The Requirements of Working to a Brief

Firstly what is a brief? A brief is a list of different requirements that people in the media industry have to follow in order to please the people who hired them, as once they have hired a company or an individual to make them a certain thing they have to follow what their clients want them to do. There are different types of brief in the media industry. One of which is called getting commissioned, this is when a company either employs an individual or a production company to create a product for them to help them either advertise themselves or their product/s. When a production company is commissioned by a bigger company than themselves means that they the company will bring you more work and publicity especially if you do a good job of making and working well with their brief they assigned to you.

Usually the company only commission only one production company to the brief, the opposite of that is something called a "tender" brief. A tender brief is when an company releases their brief to the public and allow anyone to follow it so instead of what commission does and have it so only one person or company can do it, in this case anyone can decide to do it and then send it to the company and allow to view them and pick the best one and use it.

The last main type of brief that is used is called a "Competition" and this allows anyone to respond to a brief, as company, this is mostly film festivals that do it, they release multiply different briefs for different categories, which allows loads of people to submit their projects into different categories with a chance to win, which can be different rewards like money or like everyone it gives the actors or director, publicity to production companies. An example is a competition brief from a company called "CineMagic", which is a film festival that is set upon getting young people into the media industry and into their competition. This brief example is about making a short film with a duration of up to ten minutes and can have any narrative and of any genre as it will be put into the different categories when it has been submitted.

With every brief, like I have said before, the production company have to follow it, in order to give their employer what they want. An example is when I had to follow E4's ESting brief, in which gave me multiply things to follow in order for the project to be valid. The most important thing we had to follow from the brief and also was the hardest, was that the project had to be exactly ten seconds long, no less, no more. But at first I found it difficult, but then was able to do it and not have any problems with it after being able to figure it out. Another thing I had to follow was that the music that was used in the project had to be music that E4, themselves made or owned, which is great as it allows me to increase the time I spent on other parts of the project, from not having to search more existentially for music, as the music is given and is only small playlist, with a variety that can fit any sort of video for the brief. The last main thing I had to follow from the brief was that it had to include the E4 Logo in the project and if it wasn't shown in some aspect then the project wouldn't be put into consideration of judging 

When given a brief by a company, there can be some freedom with it, but this can depend on the company who assigns the brief or the brief itself. In my case with my brief I was allowed some freedom with it. For instance I wasn't limited to a genre or a certain narrative to follow, I could make up the narrative to what I wanted as long as it fitted in the ten second window of the project. But when you have been in the industry longer, production companies will allow you more freedom with the brief, but even the most experience will sometimes have complications with their brief they have to follow and some even end up leaving the production all together. For instance ,the now more known director, thanks to his most recent film "Baby Driver", Edgar Wright was involved in the Marvel's

movie "Ant Man", but left the production due to "creative differences" with the clients that were involved with the film, in this case, them being Marvel. As Marvel wanted to change the movie behind the backs of Edgar Wright and Co-Director Joe Cornish, they wanted to change the script that both directors worked on for almost 8 years. When following a brief there has to be some sort of discretion with it also, but the level of it can depend on the type of brief or the company involved with it, for instance if the brief is commissioned to a person or company then it is most likely going to have discretion towards it as they wouldn't want people to find out until later in production of it. However this would be different for a tender brief as it would most likely be public, so the most people will know, so the discretion would be minimal. When trying to follow a brief other than the one that I did you can come across some problems with it, for instance you can have problems with copyright infringement when doing your project, which can be done from a number of different things, like the music you use or the sound effects or even a image you use can cause copyright infringement, as if it is not royalty free or you don't have permission to use then they have the right to claim against it, so when doing a project, I always make sure that what I am using is either copyright free or I have been given permission to use it in the project.

Another problem you can run into is the ethnics behind it, as all though you may have no intention of effecting someone in a negative way from your project, it can still happen if your not careful, so make sure you think through the project and make sure it doesn't offend anyone's belief or religion.

