the glass.
Kinetoscope:
Thomas Edison and William Dickson created the kinetoscope between 1889-1892. They based it on a French inventors design, his name is Louis Le Prince. It works by taking a piece of film and passing it through a lens and electric light bulb, while the person looked through a peephole.
Developers: George Pal: George pal was a Hungarian born animator, film director and producer, who was born on February 1st 1908 and became an American citizen after immigrating from Europe. When he was 23, he married Elisabeth "Zsoka" Grandjean and moved to Berlin to create Trickfilm-Studio GmbH Pal und Wittke. In the time he was in Berlin (1931-1933) he created the Pal-Doll technique. In 1934 he was invited by Phillips to make two short ads. He did this in a hotel in Paris. He started using his Pal-Doll technique in Eindhoevn in a butchers. Before 1939 he made 5 films for a British company known as Horlicks Malted Milk. In 1939 he emigrate from Europe to the USA and started to work for Paramount Pictures. At the same time his friend Walter Lantz helped him get an American citizenship. George Pal was famous for a stop motion animation called "Puppetoons" which were made out of wood. Puppetoons was based on world war two and the nazis invading places. Willis O'brien: Willis O'brien was an American pioneer in the animation industry and also was a picture effects specialist. He was born on March 2nd 1886, in Oakland, California, United States. He was known for "King Kong" which was made in 1933, which he was a special affects artist. He was also known for "Son Of Kong", "Mighty Joe Young" and "Last Days Of Pompeii". In 1949, 16 years after "King Kong", O'Brien worked on another Gorilla picture called "Mighty Young Joe". A young Ray Harryhausen, who was O'Brien's apprentice, animated most of the film, but O'Brien came up with most of the ideas and designs. O'Brien was awarded an Oscar in 1950 for best visual effects.
Ray Harryhausen:
Ray Harryhausen was an American-Britsh animator who was born in Los Angeles, California, United States. He was most famous for his technique in animation known as "Dynamation" where he would use two screens, one where the actors were, and the other where the models were. He projected the image of the actors onto the screen so he could put animation, with real life. This was used in one of his films called "Jason and the Argonauts", the best part where this is used is when they are fighting the skeletons. He worked with Willis O'Brien on "Mighty Joe Young" and was mentored by him. Phil Tipett:
Otmar Gutmann: Otmar Gutmann was a German producer, animator and director. He was born on April 24th, 1937 in Germany. He was best known for Pingu, a long running Swiss-British children's animation programme. Pingu was made out of clay, like everything in the Pingu universe. Tim Burton & Henry Selick:
Time Burton is an American Film director, writer and animator who was born on 25th of August, 1958. He is very well known for dark, eccentric films such as "The nightmare Before Christmas", "Edward Scissorhands" and "Bettlejuice". Henry Selick is an American stop motion animator, producer and writer, who is most known for "The Nightmare Before Christmas", "James and the Giant Peach" and Caroline". He was born on the 30th of November in 1952. Tim Burton and Henry Selick made "The Nightmare Before Christmas together, however, Burton took most of the credit, which forced Selick to step out of Burton's shadow to make Caroline.
Adam Shaheen:
Adam Shaheen who was born on the 13th of October, 1964 is a British-Canadiananimator, television producer and screenwriter. He is the founder and owner of Cuppa Coffee Studios. Cuppa Coffee Studios was made in 1992 and since its opening, it has made over 150 hours of animated TV, and has won over 180 international awards. The Brothers Quay:
Stephen and Timothy Quay who were born on June 17th, 1947 are American identical twin brothers better known as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. Most of the brothers animations are made out of doll parts and other organic or inorganic materials. In Absentia (2000), The Comb (1991) and Street of Crocodiles (1986) are all films that the two made. Nick Park: Nick Park was born on the 6th of December, 1958, in Preston, England. He specialises in clay figures and is a stop motion animator and director. He is most well known for Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, and Shaun The Sheep.
Media Platforms and Audiences:
Television: Shaun The Sheep is targeted at kids as it was shown on a channel called CBBC. CBBC was a channel aimed at people in their early teens and for people coming up to their teenage years.
The Simpsons has a very wide range of their intended target audience. This is usually for people who are both quite young, from about 10, to elderly people. This is because of the cartoon appearance that they characters have, which attract children, and the adult humour that children don't notice makes it funny for people of an older age.
Feature Film: Boss baby is animated feature film aimed at children. This is because of the characters of the film which are babies and the colourful scenes. It is also aimed at parents as there is some aspect of adulthood in the movie. This is because the main target audience is young children so they need to have something that will attract adults in some way as they will be paying for their children to watch the film.
The Emoji Movie is a feature film which is also aimed at children. This is again because of the characters which are used which are emojis, and the bright colours which attract children to watch this. The characters being emojis are heavy used by young people which are also turned in the plushies and pillows, which are most commonly bought by young teenagers and children.
Advertisement: Tetley's tea makes adverts which are for anyone that drinks tea. The older looking characters suggest that their intended target audience is older people, however, their target audience would end up being anybody that drinks tea.
Frosties target audience is both parents as they will be the people buying the Frosties and children. This is because of the cartoon tiger which is the cereals identity. How it acts and how it looks is very child friendly and humorous for a younger audience. Also it can seen as being targeted towards people interested in sport, but in this case swimming as the tiger is shown jumping from a high board into a pool.
Music Videos: Kanye West's "Heartless" was animated by Hype Willaims to add and old American Pop vibe to the video. The target audience is anybody that is interested in Kanye West.
Ed Sheeran's "Perfect" was an animated lyric video aimed at anybody who like or wants to listen to Ed Sheeran.
Ident: Channel 4 created an Ident using one of the TVs shows that they show, The Simpsons. The target audience would be anyone who like channel 4, or likes The Simpsons.
Cartoon Network created an Ident using clay figures. The target audience would be teenagers and children because Cartoon Network is a channel targeted at this age range.
Conclusion: Animation is made for anybody that in interested in cartoons or art based things. If you like to make your own stuff and take a lot of time creating your end product, then animation is for you. There are other types of animation were there doesn't need to be any drawings or cartoons involved, and it can just be people. However, you could only pursue a career in animation if you are patient and passionate about animation as a whole. I believe that stop animation will stay around, however it will be very, very small. This is because computer animation is a lot smoother and appealing to the eye. Also, stop motion animation is becoming out-dated and is becoming something that anybody could do if they had the time an patience. Becuase of this i don't think stop motion will die out. I just believe that computer animation will completely take over as being apart of the youth society in todays culture, everything revolves around computerised technology and is a lot more appealing to members of todays youth society.
