The Requirements of Working to a Brief

Briefs

• What is a brief/project briefs?

A brief is an outline written by an individual or a company that lays out rules and guidelines for creating (in this case) a media text. For example a company may need an advert for a new product the have made so they will write a brief stating the advert must be a certain length, contain the company logo, look professional etc. In our case we worked to a brief set by E4, to create an E sting, the brief that we followed can be seen below.

As you can see the brief is clear about what freedom the creator will have when making the product. 

• What is a commission/what does it mean to be commissioned?

A commission is very similar to a brief in that it is an individual or organisation asking someone to create a product. However a commission is far more focused than a brief, a brief is something like the E sting competition above, it is something that a large amount of people can enter. A commission is when a company will seek a certain creator, most likely a professional, to create their intended product.

Commissioning of Sherlock:
Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss originally approached the BBC with the idea of a modern day Sherlock with a plan for six 60 minute episodes but after talks with the BBC the show was eventually commissioned for three 90 minutes episode after discussions with the BBC, the commission was successful because of the contacts that Gatiss and Moffat had in the BBC after their work on Doctor Who and Gatiss' history with the League Of Gentlemen.       

• What is meant by the term ‘tender’?

Tender is the process of sending out a brief to multiple content creators who will then give the client their price for creating the intended product. The client will choose the creator based on price, skill, experience etc. meaning that they have more control over how the product will turn out based on how much the creator charged and his/her overall experience.

I could not find a specific example of tender but they are very common in the media industry. For example, in a fabricated scenario a company inexperienced in creating any kind of advertisement wants a new advert to be aired on television so they send out a brief to various creators who will then reply with their required time frame and budget the company will then choose which creator they think is best for the job based on their past work, reliability, price etc.    

• How else could you respond to a brief? (Think about the one you created an animation for…)

There are multiple methods of responding to a brief, I have already covered them earlier in this post so I will explain them again in a broader sense below.

Competition: An individual or an organisation may want as many people as possible to respond to their brief so they will set up a competition much like the E4 Esting competition that we took part in. This allows for a large amount of people to respond to the brief, and instead of the person who set up the brief choosing which one will be used officially the content will be viewed and voted on by the general public and/or a panel of judges. An example of a competition is Script Pipeline a worldwide screenplay competition that takes scripts from writers of any skill level and gives them the opportunity (if they win) to get a shortcut into the industry.  

Commission: A commission is a far more focused method of completing a brief. A commission involves targeting a specific client to create your intended product this method can be more useful than a competition or tender because it allows for the choosing of creators that you know to be reliable and professional. 

Tender:  Much like a commission a tender involves hiring someone that you know is experienced in the required field, but instead of hiring just one person the brief will be sent out to a handful of clients who will then name their price and terms for creating the product, as well as outlining what they intend to make to fill the brief. This allows for the person who sent out the brief to choose which ever client they feel is best suited to creating their intended product.  

Reading a brief

Briefs in most cases are very specific about what they want to be created, although some times people or organisations will send out a very loose brief about what they want to be created to get in a wider range of clients. As in the case of the E4 E sting competition which had a fairly simple brief in order to get as many entrants to the competition as possible. The image at the top of this post shows a section of the rules of the E4 E sting post. For a brief these rules are quite lax they are intended for a larger amount of people to be able to meet the brief. A brief sent out to a small amount of people will be far more specific than one sent out to a huge amount of people.  

Negotiating a brief

The brief we followed had no room for negotiations as we did not contact E4 but also because the competition has always had the same set of rules and deadline. However this does not mean we were limited creatively the brief does not state in any way what genre the E sting should be nor specifically what it should contain with one exception that it has to contain the E4 logo.  A real example of a negotiation of a brief in the media industry was the creation of Ant-Man originally Edgar Wright was set to write and direct a new addition to the MCU (Marvel cinematic universe) but creative differences arose between Wright and Peyton Reed when they had different opinions on how the story should play out withe Wright focusing more on the heist side of the movie and Reed more time outside the heist eventually Edgar Wright stepped down and let Reed finish the movie however Wrights work wasn't destroyed Reed claimed that Wright made the 'spine' of the script. 

• In the media industry, what degree of discretion do/would you have in interpreting a brief?

If you are hired to fill out a brief you would most likely try to be discreet about how you intend to meet it. It would be best to keep your version of the brief to yourself or the group you are working in since it is fairly easy for someone else to replicate your ideas and get the credit for them if they send out their product before you do. And since you are working to a brief it would be harder to claim plagiarism if your work is stolen since they can simply claim they were following the brief.  

• What constraints (legal, ethical, regulatory) might you face when responding to a brief? What constraints did you face?

When creating a brief you have to be considerate of legal, ethical and regulatory (if shown on TV) standards, meaning to be aware of copyright and ensuring to use only the materials the company or individual has provided you with eg. logo, music, slogan etc. As well as ensuring not to breach copyright you must also ensure that the product you create is not in any way offensive to certain groups, ethnicities, sexualities etc. and if your product is shown on television you must ensure that it fits into the guidelines of regulatory bodies such as OFCOM.

As for the brief we followed we had to ensure much of the above as well as the specific things that E4 required for the E sting. A real example of legal issues in the media industry is the case of John Carpenter versus Luc Besson, Besson created a film by the name of Lockout which shared a huge amount of similarities to Carpenters Snake Plissken films Escape From New York and Escape From L.A, going as far as to be called a "sleek,slick and shameless rip-off" Eventually Carpenter won the case and the producers Europacorp were forced to pay Carpenter €20,000.     

• Did you have to make any amendments to proposed final product? Why?

The product we created stayed very much the same from the original idea to the final product so we did not have to make many changes to the product. Some changes had to be made however hence why we took some time for re-shoots, our teacher suggested changing the E4 logo at the end of the animation in order to make it more authentic to the actual logo so we re-shot the ending part with a better E4 logo.

• For what reasons might there be amendments to; a budget? Your fees? Conditions outlined in the contract?

The media industry can be incredibly competitive which means that things can shift and change quickly. For example if you are working on a brief there can be changes while you are working on it such as having to work to a smaller budget if the individual or company who hired you can no longer pay you the amount they first agreed upon. The brief itself can change while you are working on it for a number of reasons such as the original brief was not want the company needs anymore or was too closely related to an already existing product. 

Opportunities

• Why might someone respond to a brief?

Working to a brief can be preferable for many people in the media industry as it allows them too choose what to work on rather than if they worked for a company. It also allows for better time management taking on projects when it suits you best and being able to work on them on hours that suit you best.  

• Identify opportunities that you had for self-development.

Having a constant stream of feedback as I was working on the project allowed for me to better understand my strengths and weaknesses when creating something like the E4 E sting I had a better understanding of time management and the importance of planning by the time the project was finished.

• What new skills did you learn?

A lot of the skills I applied over the course of the project where ones I had previously, so I did not learn new skills per se but I did improve upon skills I already had which is still incredibly useful in the media industry. 

• Did you have to multi-skill at all during the project?

Since I worked in a group of only two people I definitely had to fill more than one role in my group. Over the course of the project I worked mainly on the pre-production and post-production stages of the project. Normally in a larger group I would have only worked on just the editing but instead I had to work on more than one section of the project.

• What contributions did you make to the project brief?

As mentioned above I primarily worked on the post production stage of the project more specifically the editing of the project. This entailed making sure the footage was in the right order, adding in colour correction and any other changes that needed to be made.