Assignment Brief

Assessment Feedback

Unit 5
First submission

GC1
You have explained briefs and the requirements of working to a brief (twice at the start actually?!) with reference to your own work, the esting competition and the wider industry.

GC2
You researched the client and target audience thoroughly and have managed to plan a response to a specified brief competently. You required only very occasional assistance and your idea shows creativity and imagination.

GC3
You have applied a competent response to a brief and you have considered the client and target audience. You only required occasional assistance and worked well in your pairing.

GC4
You have explained your own work on completion of a brief whilst referencing some specific examples from your experiences. You have used terminology correctly (where it has been used). You have analysed your responses in detail and also shared a personal reflection.

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.

E4 E Sting - Animation Analysis

Animation Evaluation

I have decided to review my animation in a written report style as opposed to a presentation, because I feel that using a  written piece allows me to go into a lot more detail than I would be able to in a oral presentation for example. The animation I created can be found on my personal media blog and the college YouTube channel, I could have made the E sting more widely available by sharing it on personal social media sites and uploading it to other video streaming sites such as Vimeo.

Audience Feedback

I created a survey on 'Survey Monkey' in order to gather feedback for my animation. I mainly asked my peers as well as a few teachers. In general the feedback for my work was positive, the people who saw the final product in class and out of it gave it mostly positive feedback. Below are the results from my survey.

Survey can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/KZ3522Q

Personal Feedback

What went well?

Because of the location we filmed in we were able to get the shoot done in a very short amount of time, the original shoot only took two hours, however we had to re-shoot some areas of the E sting but that only took  a lesson. Although luckily the location we filmed at allowed for consistent lighting so the re-shoot and original footage did not look too different. We used a 50 mm prime lens for the E sting the shallow focus of this lens added a unique aesthetic to the E sting, because of the shallow focus we were able to subtly direct the audience’s attention to whichever part of the frame we chose. Because of the nature of stop motion animation the editing process was a lot easier than that of a short film. For example, the process was simply finding the right pictures and putting them in the right order along the timeline, then adding a adjustment layer over the top for colour correction, lighting, contrast etc. Because the E sting is on YouTube people in the class were encouraged to leave constructive comments on each video the screenshots below show the comments on my E sting.         

In the feedback a lot of people mentioned that there were a few shots out of focus this however is not true they are not out of focus per-se, since the lens we used has a very shallow depth of field the focal point was only at the very foreground for example in the screenshot below you can see the shallow focus at play

One of the more frequent positive feedback we got was on the lighting the screen cap below shows a point in which the lighting was impressive.

What didn't go well?

During the editing process our teacher pointed out that the E4 logo at the end of the E sting was not a close enough representation to the actual E4 logo as originally the ending of the E sting had multiple small E4 logos. We re-shot the parts of the E sting with the E4 logo with a bigger more accurate logo which was thicker and had an outline much like the actual E4 logo. Although this new logo looked a lot better it meant that more time had to be spent editing and because the actor we used was unavailable for re-shoots the new E4 logo scenes had to be edited into the existing scenes which made the end product choppy. Another noticeable mistake was in the lighting, the lighting in the sink shots was a lot darker than the shots with the actor and the mirror.    

What would you have done differently?

I would have spent far more time shooting than we did, I feel like I could have spent more time ensuring that the end product looked as professional as possible by improving the lighting in each scene and possibly using a different lens. While the 50mm lens looked good a lot of feedback I was given stated that some of the shots were out of focus, they were not out of focus per se we just used a very shallow focus which meant that only the foreground was in focus, we could have used a wider lens and deep focus to counteract this issue. Also I would have preferred to have used a different location, the sink we used was way too small to fit a decent sized E4 logo, a bigger sink would have meant that we would have had more freedom with the building up of the E4 logo.

Constraints

The E sting we created had a fair few limitations on what we could and could not do. For example the E4 website clearly states the rules for the E sting competition, which can be seen below.

Time management

We had two weeks for planning, three weeks for shooting, and two weeks for editing. We kept within the guidelines for all of the stages of production in most cases we managed our time efficiently enough that we finished a few lessons earlier. In most lessons I set myself a personal goal to complete by the end of the lesson, more so during the editing stages. For example, I would try to sync up the soundtrack to the video and colour correct the video in a lesson.

Meeting the brief

During the planning stages of the E sting we ensured to follow the brief as closely as possible, the rules of the E sting (above) show what guidelines we had to stick to. We ensured that everything we planned to shoot was within the rules of the E sting competition. The E sting we created did not have a budget we were allowed to buy any items or props we needed in order to make the E sting, we did not need any additional materials or props outside of what the college provided us. Before we began creating the E sting we carefully considered the brief and if the E sting we planned to create was acceptable for the brief we received. Investigating the target audience was important since our E sting was in reference to a particularly gory scene from the movie Poltergeist and we wanted to make sure that the E sting didn't appear too disgusting, the use of play-doh made it a lot more bearable, additionally we decided on purple instead of flesh colour to emphasize that it was not real. Financially the E sting did not cost anything to make since all the materials, equipment and software we needed was provided by the college, any legal issues if there were some would arise from the similarities between the E sting and Poltergeist however since it is done in parody and is non-profit it is unlikely to cause any legal issues. I believe that the E-sting is acceptable to be shown after the watershed while it is not disturbing it could still cause some issues with some audiences and therefore would be better off being shown later.      

