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.

Animation Evaluation

Create your own user feedback survey
The project we had to for this assignment was to create a video to a brief in this case the brief was for us to create an E4 Esting for the Channel E4.

The way I decided to review my animation project is via a written report on it, the reason for this is because with a written report you are able to check and fix your mistakes easily and make the whole thing look more professional, where as if you were to do that in a oral presentation then you wouldn't be able to fix properly and still make it look as nearly professional and it should have. Once of the

project of the stop motion animation was completely finished, I had then to distribute and exhibit my work and the main way I did that is by uploading it to my college's YouTube Channel allowing it to get some publicity and because it's easy and free to do, the bad thing about it is because if you don't have a big channel or don't get many views you won't get as much publicity as a big channel would and even when searching for the animation it won't be seen easily as there will be tons of other stop motion animation videos on YouTube and most made from more popular channels so people will most likely watch them instead.

 But there were other ways I could exhibit my project, one of the ways would be posting/sharing on different social medias, like Facebook, Twitter. Another way I could show of the project is by posting on public blogs and post and creates it own thread which will allow people to see it and also be able to comment on it as well. Another way which is via YouTube is by spending some money on making it a advertisement and allowing even more people to see rather than the just limiting to the people who watch the videos on the college's channel and allow others to see it before watching what they selected and if the advert intrigues them they can click on it and watch it again and be able to share as well to show other people. But after posting the video on the college's channel i had to get feedback on what people thought of it The main way I got feedback from my stop motion animation project is by creating a questionnaire with question that were based on a criteria we had to follow in order to get the best possible feedback.

Above is the criteria we had to follow when making our questions for our questionnaire and we had to make sure that the question we used were relevant to these bullet points and make sure they were validated by a peer as well.

I was surprise with the amount of females that were answering the questionnaire as my I sent the questionnaire to mostly my target audience's gender, which was male, but having a feminine opinion is good as well.

It's good that mostly the people who answered are around the age of my target audience which is 16-21, but also great to have opinion outside of it and it gives the answer more of a range.

The response mostly follows what I was making the stop motion animation was which was a Sci-Fi, comedy, this makes me glad that people were able to perceive that from my stop motion animation.

It's good to know that my stop motion animation project did show that the ESting was targeted towards the 16-21 target audience.

Its good to know that more than half liked the narrative of the story and the rest where still weren't negative about it.

The answer were all mostly unique to themselves and all provided helpful information about what they liked about my media project.

The answers in this one are somewhat plain with information, but still offer some closure on whether or not they liked the feel of the characters in the stop motion animation.

These answer were also somewhat plain with information, but there were also a few which provided very useful information about it.

This one had much for information about my media project that I can makes it very useful feedback for me.

The reaction overall,  I got when I first saw the result was slight happiness as they were almost all positive, as most people had good things to say about it.


When making the stop motion animation, surprisingly I didn't suffer hardly any constraints. especially not with things legally as everything I did I made sure all was all legal by making the sure the location I used, was safe to use and also I got the owner to sign a location release, in order to allowing me to use that location and also made sure that the actor I used also has sign a release in

order to let them be in video. I also didn't have any financial difficulties due to college having a budget allowing us to buy materials and props for a stop motion animation, the only real constraint I had was that the material we did buy had to be shared with the other people in the class only allowing me to have a limit amount of it in order to be able to create my octopus character, but even with that, I was still able to do it. The biggest constraint of the project was the time limit we had, because we only had four weeks in order to plan the project, do the pre-production paperwork, film the production and then edit it altogether.

For my time management,  I could've spent time better, as I spent more time on the pre-production then I needed to, leaving me having less time in order to do the editing at the end of the production. With this project making us have to follow a brief we obviously had to make sure we followed it and in my own project I believe I did follow it. A reason why I followed it was because the brief said that we had to make the "ESting" no more than ten seconds long, which is what I did as my stop motion animation project was exactly ten seconds, another thing was that we had to use the music that they included with the brief as it will cause them any sort of copyright problems, as they will be using the music they made and won't cause a copy right infringement and of course I used their music in my project as well. As I have explained before the way I got the feedback for my stop motion animation project was by doing the a questionnaire and sending it out to my target audience which male teenagers 16-21 and also people outside of the target audience as well and also to my friends and family.

