Working to a brief

The Requirements of Working to a Brief

Briefs
The brief is a guideline for each individual project which is given when commissioned. When working in the media industry, for each project that is commissioned, it will come with the brief, it doesn't matter whether it's for a large company, a small independent company or the individual.The brief could also be non negotiable or negotiable depending on what the producer or those who set up the projects allowances are. It's also very important to have a clear understanding of the brief, also if there are any legal or ethical issues and if necessarily, you may consider talking to a solicitor about the concern.The examples for this is the brief from E-sting(animation E4 Chanel ident) which is the project I'm now working on or another competition like depicT(90 seconds short film)

E-sting's competition

This is a brief for the E-sting competition that I got from the the E-4 website, which includes all the rules such as judging criteria, audio, sound to be download and used on your animation and the answers from a lot of the questions that are shared by  those who are taking part in the E-sting production, Such as "how will I know if my E-sting is chosen as the finalist? or "my e-diting is 10 seconds long but YouTube make it longer, will it still meet the criteria?". 

Depict competition
The brief for this competition is very simple as there are not many rules added to the submission of the production, the main roles are that it must be less then 90 seconds. However the rules of Legal and ethical issue will come in to it.

Commission
Commission has several meanings in different industries but overall it's an act of passing the responsibility to an individual . For example in the media industry it could mean that the producer or company could give the script writer to write a screenplay for a certain subject or give the journalist the responsibility to find out an interest for a specific production. When the worker, group or company are commissioned it means that they are being signed to complete the task and they will also get paid.

An example for commission - The Aldis Animation Company is behind a new pant commercial commissioned by Ron Bareham 

Tender
The term of tender, regarding to the media industry, it's a task that's opened up to the public or certain groups where everyone has as much opportunity to work on an idea on the task and submit it, however not everyone will get paid but only the chosen ideas that get put forward to completed the projects or in another words is that if you won tender you will get a job. You could say that the creative competition on the ideastap is a type of tender. (http://www.ideastap.com/Opportunities/Brief/Sculpture-at-Bermondsey-Square---Open-Call-310315#Overview)

Competition
You could argue that competition is a particular type of tender because there is a slight difference which is that the competition is open to enter completed work and then the winner is chosen, and the payment will also usually be for the prize of first, second and third and the recognition of the maker. When the tender opens up to submitting the ideas and then the chosen idea will get picked to complete the job. A good example for this one is a short film such as reed.co.uk or E-sting. Competition is also one of the easier ways to respond to the brief.

Reed's competition

Reading a brief

On this project I went on the E-sting competition page and did research on the project as the guidelines must be strictly follows for the competition to accept your work. The website also provided you the music and the answers for certain areas of question which could be asked by many.

Negotiating a brief
A brief is a strictly provided piece of information for projects which can be negotiated to change certain parts of certain styles of the project by discussing with the company or individual, as sometime it could provoke legal and ethical issues; this refers to when it's commissioned. In any case if these laws controlled by Ofcom are provoked, production could have been banned by the broadcaster rules controlled by Ofcom, If this happens, the production will lose a lot of money because they have spent money on the production and it can no longer make money.Furthermore if they are involved with copy right laws, the production company could be sued by the owner and lose a lot of money. An example for this is "Angelina Jolie sued for copy right infringement over new film"

  There are more films that were sued Such as Hangover 2, the tattoo artist sued Warner Bros for a copy right infringement of the tattoo

There are more film companies which interfere with legal and ethical issues that have been sued by the original owner- more on Mental_floss

When it comes to competition or tender you must strictly follow the brief and mostly there is no room for negotiating. On the E-sting projects; as a competition there is no room for negotiating, however the brief is set for a very wide range of allowances, The main rules for the brief are that it must be no longer then 10 seconds, as an animation, no music that will interfere with copyright and it's must show E4's logos. This could refer to, when interpreting a brief which if not careful; the work won't be accepted by a client or those who set up the projects. As I did the research and made notes before filming, my project meet the brief perfectly.
There is an amendment to my production during the middle of completing production because the ideas would not work in the location and there was a lighting issue. So I had to come up with another idea and re-film again.

The second change I made is after re-filming my second idea; There are  too many frames so I have to make the scene shorter to meet the brief using "speed duration while editing". Armaments often happen in this industry especially when it comes to working when commissioned. The clients could ask you to make changes to certain parts of the scene during filming e.g Commercial media may ask the advertiser to change the look of the character or the brand of the products. When the production has been amended, the budgets and outline contract will be reviewed and changes made to meet the requirement of getting the production complete.

opportunities

Working to the brief is a good choice of practicing and learning the way to work through each project in the professional way.  A competition and tender is an excellent practice and preparation to work in the industry. Further in the future you could get a job that is only open towards those with experience.  Completion is also a good way to get yourself organised and recognized in the industry. After you have your own productions it could be used as a showreel when responding to even bigger projects. On the other hand where you didn't have a great impact experience working through the brief and and production, the client would not trust you to complete their production. In the media industry it could be hard to make a living if you are unknown in the industry, as there is a lot of competition going on; and whether you will be likely to get a well paid job is up to you to build up your own reputation. 

While working through the Animation project including E'sting I have learnt different types of animation and how it's produced e.g. Frame rated, effects, lighting and issues that could lower your grades on this specific subject. Frames rated is on 12 frame per seconds(1/2 of qualities of moving media text). As a photo, sometimes you may need to balance the color effects through the scene; 


lighting is very important as it could make the scene look unrealistic(shadow). The only Issue in this project is when collecting the frames as there is a lot you have to worry about e.g. the way the character will have to move (by a little). This is not too much of an issue when it's a claymation but talking about life action animation is something you want to cry about!  
This project is based for the channel E4's idents. My style of animation genre is a kind of magical movement (push and drag) as if by magical objects(E4 logo paper). Some may not see it clearly and think it's a horror as it seems quite similar to certain scene in the horror movie. However as the scene shows the character doesn't show a scared expression and I believe if a fan of sci-fi sees this scene they would understand the film. My animation used the provided sound and meets the requirement for the brief.