So the film or television show that is created from the brief must make sure it doesn't break ethnic laws, for instance not subjecting any religious beliefs to abuse or that you must promote religious belief secretly within the film or program.With my final project for the brief done as a first draft, I was able to get feedback from people and actually figure out what the problems were before making the final draft and begin to release it on social media. The stuff I was told and able to amends to  things like the lighting and colouring were different for some parts of the video, due to the change in camera and their white balance being different. The way I fixed this was in post production I changed the colour correction of both parts to make them look the same which worked out well as it looked very similar to each other. Another thing I had to amend in post production before the final draft, was that I had to make the movement in the video look more realistic and that it fitted with it as well, as the box in the video moves around and the make it make it seem like it fits is add sound effects to make it seem that the octopus character inside the box is making it move around whilst it's trying to escape, which

worked because the feedback from the final draft didn't mention the box's movement so the sounds worked. It's not just me who had to make amendments for my project, this can happen with anything in media industry, as things don't always go to plan, especially when following a brief. For example the company who made the brief could change it instantly, as they could change the date the brief is due or how they want it done, if the brief is commissioned then they could change the budget they are given the company or person, but this could also happen the other way by the production companies going over budget. An example of a project that went well over budget is by the 2013 film called "The Lone Ranger", with it's starting budget being around $70 million and by the end of the project, the budget went up to $225 million, with it barely being made back in the box office with it only earning $260 million, this is all after production had mid-shoot shut down and also with the script being re-written multiply times as well.

The biggest question that is asked when talking about briefs is, why do people want to sign up to follow a brief? There are a few reasons why, one of which is to get more publicity with the media industry, as if a person or company gets commissioned or win the tender/competition brief, then will relay to other companies and may make them come forward and ask the person or company to do a project for them, especially if it was the original brief was from a big company. Another reason is like me, was to increase their skills at following a brief, as it's a good opportunity to work on the skills of that and also to work on the skills you lack as well. Another is the fact that being able to break your way into the world of the media industry and be able to work your way up from there. Competitions aren't just a way to have some fun making a film it can actually turn to a successful career from it, as competitions give you a massive boost in publicity with production companies, which could turn into a job offer. An example is a director called "Martin McDonagh". Martin has directed films like "In Bruges", "Seven

Psychopaths", which stars Colin Firth, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell. As well as his most recent work which was "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", which won a golden globe for best screenplay. But his career mostly started with competitions as most of his work he put into film competitions like London's Film Festival, to which his work of Seven Psychopaths was nominated for best film award, but his work on His own project "Six Shooter", won a award for best live action short film, as well as the work on In Bruges which won the most awards in the film festivals like, Best Original Screenplay, Best New Filmmaker , Best Screenplay and Best Motion Picture Screenplay.

Like I said before the reason for me doing the brief was to increase and discover new skills for media industry, but with this brief it allowed me to do some self development, for instance I developed my independent skills in all areas of media, pre, post production and of course the actual production side of the project, I also was able to also develop heavily on my stop motion animation skills and my creativeness as I had to think outside the box to be unique as the brief was for E4's ESting which are known for being crazy and unique and in order to have a chance I would have to think the same. When doing the ESting I did actually learn a few new skills, for instance I learnt some of the basics of prop design or stop motion animation character design as my main character was an octopus made out of clay. I also learnt the whole genre of stop motion animation basics as that I had to do for my course, from making the character to when filming to move the character inch by inch, in order to make them seem as realistic as possible. My new found skills were also put to the test during the production f the project due to me having the multi task between taking the pictures and then changing and animating the characters in the project video, which was hard at

first, but after a while then it got easier and easier. My contribution to the project brief I had to follow was a stop motion animation, which mainly focus on claymation and live action stop motion animation, the animation was a short ten second video of an pick a prize box at fair being picked by an anonymous hand which gets attacked by a purple morphed E4 logo, as it escapes from the box and attacks the camera.