Understand the Requirements of Working to a Brief

Briefs
A brief is a document which states what the client should do, what is required and when the project should be handed in. These documents may come in many forms be it verbal or written. They may simply a paragraph of 30 pages long, depending on the type of brief. There are also competition briefs which our recent piece of work was. In competition briefs they give requirements and are specific in what they want.

This is a brief from one of units in media.

A commission is where someone pays a writer to write a script or screenplay. They will give the writer a brief specifying what they want to be in the script, the target audience and the amount of time they have for a brief. This could hinder the writers performance of the script due to writers working in many different ways and this is forcing the writer to writer. It is also where a writer wants their script to be noticed.
If someone had written a script, this person would look a team, a commissioning body, to buy their script and make it into a movie/TV programme.

A tender is where in the brief there is a predicted cost and what the final product must contain.

Responding to a brief - The brief we were given allowed us to work freely although there were some requirements we were made to follow as it was a competition. If the brief is a tender brief then you would stick completely to it and make no changes which does restrict some creativity.

Case study : http://www.labrysdesign.co.uk/creativemedia/casestudies_brahm.html

Reading a Brief
For the E4 ESting there were many requirements which did hinder our creativity slightly, however, once these requirements where out of the way we could get on with it.

Some of the requirements we had to follow were that the video had to be 10 seconds long exactly. We also had to keep in mind the theme of the ESting. E4 would not show anything too violent however if appropriate enough, they would show it after the watershed. The ESting would have to have one of E4's audio tracks in it along with the E4 logo so we would have to incorporate them in the video.

Negotiating a Brief
We decided to include a claymation version of E4 therefore we are still using the E4 logo we just made it our own and original. We had asked our teacher to see if the idea would work and then were able to get to work. In the media industry the brief may a lot stricter when negotiating. This may be due to legal and ethical issues the team may encounter. When responding to a brief you may be faced with a lot of constraints. Many of these will be legal, such as copyright on the music you would like to use if responding with a video piece. There could be ethical issues with the nature of the product, therefore you would have to reconsider. When creating the piece you should keep in mind the target audience and therefore would refer to the BBFC where the ratings are listed.

The constraints we faced where was budget and viability in the time we had to make the video. We were given a small budget so weren't able to create the E4 as best as we wanted. To our final product proposal, we had to change a few things which was the the amount we had in it. This is due to the time we had to film and the length of the ESting which had to be 10 seconds long, no longer, no shorter.

Some briefs may have a budget, therefore you would have to make amendments to the types of equipment you use, the location you wish to film in and the props you use.

Opportunities 
Someone may want to respond to a brief to get themselves known in the media industry. By responding to a brief and creating a successful end product then this could get your name into the media industry and more people will be likely to hire you.
During this, there was a lot of opportunities for self development. While filming I had learnt to become more organised and write down a production schedule to help organisation.
During this project, although a small skill, I learnt how to handle a DSLR camera. I have also learnt how much patience is needed during the filming of stop motion therefore helping my patience.
We used live action and claymation in our ESting which took a lot of work. Moving the claymation as well the person took many tries and times, trying to keep the movement minimal each picture, therefore having to multi-skill.
The contributions I made to the brief was acting in the final product. I also helped out with some of the editing, however my partner did the majority as editing isn't really a strong point of mine.