The reaction I got from them was quite good and almost all positive with some small things that people noticed about it and I also got the same reaction from my peer as well when they watch it, saying it was great and only had small bad things to say about it. This project has made me learn what it's truly like when working to a brief and proves the difficulty of it and allows me to understand what I will be getting into when I join the media industry in the future. Following a brief made me become more creative as I had to think of idea that would be creative, unique and fit the brief and keep it under ten seconds, it was challenge put it allowed me to test my limits when creating a media project.

I believe that from doing this project, it has shown me to be able to know that I will be able to work in the media industry and be able to think and do projects when they are under a strict brief we have to follow and also it has shown me that the stop motion animation part of the media industry is not for me and that I prefer being able to work we humans and be able to pick out shots with them in mind and not inanimate object as the talents can also give you feed back on what they think they should do where in animation they can't so its just left to the director to do everything and no get much feedback.

Personal Reflection:

For my own stop motion animation I believe that I made it to the best of my ability, but they were things I would change if I could go back and re-film and edit the stop motion animation, for instance I would change how to box moves around the screen a lot of time throughout the animation  and if i was re-filing and I would make it more stationary, but the movement of the box made it so it looked like the octopus character was trying to escape and was moving the box from the inside, which like I've said before is by add sound effects in the video to make it sound like he was hitting the box around the screen. Another thing I would change is the actual animation of the octopus, as at some

scenes it looks very jumpy of the movements of the arms and the body of the octopus, this was of course because of the structure of character was falling apart during the production, but even with that the animation, it still worked well with the video and the stop motion animation. The last thing I would change about my stop motion animation ESting is the colour correction of the editing as it looks similar to each other but I can tell its not and I would just change it and make it look exactly alike. But overall I liked my stop motion animation, it followed the brief exactly and if it was put in the competition I believe it would give the other entries, a run for their money. 

Final Esting

Research and Planning: Responding to the Brief

One way in which that my ESting meets the requirements of the brief is because it does not exceed the time limit of ten seconds which was set and also doesn't use any music that the brief doesn't permit, instead it used the music that is meant to be used instead that was provided by E4 themselves. Another thing in which I followed the brief is that I didn't use any copyrighted materials in stop motion animation video, not including the music. In order for me to be able to follow the brief correctly I had to change a few things, one of which was the duration of the stop motion animation to something shorter because it would of been too long or too short and replaced the remaining time with an outro screen. Health and Safety was thought of as well, but luckily there wasn't much to weary of, but one of the things we had to be weary of was if the actor in the stop motion animation was allergic to the materials used to make the octopus, so we had to find out if the actor was allergic to it and he wasn't, so that was good. We also had to make sure that the ends of the structure of the octopus were not sharp, so that it didn't cause harm to the talent in the animation video, in which they weren't, due to us filing them down before creating the octopus, so everything was safe and ready to be filmed. For the production of the stop motion animation it was only me in it, meaning I had to everything by myself, including taking the pictures, acting, manipulating the octopus, as well as both the pre and post production processes. The entire deadline for all of the pre-production, production and post production was on the 7th of December.

Feedback of ESting

After getting feedback for my first draft of my version of an E4 Esting, I now know what i need to do, in order to improve the Esting. The main thing i have to do, which i found out from the feed back, is the lighting that changes half way through the video. The reason behind it was due to the different days of filming with different cameras which had different white light settings. I will fixed it by putting a colour correction on the videos and change each one individual and make it look exactly the same. Another thing is the boxing moving in the video, the way i will fix it will be to make it look  likes its part of the video and make it seems the octopus is knocking around,inside of the box, making it seem likes that's the reason for the box moving.