Research and Planning:Designing an E sting

The format I tend to use for a E sting is by using stop motion frames. This is because I have enjoyed using this format by practicing it with my peers. However I will be specializing in claymation. This is because it is very similar to stop motion photography. The characters will be made with clay and the setting will be made with a combination of materials e.g. sand, colored paper and a cardboard box.

The narrative will be about two cowboys having a shoot out. First the two cowboys will catch eye sight and they will both start to reach for their guns slowly. The two characters I will make will be distinguished by their coats. One will have a red coat and the other will have a blue coat. One of the cowboys has one eye his name is Angelo and he is an outlaw of the west  with a price on his head. Mark is a bounty hunter on his way to track him down and kill him. Angelo will leave the saloon when Mark will be there. They will both reach for there guns and Angelo will be killed by Mark.

The lighting of the set consists of several light sources. This is easily managable because they are part of light switches. However the premises is used a lot so if I were to control the light sources I would have to get permission from other people to use them.

The diegesis of the film will be set in a remote part of the desert with cacti. The time will be just before sun set so that I can make a it look like an iconic western scene. I will take some inspiration from some other western films I have watched like The Good The Bad The Ugly, and Once Upon a Time In The West.With these films they have many iconography which represents the western genre which I want to portray to the audience. With this I will use the orange paper to replicate the sun and I will use sand and the card board box to simulate the desert. With the blue paper it will show the clear landscape so that the characters and the environment are the main focus of the E sting. I will also add a saloon in which one of the cowboys exits out of the classic double doors. I will do this by using a cut out cardboard box to make up the saloon. I will use pipe cleaners for the characters skeletons to make it easier for me to position them.

The limitations of my E sting may be the financing of the paper I will need. Different colours of paper can be expensive. Also as it is winter when I will be filming when the models are not being used cold temperatures can harden them. This can make them brittle so I will have to be careful as they may break a lot. Also there will be many limitations to the production of the E-sting due to copyrights. For example the E sting competition gives you tracks for you to use in the E sting. These tracks are the only ones you don't have to pay for the copyrights for however if you want an individual one and you don't have the rights for it E4 won't allow it. This will ultimatly lead to the choice of the soundtrack I have to chose. In the guidlines set by the E sting competition you are required to pick from a list of clips of music and you must include this in the animation. However I will most likely look to pick a soundtrack that is upbeat and catchy to make the animation more memorable and quirky. The soundtrack I used from the tracklist provided by E4 was called Daft Punk 3.

My target audience for my E sting will be individual males aged 17-35 who watch E4 at 21:00 or onwards. This time could be earlier however because of the content I should be conscious of the watershed .This is because my E sting will contain some violence and guns which wouldn't be appropriate for children to watch and it may upset him. The time in which I will air the E sting will be past the watershed which is the time set in which adults watch TV with more mature content.