The Requirements of Working to a Brief

The Requirements of Working to a Brief

Briefs

A brief is a set of instructions given to a person about a job or task. In TV and film a brief/project brief is a guideline you must follow for a film project set by a production company. The brief will tell the filmmakers the direction they need to be heading in with the film and what you can and can't do. A commission is when your approached individually by a client looking to start a film project and payed and employed or getting a contract for the production of the film.

On the other hand a tender is an open request targeted at anybody to submit films and ideas. An example of a tender is The Editors Brief: New Beginners on www.ideastap.com. This is a tender because anyone from all ages can apply for this brief. The brief is about new beginnings so it must be themed around this but can be visual art/photography, writing, video or audio. The brief also states if it's a video or audio it must no longer than 2 minutes. A written piece should be no longer than 1000 words and visual/photographs must submit no more than 2 items. Applicants must follow this brief if they want to be considered for judging. Tenders are a great way to get experience with working to a brief without the added pressure you get from commissions.

You could also respond to a brief through competitions. For example the E4 ESting which is a competition anyone can apply for and submit their own 10 second video for E4. The E4 ESting competition wants people to create a 10 second ident to remind viewers they are watching the channel E4. Another example is the Bluecat Screenplay Competition, as anyone can apply but there is still a brief that must be followed if you want your screenplay to be considered for the competition. For example the screenplay must be 65 - 125 pages in length, must be PDF format, must be in English.

Reading a Brief

The E4 brief was a guideline you have to follow when creating your ident. The brief contained information on what you can and can't do and what must be included in the E Sting for it to be considered in the competition and shown on TV. Anyone who is working with a brief must read it carefully and understand what needs to be done as their are restrictions and less freedom following a brief.

When I was creating an E Sting for the E4 competition I made sure I read all the rules and the brief so I knew exactly what I had to do and couldn't do when making my E Sting. Here are a few examples of what I had to include in my E Sting and what I couldn't do:

The brief stated that I can't just use any music I like, I MUST use one of the soundbeds available to me on the E4 E Sting website and I wasn't allowed to remix or edit the soundbeds when making my E Sting. The brief also stated that the video must be EXACTLY 10 seconds long and contain the E4 logo in it. If it's not 10 seconds long it won't even be considered by the judges in the competition.

Negotiating a Brief

When creating the animation for the E Sting competition we actually had quite a lot of freedom despite their being a brief stating the video must be 10 seconds long with the E4 logo integrated into the idea which limited the content and ideas we could put into the video as it was a short amount of time. However the animation could be any genre and style of animation we wanted and could be about whatever we wanted as long as it fitted in exactly 10 seconds, contained the E4 logo and wasn't anything explicit or violent as the ident will be shown in the daytime. In the media industry changes may have to be made to a brief if it doesn't go according to plan, for example if a production company runs out of money or doesn't have enough budget to follow the brief. Or someone might not be available or leave the production so changes will have to be made to work around this. For example director Edgar Wright left Marvel's superhero movie "Ant-Man". Sources say "Marvel had to unhappy with his take on Ant-Man for weeks." so rewrites were made without Edgar Wrights input so he left due to the different visions of the film. Another example of negotiating and changing a brief is Sherlock (TV Series) created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat who shared the idea with BBC who commissioned them to create create the series. In the brief Sherlock was originally announced as a series of six 60 minute episodes should the pilot prove to be successful. However the first version of the pilot was reported to have cost £800,000 according to The Guardian. This caused Sherlock to be a potential disaster. So the BBC decided not to broadcast the pilot but instead requested a reshoot and a total of three 90-minute episodes.

 

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(TV_series)
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/why-ant-man-director-edgar-707374

When reading the judging criteria for this brief I actually had a lot of room to negotiate the brief as I could still be creative and entirely come up with my own idea so I decided to make a Legomation, action fantasy genre, 10 second E Sting which contained the music supplied to me and the E4 logo was integrated in the story as two armies were battling and the E4 logo was the boulder in the catapult which was fired into the enemy forces.

When following a brief there are always constraints you will face and have to work around. When creating the E Sting constraints I faced was that the video had to be EXACTLY 10 seconds long which is capitalized to tell the client this is extremely important and must be followed. Making my animation 10 seconds exactly was difficult to do at first as this was a very small amount of time to fit all the content I wanted into 10 seconds and always had to be aware if I'm taking too many shots when filming. When I finished production and started post production and editing all the images together the animation was over 10 seconds long as I added too much content and shots which I didn't need so I had to go back and make amendments by re-shooting scenes and removing shots in post production. Another constraint I faced was that I had to use the music supplied by E4 which was very limited as there wasn't much to choose from and a lot of the music sounded the same. I didn't like the music I had to include in my animation but these are problems you face and have to overcome when responding to a brief telling you what you must and can't include in your animation. Amendments may have to be made in a brief if a company hasn't got a large enough budget to meet the brief so it may need to be negotiated and changed until the brief can be met for clients.

Opportunities

Responding to a brief is great for experience in the industry and helps you learn to follow instructions which is a skill you must be able to do if wanting a career in this industry. It will also help you gain recognition which is extremely important if you want to be successful in the media industry. As you're working for companies and completing the brief set, the company will remember you and could ask you to do another project for them again.

I have created and had experience with stop motion animation before completing this brief this helped me immensely when responding to this brief as I already had a good understanding of how to create a stop motion animation and what to do for the brief. As I have done animation before there isn't really any new skills that I learnt however I feel I have improved on certain areas due to this project, especially in post-production when editing. I shot my stop motion animation over a few days so the lighting wasn't on point so during post-production I colour corrected the shots until the lighting in all the shots were the same as much as I could. When watching the stop motion with the new colour correction I was very happy with the outcome as it looked more professional with minimum flickering from the lighting.

As well as this I chose to do some masking to give the effect that my E4 boulder is flying in the air by taking a shot of just the background of my set with no objects then taking another shot in the exact same place and exact same lighting but this time with the E4 logo being lifted up with Lego bricks. When all the shots are completed they will be masked on Photoshop by importing the background image and then layering the image with the logo and Lego bricks on top of it. As the shots are layered you can rub out the Lego bricks lifting the E4 logo as we don't want to see them and the image underneath will appear through the rubbed out areas showing the background without the Lego bricks. This gives the effect that the E4 logo is floating. I felt I improved on masking as it looked good when masking it together as it's vital that each shots getting layered is identical when it comes to lighting and movement of the camera which I felt I improved on and achieved the effect of the E4 logo flying towards the army.

I created the entire project brief on my own as it was individual work. I completed all the planning and pre-production paperwork before filming so I knew exactly what the brief wanted me to do and what I was going to make. I also made the set and gathered all the characters and props needed for my animation. I filmed the entire project and edited it all together as well as colour correcting shots to improve the look of the animation and masked shots.