Planning an Esting

Our idea for an Esting is a live action stop motion animation space invaders game. We would need a wide open space like the college gym and then have students move around up the top as the space invaders for the game. We would then have a student at the bottom for the turret and have it firing out students at the space invaders in which will explode into a piece of clothing. Once all the students are gone the game will be completed. For this project we would need many students to participate as well as a wide open space to film in and also the camera and necessary equipment to ensure the camera is focused at the bird’s eye view of the game. We will also have the students make sounds when they are shot or just add a space invades theme song to the video.

E4 is the sister company of Channel 4 however E4 is more aimed at a larger youthful target audience. Many of the shows which feature on E4 are mainly US imports which consist of big shows featured in America. For example "Scrubs" and "The Cleveland Show". Although having a young audience it still manages to attract an older audience however with such shows as "Desperate Housewives". However the main audience consists mainly of teenagers from around 15 -19. I had based this on the shows which E4 provides which are mainly teen dramas like "Hollyoaks" However its main home-grown teen dramas are that of "Skins", "Inbetweeners" and "Misfits". These shows have been the most popular among teens since E4 had started cranking out such teen dramas. As shown by the ratings these shows although are not brought out very often get the highest ratings of any of their other shows. This occurred mainly in which the ratings showed at least 3.7million tuning in to an episode of inbetweeners. Although these shows are based at a much younger audience I believe that due to the other shows which are some more adult dramas I believe that the target audience is around 15-25. However in terms of gender I believe that E4 targets both genders with their comedy as it appeals both to male and female however some do target them both individually. For example “Glee” attracts mainly more female viewers when “Misfits” would attract more of a male audience.

I think our idea is suitable as it seems that all though E4 cranks out new innovative shows, it has a certain amount of nostalgia about it and appreciated the stylistic appeal of nostalgia as shown by the "street fighter" type Esting. Our esting is also going to be created by college students so we are the age group and understand what the target audience want as it is nostalgic about the old space invaders games as they were part of our childhood. Not only this but the whole concept is stylistically cool and fun to do.

While scouting locations for our Esting we has decided on using the college gym due to its convienience and wide open area. Because of the balcony we can get a good birds eye view and with the open area can fit a farely large amount of people. In order to get access to this location we had to get a release form and have it signed by the owner to ensure we can use it and in doing so will not damage the property. Not only this, but we had to do a risk assesment to assess our safety and well being while ensuring we cannot cause problems for ourselves or others. Not only this we must ensure that in instructing the talent, we do not put them in harms way.

In terms of the location we had to set up camera on the balcony to get a good angle on the space invaders Esting. In doing this we identified that getting a birds eye view was unrealistic as we had to get a angle which gave us more space to work in Making sure we got the angle a bit higher we used a jib to get the camera over the balcony. In doing this we can get a good angle without any obstruction. However it wasn't without its trials. In attaching the jib and tripod the tripod couldn't hold the jib as it tilted sideways. As shown in the picture to the left. However in supporting the tripod we were able to get a beter result. as seen here we managed to keep the image straight while also getting the best angle on the sports hall with the maximum space. Not only this but we managed to get a central look at the hall.

Unfortunately we hit a roadblock as on our second day of shooting there wasn't enough people turning up so we had to change our idea that day and shoot the next as we only had enough pictures from the Wednesday so we could not go forward with our space invaders. Our idea was to have a punch in which a person would fly back against some lockers in which when the person is sliding down the locker from being punched would reveal a smeared E4 logo on the lockers. The reason we went for stop motion over clay mation was the fact that the claymation didn't look very good and all three of us just looked mediocre for us so we decided on this.