The requirements of working to a Brief

About brief:

The project brief/brief is normally seen as the last stage in the process of defining the clients for the development of a built asset. These normally contain guidelines set by a production company, it is important to always follow these guidelines as they will say what you can and can not do during the production of the film. These could be simply things such as the film must promote a sort of logo or product, or even a catch phrase.
When you are in a commission you pretty much are hired by a certain company to do a specific job for them or even work for other commission bodies and follow the brief you are set. Commissions are very different from a tender, a commission you are pretty much working private for a specific company, as a tender is an open brief where anyone can take part. A very goo example of this would be E-Stings competition at E4. Anyone can submit their 10 seconds short video in which winners are then picked and shown on TV. The main purpose of this is to remind the audience that they are watching E4.

Working to a brief at a commission body can have its disadvantages and also advantages:

Reading a brief:

It is important that a brief is well understood and followed, if this is not the case the project you are creating may not be valid or approved. For example when reading the brief for making an E-Sting we come across sets of rules we have to follow in order for our final piece of work be legal and approved to be entered for the competition. There are things that we must do, and there are also things we must not do. One example would be the music.
Here is a screen shot from the E4 website for an E-Sting brief of things you can and can not when adding music to your e-stings:

Looking at the screenshot we can tell that music is an important stage of e-sting. The Brief states that you must use one of their songs and you are not allowed to remix these. The only exception is sound effects as long as they are your own piece of work. Another section of this brief states that the e-sting must be exactly 10 seconds long to qualify, it can not be any longer or any shorter. There were more things that stated in the brief that we could not do, such as creating as e-sting that exhibit explicit or violent content. This is really important as the e-stings are shown on E4 channel during day and afternoon time, every competitor has to ensure they meet the OFCOM codes 2.4 and 2.5.

 Another must in this brief is that the E4 logo is used and shown on your 10 seconds e-sting. Apart from all these must and must not do we can then do what ever we like best. We have the choice of what genre we would like, the style of animation we wanted to make it and also it could be about any topic we wanted.

Here is a screen shot of the criteria we had to meet:

Looking at this brief compared to others I had plenty of freedom when making the e-sting. Some briefs can be extremely demanded and limiting with more rules to follow. Briefs like that normally make it harder to negotiate, however this brief does not demand for a lot so negotiating became quite simply as i could still do a lot of what I wanted. With this brief I could still be very creative and do my own thing which is an advantage. However due to the judging criteria i also had some disadvantages when making my E-Sting. One of these disadvantages was the music, the brief says that we must choose and use music from them. This was a problem as there were not many music to pick from and most of the music I completely disliked as it did not suit and fitted with the pace and background story of my e-sting. I actually ended up mixing two different music from them in order to get something I liked a little more. Another disadvantage of this brief is its length. The e-sting can only be 10 seconds long which is actually not a lot. Once I had my idea sorted and I started to shoot my e-sting I realised that 10 seconds was no where near enough for my whole idea. With this being realised I had to cut out some scenes to reduce the number of photos I was taking in order to meet the 10 seconds criteria. Although I had taken out some shots I still went over the 10 seconds criteria by a few seconds, however this was not a major problem because when I edited on premier pro I speeded up the time each frame is shown in order to reduce the time and meet the 10 seconds criteria.

Responding to a brief:
When responding to a brief you are opening a path with more opportunities than you can not imagine. By taking part in a brief, or competitions such as e-stings you are experiencing a small section of what it would be like to have a career in the media industry. You also gain more experience in following brief instructions and meeting the criteria which is a skill many industries will look for. With that being said it is also a good way of being recognised, if you create a good project which ends up being the winner project you have a higher chance of being picked up by the same company or even a different company in order to produce another piece of work for them. It is always a good way to gain recognition by joining competitions. There are many ways you can respond to a brief and join competitions. For example IdeasTap, they are a "UK charitable organisation established to aid people in the creative industry at the start of their careers".

Responding to a brief has being a great experience, I really enjoyed every second of it especially as E4 is one of my favourite channel and I have always liked the e-stings but never though of making one myself. Although I had created a stop motion animation before with a few other members of class I feel like I have learnt a lot more and gain more skills and experience when creating a stop motion animation especially to a brief. I gain more experience and skills using claymation in order to create a stop motion animation.  I also learnt more about using premier pro as well as developing my skills at editing. It was the first project I have had to make my own choices and edit all by myself. One of the things I had to edit was the timing of every frame to match the 10 seconds criteria. Another editing skill that I had to use a lot was balancing the lightening. Because my e-sting was shoot in two different days the lightening had changed so I had to go photo by photo making it all look similar by using colour correction, and brightness and contrast. The last editing skill I came across was how to use Photoshop in order to erase an unwanted object without changing the background massively. I had to use this skill to erase the line I used to attach the ball to it in order to make the ball bounce. Which I had to take staged photos of the ball slowly going up with small movements and the ball coming down.

Overall I feel good about responding to this brief, as well as widening my experiences I feel prepared and ready to respond to other briefs and join other competitions. I got a chance to use clay in order to do my stop motion animation and create my own characters and my own scenery. I also used computers to do all the research, planning, paper work and editing which as only improved my skills and widen my understanding about working to a brief.