 What have I learned

Creating the E sting was very useful in further developing my skills. The E sting was stop motion animation which was something I hadn't truly tried yet, the E sting helped to gain a further understanding of what goes into making a stop motion animation and how different the editing and shooting processes are to live action. I would hope to further develop these skills working in the media industry, with my current skills and the new things I have learned making this E sting I believe that I would be able to efficiently work within the media industry where working to a brief is extremely common. Now that I have had experience working to a brief I could see myself enjoying doing similar projects. Briefs can be better than working entirely solo because if your strengths lie more in editing and filming rather than writing and planning a brief cuts out the initial ideas stage since the individual or company that commissions you already has an idea of what they want to be made. However I feel that I wouldn't take animation any further as a career choice since I much prefer live action, because I have had more experience with it.  

PoltergEsting Final

Research and Planning: Designing an ESting

Important rules for submitting an ESting:
The E4 logo must be included
Entrants must be 16 or over
Entrants must have a public YouTube and Twitter account.
Entrants must use the music provided by E4
1 entry per person or group
Must not be offensive or breach copyright.


Questions

For my E sting I will be using a blend of live action and stop motion. The actor of course will be live action but the face/skin that falls will be done through stop motion.

The E sting I will be helping to create is a parody of the Poltergeist face pulling off scene. The character will be looking in the mirror in a dimly lit bathroom and will notice a piece of his skin hanging off he will pull the skin off and let it fall in the sink, he will continue to pull more and more skin off of his face until the sink is full the skin will combine to reveal the E4 logo.

Our E sting is set in only one location which will be the bathroom.

The only real problem that we may face is actually creating the fake face that the actor will peel off, it may be difficult to create a realistic looking face if we are unable to we may have to settle for an alternate material or method. If we are unable to make the fake face look good on a real actor it may be wise to create the whole E Sting using claymation

Due to the fairly disturbing nature of our E Sting it would not be suitable for younger audience members, I approximate that it would be better suited to audiences aged 18+, it is not aimed at any specific gender, and would be better targeted at an audience that like movies.

E4 Esting Pre-Production Paperwork

Live Action Stop Motion Animation

Research and planning: E4 and the Brief

Part 1: E4

The British TV channel E4 is owned by the Channel Four Television Corporation (informally referred to as Channel 4) and was launched on 18th January 2001 as a companion channel to Channel 4. E4 was originally launched as a pay-TV channel but eventually made the move over to freeview. E4 primarily shows imported shows from the US including:

The Cleveland Show
The O.C
Smallville
Veronica Mars
Everwood
What About Brian
Desperate Housewives
How I Met Your Mother
90210
One Tree Hill
Ugly Betty
Scrubs
Rules of Engagement
The Big Bang Theory
2 Broke Girls
Revenge
Friends

                                              E4 Logo

E4 has also had big success with British TV series' such as Skins, My Mad Fat Diary, Misfits, The Inbetweeners, The Ricky Gervais Show, Shameless, Hollyoaks and Made in Chelsea. Due to the focus on Sit-coms and Teen Dramas it is evident that the primary demographic for E4 is young adults aged 15-25 in the United Kingdom who are most likely students or working class, this is further supported by the graph below which shows the most popular shows on E4.

These kind of shows attract teenage/young adult audiences because the content of the shows often covers issues that affect real people, as well as comedy derived from unlikely or embarrassing situations. 

The secondary demographic for E4 could be adult-middle aged housewives aged 35-50 since a lot of the content is drama aimed primarily at middle class or skilled working class housewives i.e Desperate Housewives, Friends, One Tree Hill and 2 Broke Girls. The primary and secondary audience relate since in most cases the older audience are the parents of the primary younger audience.  

E4 also has two extra channels E4+1 and E4 Music, E4+1 shows repeats a hour after they are shown on E4 meaning that the audience remains very much the same. E4 Music however has a larger demographic since music channels are not normally catered to a certain audience since any one of any age or background can enjoy the music that is aired on the channel. 

Part 2: E Stings

E-stings are short clips shown before and after shows, they serve the simple purpose of reminding the viewer what channel they are watching. Additionally in the case of E4 E-stings are created by the community which allows for a level of involvement with the audience that most TV channels do not have.

Analysing E-stings.

1. 'EEEFam' (E4 Estings 2013)

this surreal comedic e-sting is aimed at a family audience based on the characters represented in the sting. I personally enjoyed the e-sting because of it's unique style, the animation quality is fantastic and the e-sting is entertaining overall.  

2. 'E4 Squad'

An action/comedy e-sting that recreates the 80's VHS feel, this e-sting is aimed more towards an adult audience since the nostalgia factor would be lost on younger children. I personally enjoyed this e-sting because of the nostalgia as well as the high tier animation quality.

3. 'Dog Chase'

Another comedy e-sting that is aimed at a family audience which stands out from the others I have chosen purely based on the expert animation.

Part 3: Planning and preparation

Before this piece of work and before I create my own e-sting I have to do some planning and preparation to ensure I can create a high quality E-sting. This is some of the work I have done so far

Early Optical Toys

This blog post shows the Thaumotrope, Praxinoscope and Zoetrope that I created as an introduction to the earliest forms of film and animation.

Lego Stop motion video

A stop motion Lego short that I created as practice with stop motion and Lego as a material. In the animation I created a small Lego figurine is seen in multiple separate pieces and over the course of the animation the character reforms into a man, who is then immediately destroyed by a robot. 

Live action stop motion animation

A short stop motion animation created using real actors instead of Lego or Plasticine. Based on the buzzword 'the race'. In my animation the character is late for class and must hurry to reach it in time but meets various objects along the way that slow him down. 

Part 4: The E-sting

When I eventually come to create my E-sting I will most likely use live action instead of claymation or Lego, simply because I believe I am more proficient with a camera and actors than I am at creating and positioning clay models or building Lego characters/structures. However this may change after I have experimented with claymation in the coming lessons.