The Requirements of working to a brief

Brief:

What is a Brief?

A brief is a short document supplied by a client with their objectives/regulations to protect their company, as well as the objectives/goals with suggestions on how to complete these tasks.

What is a commission?

A commission is when a client asks you to create a project for a media outlet/platform which you (usually) get paid for.

For example, earlier this year I worked on a film piece for BBC voices to be shown behind a live orchestra at a live performance to commemorate the centenary of WW1.

What is ‘tender’ in media?

"Tender" is a term used in the media industry when you put your survives out for hire.

How else could you respond to a brief?

You could compete in a competition which would likely have a more broad/lenient brief.

Recognizing the brief:

We have to create a 10 second short animation to enter into the E4 Ident competition. According to the brief, our ESting has to clearly include the E4 logo and a soundtrack that has been supplied by them.

Negotiating a Brief:

For this assignment we have quite a lot of freedom for what we could create for our ESting, as long as we stuck to the guidelines.

We are quite fortunate with the amount of "Leniency" that we have for this project, for many company's/clients have a specific reputation that they need to keep, and/or have a specific vision of what they want created. If this was the case, then it would be imperative that we stuck to the brief as closely as we could, and - if we had had any ideas that we were unsure of whether or not they would work - keep in contact with the client to discus ideas to get the best possible outcome for all party's involved.

Sometimes your client may not be as experienced in the industry as you/other clients you have worked for in the past, thus leading to complications in budgeting and Legal areas of your project, which would make it difficult to create the product your client wants. In this scenario, you would need to discus with the client what the problems are and why they are a problem, and what could be done to fix/get around these problems. There are also ethical problems you could encounter, such as if you were hired by a charity organisation who are working to improve living conditions in a 3rd world country, would it be ethically correct to show living conditions of these people either early in the day where children could see the footage, or  you are contracted by a vegan/animal rights group who wanted to expose living conditions and how the animals are treated and they wanted it to be shown a 19:00 when family's are eating their dinner and watching TV.

For the final ESting i had to re shoot some of the footage of the characters moving/reacting as it did not flow as well as i felt it could have, as well as changing the colour correction to give it more of a "Crime" feel and make it look more professional.

There are manyt reason that you may need to make adjustments/amendments to your product, for example, you may have been overly optimistic when outlining the budget, and be forced to rethink how you would go about making your product. As well as this, it is easy to accidently overlook or forget parts of the brief when originally working to the brief, meaning that once you hand in the product that you may have a deviated from the brief. This is why it is important to keep checking the brief throughout the production.

Opportunities:

Why might someone respond to a brief?

There are many reasons as to why someone may respond to a brief, for example; they may be looking for a way into the industry and wish to get experience working with professionals, they may be a freelancer looking for work or perhaps an already established individual in the industry looking to broadening his/her options/further develop their skills as a filmmaker.

Identify opportunities that you had for self-development / what new skills did you learn?.

By working on my own I was able to improve my time management, as well as develop my camera and editing skills as I had only edited moving images/footage up until this project. Before this project I had never attempted to make a stop-motion animation before, so I leaned the workings behind it such as for 10 seconds you need to get 120 photos as you edit it/watch it in 12 frames per second.

Do you have to multi-skill at all during the project?

Yes as I will have to do all of the camera work and editing myself.

What contributions did you make to the project brief?

To go away from the generic clay/Lego animation of most EStings and create a live action animation set in a fantasy universe and to have a warden witness a crime and carry out "justice".