The Requirements Of Working To A Brief

The Requirements Of Working To A Brief

A brief/project brief is where a company, media co-operations, client and people set guidelines that you need to follow when tackling a project that they have set. Briefs are rules and regulations that must be followed. A commissioner is a company that either sells or puts your media production on TV or Film, for example for our animation project we had to do e E-sting for the TV channel E4 which means that if our piece is good enough we would get commissioned by E4 so they can put it on the channel. A tender is where a project brief is open for anyone to try and make a media project where as some media companies only select certain people to film, such as their best producer or people they know can film. We responded to a brief by doing a project to create a E-stings for E4 which is a competition based brief where the best e-sting would be chosen to be on TV. There are such companies that do this like Ideas tap where they have all these open projects that you have to follow the brief and you could potentially be selected. The image above is of a project that is open for people to enter at the minute. 

For our animation project we created a E-sting for the channel E4 where we had to follow the rules that they had set. The image below is of the criteria that we had to stick to. I kept to these rules by making the E-sting age appropriate, and making it 10 seconds long. For the sound track E4 gave us a link that we had to go on and use one of their selection of tracks available. Here is a link to the E4 E-sting website where you can download the the sound tracks.(http://estings.e4.com/node/48.html).

And finally I made sure that the E4 logo popped up at the end for a long enough period of time so that people know that the E-sting is made by E4. This was a very important rule that E4 had set for the E-sting competition 

There was no room for negotiation when it came to the E4 brief
 as the rules that they had set where non nonnegotiable, but they
were very lenient on the rules that they had set because they only
 set 4 rules that we needed to follow, and they let us have nearly
all the control on what we could make and use. Depending on what your job is in the professional media industry you may or may not be able to negotiate the brief. If you are the the director of the producer you would be able to change the brief to what you want, but if you are of a lower ranking roll you won't be able to have a say. When creating the E-sting we didn't have a budget to spend on the models, set and lighting so when it came to making my character it was hard to get him to stand up because of the shape and weight of him so it would have been good if we had a bit of money where we could have used to but a armature skeleton so it would make my character stronger and move much smoother. And also to buy a proper set for my piece instead of placing a piece of paper up against the wall to create the background. I also had to make sure that my E-sting was suitable to be aired on TV so I referred to OFCOM because every program that goes on TV has to checked. The main rule that I looked at was Harm And Offence, this is because these rules have to be followed as the E-sting will be played during the day so young children will see them, so this is why you cant have offensive language or and images that could have explicit pictures on. The picture below shows the main rules that need to be followed when dealing with people under the age of 18.

I had to change how much the character moved at the start of the E-sting because he was to heavy and unbalanced so he wouldn't stand up and this meant that he wouldn't move smoothly without leaning over and falling. There may be amendments when it comes to a brief because you have these select rules that you have to follow from the start, but this could effect the budget that you have to spend on creating a media product.

People would respond to a Brief because if you are really interested in getting into the media industry, it is a good way for you to get that little bit of recognition from creating a small media project for a company. It is also good for you to get experience in making a media product. Also with there being so many different brief that you can be apart of it is a easy way to get noticed. By doing the E4's brief for the E-sting it has taught me many different skills. First of all I have learnt much more about clay animation and how hard it can be to have to film each movements shot by shot. I now have great appreciation for directors like Nick Park who create whole movies such as Wallace and Gromit and The Pirates by using claymation. I was surprised at how hard it was to keep the camera in the same spot for each shot because I noticed that the camera wasn't in the same spot every time so it looked a little shaky in places. This has taught me to carefully check every shot and make sure that all of the equipment is secure and that the camera is secure on the tripod. We had to multi skill all throughout this unit as we, by our self's had to plan, design, direct and produce the E-sting.Also when I was filming I was directing the shots by placing the camera in the perfect position and move the character at the same time so that it looked that he was moving, and also that he
remained in shot. I contributed to the E4 brief by choosing to use clay for my animation as I always liked the thought of using clay. And i also loved how smooth and clever it looked when it was done well. So i really wanted to cry and make it as good as I could. I also chose to draw my backgrounds as it showed that I really put the effort, time wise into the project, it also gave me the opportunity to have the exact location that I wanted for the background. I did a bit of research on claymation before planning and I saw how smooth people could make something move, so this is where I came up with the idea of having the ball come up from the grounds and go around him body like he is is doing some tricks and he is making the ball do it itself.