ESting Planning

 

Planning our own ESting

Our idea for an ESting is a live action stop motion animation space invaders game. We would be having a wide open space such as the college gym and then having students move around up the top as the bricks for the game. We would then have a student at the bottom for the turret of the game moving and firing students at the bricks at the top. When a student has been hit we will make them disappear 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 a bird’s eye view on the game. We will also have the students make sounds when they are shot or just add a space invaders theme song to the video.

E4 is a side company to Channel 4, but has a difference as E4 is largely aimed at younger audiences compared to Channel 4. Most of the programmes which are shown on E4 are highly demanded programmes from the US. Some of these shows include "Scrubs" and "Desperate Housewives". However there are many programmes which have been seen a hit which were created not in the US, such as "The Inbetweeners" and "Misfits". E4's main target audience they aim for are for teenagers to young adults, for example around the age range of 15 - 25. E4 was created to produce programmes for the younger audience and to show something different to what Channel 4 shows. As ratings have proved to show this was a huge success as the target audience watches the most favourite shows such as “Skins”, “The Inbetweeners” and “Misfits” on a regular basis, these shows are only a few of many that are a big hit on E4 and have high ratings at a constant rate. In addition word of mouth and social networking helps out E4 because of the target audience they have, viewers post about the programmes on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter but also tell their friends about these programmes which helps boost up ratings for the programme and the channel, this then brings a wider audience in for the channel which could help other programmes become popular and or help create new programmes based on what the viewers want to see and what they enjoy seeing. One rating shows that a massive 3.7 million viewers were watching E4 when “The Inbetweeners” was on.

Our ESting is going to be created by the target audience so we can relate to what viewers would want to see on E4, also our ESting would give the viewer’s memories of a game they played in their childhood which would relate to them even more which would give the ESting a huge advantage.

The idea for our ESting would be suitable because it suits the main target audience which E4 are aiming for but also it gives the viewers a sense of their childhood back which could bring back memories and good times of possibly when they have played space invaders or watched it being played. Having the target audience teenagers and young adults is good because it could be easier to interact with as the ESting is being created by the main target audience for the target audience.

We did a location scout for our ESting and we have decided to use the college gym, it has a wide open area in which we need and with the correct equipment we can easily get the camera for the birds eye view in which we need it to be. The only down side is that the gym is used regularly and maybe in use the times we need to use it for filming. If this occurs too many times we may need to change location.

We scouted the location we wanted and found out that there is a few periods in which the gym is completely empty this was a good sign for us as we could then use the gym without any interruptions. Once we found out when the gym was free we went to find the head of department to get their permissions to use the gym in the free times and to ensure nobody else could book as well as us. We then took a few test shots of the gym trying to ensure the perfect position for the camera and jib but also the perfect angle in which the camera could face to get more of the gym in and enhance the space we have to use.

Here is one test shot we took. This shot was almost perfect as we almost got all the gym in but sadly there was a sleight part of white wall which we really dont want, in addition to this the camera is slanted, this was a big problem because we was trying to even out the tripod and jib but it just kept moving down and then going slanted. To overcome this problem we touch the jib handle just a little to keep it in place but also to make the camera straight ahead and not slanted.

Here is another test shot we took. This shot was the best shot out of all out shots we got, this is because this shot shows basically all the gym with a sleight exception of a piece of wall, other than that you can see the whole gym floor which is what we want and we could get the most use out of, also in this photo the camera is completely straight which is another good thing.

We began our filming in this location, and we did actually create most of our stop motion animation is this location which we originally wanted but unfortunately luck was not on our side as when we originally planned to film on the Wednesday that the gym was free only half of the people that did sign up to help out turned up so we had to go find some people very fast and time was not on our side as we needed more people and had to try and get most of this animation done in one lesson.

By 9:20 we had a few more people and began to film because we really couldn’t waste any more time. Everyone was in their positions and we were taking many pictures then we needed to get a jacket so use as the gun shots. We took around 60 photos overall at the end which in fact isn’t even that much as we needed around 120-30 because we were working at a 24 frames per second production. We decided we would try again the Wednesday after to get the other half of the photos we needed, we attempted to get more people in case others didn’t turn up this time.

The Wednesday came and nobody turned up to the gym so that was our production over, we needed more photos and without any people this wasn’t possible. We then had to come up with a whole new idea for our production and in the end we decided to have a small fight with a big punch at the end and then have the E4 logo behind where he was punched. We got all the photos done in one double lesson and we were so close to finish the editing in that double lesson also.

Myself and Alex came back at lunch to finish the editing and get the film done by the deadline. But again the editing software would not recognise our PNG file I created and we couldn’t understand why. We tried many different things but in the end we had to save the image as an Adobe Photoshop PSD file, and then drag this file onto the editing timeline.

We then needed to change the blending options as there was a white background on the image, once we did this we then attempted to key frame the E4 logo around Alex and to keep it in the center.

This worked well but it could have been improved a lot but if the editing software had worked in the first place then this may have been an easier job to do.