Within the media industry people are usually employed to work on a variety of different projects throughout their career, these projects are usually explained to the worker through a brief. A brief is a series of information given to the person working on the project but a brief can be given in many different ways:
Contractual
A contractual brief is usually a written publication in which the employer states what is wanted from the project, the duties required from them and how much they would be paid. It is also generally a brief outline of everything that must be included in the finished product. For example Russell Howard’s good news is commissioned to be aired only on BBC Three and within the contract there are specifications requiring him to make a certain amount of episodes and series, the length of each episode and how many episodes must be in a series. In a similar way we were handed a contractual brief at the start of the animation unit outlining all of the specifications required to produce a valid esting for E4 containing all of the required specifications.
Negotiated
A negotiated brief is where two parties talk about a project and come to an agreement over what the final product should include. A negotiated brief usually takes place when two different parties have a disagreement over what the brief should involve and this usually results in conflict. An example of this would be during the creation of Spiderman 3 when the writers had a disagreement over characters, a negotiation then took place to keep both sides happy by including different things within the movie.
Formal
A formal contract is a contract in which the employer would organise a formal meeting with the employee face to face. The employer would brief the employee on all that is required from him and outline everything he needs to do. An example of this would be for big companies such as Pixar when the animation team are briefed on what to do in a team meeting.
Informal
An informal meeting would be an employer telling and explaining the brief to the employee through a variety of different ways such as the telephone, email and programmes such as Skype. The idea of an informal brief is that it is more convinient for everyone involved and is much more relaxed.
Commission
A commission brief is when a company such as the BBC will hire an independent production company to produce a programme for them by sticking to a brief that the BBC have specified and outlined for the production company. A recent example of this would be Sherlock that was commissioned to be made by the BBC. Usually companies are commissioned to create a set number of seasons and episodes before thier contract is up.
Tender
A tender is when a brief, such as one for a TV show, is sent out to multiple different companies. The companies will then come up with some ideas and all their ideas will be put against each other so the commissioner can decide which idea they prefer.
Competition
You could also enter a competition. Competitions are usually given by big companies such as the BBC who will give a brief to anyone willing to enter. An example of this would be the E4 estings competition which is what out unit was based on. The brief was to create a 10 second animation that would suit the aims and purposes of the e4 company. However sometimes smaller companies will hold competitions to advertise themselves and to take on new staff.
Reading a brief
For this unit we were asked to stick to a brief given to us by E4 and overseen by our tutor. The brief was to create a 10 second esting and receive feedback. The brief stated that it must not be more than 10 seconds long, it must stick with the genre and style of the channel and it must include the E4 logo. As well as sticking to the brief it was necessary to make sure that the animation was smooth, fluent and looked good and being able to create and reference a timeline significantly helped. Sticking to the brief was important because if not the work I created would have been useless as it wouldn’t have been what the competition was looking for.
Negotiating the brief
While creating the idea with the esting I had many opportunities to consult with my tutor as to whether the idea was appropriate, if the design was acceptable as well as the set design and how the animation as a whole was coming along. It was very helpful to be able to consult with my tutor as it allowed me to change and tweak my animation depending on the tutors preferences.
The brief as a whole was very malleable, it wasn’t deadly strict as to what had to be included apart from the 10 second limit and including the E4 logo, the rest was up to me. This flexible brief allowed me to come up with any idea I found to be appropriate.
During the physical animation and filming of my Claymation I didn’t personally find any restraints within my idea. My animation was very light hearted and didn’t breach any of Channel 4’s editorial guidelines for example it didn’t have any copyrighted content, didn’t offend any religious or any ethnicity and didn’t contain any vulgar content. However, if my animation did contain any content that was not sutible for an audience commissioning bodies such as Ofcom, under the BCAP code, would not allow my animation to be aired which is why it's always important to stick to the brief.
After receiving feedback for my animation, most of which was positive, I did find that all of the negative feedback given was because of the lighting change where I had to reshoot some footage. The way that I amended this was by taking the frames from the clip and editing them in Adobe premiere pro with the colour correction. After I had edited the clips they all seemed to flow together a lot better and much smoother.
During my animation I personally didn’t find that I ran into any financial restraints or budget problems but if I were working within the professional media industry I would have an extra 10% of any budget given to me just in case any materials were needed after the budget had been used up. I did however find that there were some time constraints, but because I had left ample time to make sure I could change anything in my animation that needed to be before the deadline I was able to complete my video and hand it in when it was specified in the brief.
Opportunities
Throughout this project I found that animation is a lot more difficult than I first thought. I learnt that there isn’t just the fact that you have to sculpt and craft the models but you also have to design them in such a way that they stand freely of any support and also they tend to fall apart if moved too quickly. Although I did find filming the animation difficult I did however enjoy filming and editing. I also managed to make the animation a lot smoother and more fluent than I originally thought I would be capable of. Also, I feel that this animation unit has allowed me to learn new skills such as how to physically make a clay model but also how to edit a stop motion animation and even helped me to understand how to organise myself and stick to a brief. It also allowed me to understand how to create a fluid animation through the use of frame rates and learn abut different types of animation.
As well as learning new skills I was able to develop my ability in being able to multi-task. I mainly multi-tasked and showed multi-skilling when I was reshooting some of my footage just before I posted my final esting. I had to do three things at once whilst reshooting; I had to film my animation, edit the footage that I already had as well as creating different items out of clay, for example the skull from Hamlet.
I feel that my idea was original and that I brought a completely different idea to the table. Throughout the class there were many varied ideas none of which were remotely the same. I stuck to the brief completely by staying to the same genre and style of the channel and also by abiding by the 10 seconds maximum rule. I feel my animation suited the E4 esting brief to the best of my ability and I would be happy to do animation again.
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