Understand the requirements of working to a brief

When working in the creative media industries or even on a smaller scale (like as part of a course), you will be required to work to a brief at some point. A brief is an outline of the requirements that your media product must fulfill.

Structure of briefs
A brief may be presented to you in a variety of ways which could decide the way that you approach the project. With a contractual brief, the outline is given to you in an employment contract; this will be discussed between the client and the company but allows for an easier to read, yet detailed, brief. This helps create stricter guidelines for the company to work around and allows the client to have more control over the process. A negotiated brief is when the worker will help the client with the actual development of the brief so that  aims and objectives can be agreed. By working more collaboratively in this way, it becomes easier for the company to meet realistic expectations.

The brief can be given formally or informally. A formal brief will involve a face-to-face meeting with the client where they will inform you of the requirements for your work whereas an informal brief is given indirectly in the form of a telephone call or conversing through emails. In many cases, the client will approach and request to contract a specific person for the job that they have in mind. This is known as commissioning the worker. A client will usually make this decision based on previous work or a new portfolio that they have seen by that person which makes them suitable to work on your brief. A tender brief is one that is published and sent to several different companies who can respond with any ideas that they have. Depending on which idea the client likes the most, they will make a decision as to who will work on their project. For example, with my brief, it was published on the E4 website and a decision will be made around all of the ideas submitted as to which they will air. The brief which I was working towards for my E-Sting is also an example of a competition. It was an open brief which anyone could submit an entry for.  As well as keeping it appropriate for the E4 brand identity, entrants were also required to follow guidelines including use one of the provided selection of 10 second audio plugs in the creation of your ESting. If you are successful in winning the competition (based on a public voting system), you receive £5000 as well as having your ESting aired on the E4 Channel; there is also a £500 runner-up prize.

Reading a brief

When you are given a brief, it is important to read it very carefully; doing this allows you to guage how much freedom you have in your creation of the final product. A more specific brief will give you less freedom to do what you want so it is important to be knowledgeable of what you must and must not include. The rest is up to you. In the brief that I was given for the creation of the E-Sting, there were very few specific instructions as to what needed to be included. The main element which was implicit in the creation of a winning E-Sting was to conduct sufficient research into the E4 brand. So as long as you are aware of what would be suitable for their target audience, you have free-roam on whatever concept you choose to run with for your product. Other limitations that were set included a 10 second time limit and a submission deadline on the 9th November 2012. If a deadline is missed in this competition, you will not be able to take part. However, in the real creative industries, if a film does not meet its deadline, legal action can be taken by investors to reclaim their money.

Negotiating the brief
When working to a brief, it is important to confer with the client as much as possible to negotiate what you intend on doing for your project and to find out about any relevant constraints. For the purposes of this unit, by tutor was my client whom I consulted with daily for interim feedback as I began to build up my final product. This allowed me to spot and resolve any problems that came about as well as foresee some of the problems that could develop later on. Items that were discussed included the deadline and my production schedule as well as creative changes such as having a printed background as part of my set. As I previously mentioned, your discretion in interpreting the brief is important as it allows you to accurately judge what could be twisted or changed to accommodate some of the features that you want to include in your E-Sting.

With any project that you take on, there are always going to be constraints that you need to be conscious of. In terms of legal constraints, it was important to be aware of any copyright issues that might occur in your production. This could include the use of copyrighted characters, concepts or soundtrack in your E-Sting. This was less of a problem for me as I used stock characters and concepts meaning that I could not accidentally copy a piece of somebody else's work. I also created my soundtrack with copyright-free sound effects from my college network. If I had chosen to use them, E4 also provided E-Sting soundtracks for you to use if you wanted to. When working to create any media product, it is important to be ethical. When thinking about ethical constraints, one of the main elements that must be considered is the treatment of all cast and crew which should be reasonable and friendly. After all, you are all ultimately working towards the same thing. This was less relevant to me in this unit as I was a one man cast and crew but this is highly unlikely to be the case in the professional industry. Another ethical issue which also comes under the legal category is the way in which you attain information that you require. For example, you should only have information about a person if they want you to. Having information about someone without their permission is unethical and should not be encouraged, particularly with the phone hacking scandal in recent years. In the aforementioned paragraphs, I have discussed the importance of researching the brand before working for them as this will give you information about regulatory issues that may arise for you. In this case, it was important for me to read Channel 4's editorial guidelines. This is based on the code set down by the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) and says what can and cannot be broadcast on any of their stations, including E4 upon which the winning E-Sting would be shown. Budgetary contraints mat also affect the way that you approach the production as certain materials and equipment may be expensive unless already owned by the filmmaker. Alternatively, some equipment can also be outsourced from elsewhere such as a film studio if working on a professional production.

Upon completion of my E-Sting, it was necessary for me to receive feedback so that I could make ammendments accordingly and, overall, improve the quality of it. I asked for criticism as well as positive feedback through YouTube, questionnaires and a focus group. Whilst much of it was positive, many of the critical comments regarded confusion about the concept. Since I did not consider it time or cost-effective to recreate the whole animation, I chose to work on the other amendments including continuity with lighting and sound as well as adding some extra shots to demonstrate other animation possibilities. This included the facial expression at the beginning. In order to make these changes, amendments needed to be made to the timescale of the project. In the professional industry, it is possible that alterations would need to be made if any of the production stages do not go to plan. It is common practice in the film and television industry to have 10% of the budget extra as a contingency for this kind of situation. It is also important to keep your client involved in these proceedings so that they are aware of any issues. Communication is key to keeping your client and investors happy with the way production is going.

Opportunities
Now that I have completed this animation unit, I can reflect upon what I have learnt and the new skills which I have developed. I discovered that much of the beauty of animation comes in that it makes an impossible action become a feasible one. However, I also learnt several things about myself and my personal compatibility to animation. Whilst I see what is great about the end result, I find the entire process painstakingly longwinded and repetitive. Due to this fact, I have decided that it will never be my intention to work in this area of the creative media industry but I am glad that I have discovered this as it will help me to decide which area I do want to work in. This could, for example, be a designer, a technical specialist in animation or a storyboard artist.

Despite my aversion to the process, I have gained several new skills. For example, I have learnt how to create a character and set out of the raw materials such as plasticine. Whilst I have never been talented with hands on art, I have still developed my skills in this area to a degree. This could come in handy should I need to complete a similar task in the future as well as them being transferrable skills into other design tasks. There were also times where I had to multi-skill such as when I was animating my character whilst needing to be aware of how it would look in the cinematography. This sort of awareness is important in the creative media industry as it involves the attention-to-detail which is necessary to create an aesthetically-pleasing, professional media product.

When working to the brief, I had to bring my own creativity to try and create something unique. I had to ensure that I kept within the running time of 10 seconds that was specified. I also had to keep to the timescale that I had set to complete the task. Therefore, when planning my E-Sting, I could not be too ambitious with what I wanted to do; my idea worked around a fairly basic concept with obvious actions that my character (a boxer) would do (punches and intimidation). Overall, I am pleased with what I accomplished as I planned and brought to life my own concept despite having no previous experience of stop-motion animation before this unit.