Understand the Requirements of Working to a Brief

Briefs:

What is a brief/project brief?:

A brief is a set of directions or a request which an applicant can respond to. The client will create the brief and then either give it to the person who will create the response or advertise it so that numerous people can respond. The result should be a product for which the applicant / worker can get recompense / payment or recognition. The brief is the first part of the process as it has be able to detail just what is happening but it also has to be short and concise enough for the client not to become overwhelmed or disinterested in what they are reading which would therefore be detrimental to the entire project as a whole. It is also useful to ensure that the brief they are handed is lenient enough for them to take their own interpretations of it and implement their own artistic flair to it.

A tutorial helping people to create a great project brief:

What is a commission?:

Commissioning is where a client will reach out to a certain group of individuals or a single individual and ask them to complete a job for them, this happens in media when a company wants someone to produce a movie for them, they will often decide who to commission after viewing all of the briefs given to them they have to decide which one to commission and take the idea further. They decide which idea to commission judged by the strength of a brief so for the people producing the brief it is vital that they have made it as short and concise but also full of information as possible as this is vital for the brief to be selected over the other ones. Once your brief is chosen this is known as being 'commissioned' once your item has been commissioned it is then down to the people who have purchased it as to what happens with it, ensuring that the main part of the product/project isn't lost but also adding their own thoughts and opinions to it due to the fact that they are the ones who have invested into it.

Tender:

A tender is different to a brief, the client and or employer will reach out to people with an 'open brief' and look to allow them to have their own thoughts and opinions and make any changes in which they see necessary to have it the way in which they want. This information is then relayed to the original creator of the brief and if they feel this is acceptable they will then look to sell it with the changes in so that both parties end up benefiting.

Another way someone can respond to a brief is if the brief happens to be issued in the rules of a competition, a fantastic example of this would be the EStings we created, we had to follow a brief which was in the rules of the ESting competition to ensure that our entries would be eligible, here is an extract in he rules in which we had to follow:

Above is the rules listed on the EStings website for the competition. This is the brief that we had to explicitly follow for our animations. In regards to the rules, there wasn't an abundance of them so there was a reasonable amount of freedom when producing the ESting, the main draw back with an ESting however is the 10 second maximum time allocated for you to work with, furthermore we were unable to use our own sounds in which we had sourced from the internet which was abit of a hindrance in the end for our final product.

In terms of finding ways to 'work around' the brief there wasn't too many, especially with the fact that it had to be exactly 10 seconds long, no longer, no shorter which meant that it was a reasonably strict brief (in that regard) however we managed to hit this brief with relative ease in the end due to the fact that things can always easily be added/taken away with the idea we decided to use to meet the project brief. I had the opportunity to liaise with my tutor in the same way I would a client even though soe briefs allow very little room for negotiation. It was suggested that we look at a comic way to incorporate a bomb so that it was not seen as insensitive due to current and topical events. We achieved this by using sticks of dynamite in a nod to old Warner Bros cartoons.

There are many varying restrictions and implications in which people could come across when responding to a brief, some of which may not even be specified in the actual brief itself, one of the main problems is copyright, especially with the constant access to the internet, it's vital to stay savvy when exploring options online as if you wish to use work for professional use and you have 'stolen' someone else's work unknowingly when your work can be claimed and taken away from you. This was easily avoided with the ESting task as all sounds had to be taken directly from the E4 site, furthermore, all footage had to be made and produced by you from scratch so copyright laws were fairly easy and reasonable to abide by in this certain scenario.

Also, the competition rules had to be followed as this animation was ultimately made to be shown on national TV this in turn means that OFCOM's rules and regulations also have to be followed to ensure that is suitable for TV.

I had to make a few changes to my project during production, this is due to the 10 second deadline being an extremely strict one and we went out and obtained over 200 shots which would of been over 50 seconds of footage this lead us to tweak our idea slightly and cut out some parts, to any usual viewer from a neutral perspective it would appear that nothing really changed but for us the idea is just a shell of what it was in the beginning, even if we were still happy with it.

On the other hand, if your'e working on a bigger scale your budget may change very quickly and either your idea or certain aspects of your movie have to be changed to ensure that it can still be made with the budget at hand, alternatively, the budget could change for the better which allows the team more freedom to produce more impressive ad in-depth shots.

Briefs are fantastic for people who are just finding their way in the industry as they offer a fantastic way to obtain credibility and experience, if it is a commission based brief then it allows the person to obtain money and therefore explore other ventures within the industry as well. Which further supports the fact that briefs are fantastic for helping people in the industry

Brief example from Hiive (formerly Creative Skillset)

During this task I had several opportunities to learn new skills and develop the skills I already had further, this one was specifically helpful for me due to the fact that I had never worked using stop-motion animation in the past so this was a whole new skill to me which I feel helped to develop my skills and know how greatly.

I completed alot of new tasks in which I had never done before when responding to the brief at hand, working frame by frame was perhaps the most challenging thing in which I learnt how to carry out, this is due to he fact that during my time on the course I had only worked with full blown video production so making an animation through stop-motion was always going to be a new thing and something in which I would have to take my time to get used to. Furthermore, we worked with Manual DSLR cameras something in which I had never done before carrying out this project and I feel much more comfortable using this type of camera.

 There were a few varying skills in which we had to sue in this project, perhaps the hardest part was ensuring that when I was sliding on the floor was flawless and looked smooth as if it jumped or one frame was missed then the illusion that it was as if it was being recorded would be lost so we took extra care when producing these and was perhaps the hardest thing in which I have carried out on the entire course in terms of ensuring that it was just right and I am happy with how this turned out and if I was to replicate this in the future.

The contribution that I made to the project was my completed animation which was of course the 10 second Esting stop motion animation in which will be sent off to Channel Four and hopefully be considered for the ESting competition, however this also had contributions to me personally in terms of developing my own skills and helping me further develop my ability not only with a camera but also in front of it and editing and making tough decisions choosing exactly which parts need to be cut out.