The Requirements of Working to a Brief

     A brief or a project brief is a set of instructions given to someone containing details about a job or a task, if you're are given a brief then the likely chances are that you work for someone and have been commissioned. When you are commissioned it means that you're working for someone who wants you specific skill set, once you are working for them you will then receive a brief to follow and produce what the commissioner has asked. When commissioned you are working for a company and will be working under that company's name, however the company will offer you a price for once the job has been completed this is often known as a tender. If you are not commissioned you can still sometimes have to work to a brief for example if you're entering a competition for some solo work you may have to follow certain rules and regulations such as we had to when making our E4 Esting. There wasn't many rules to follow however one was that we had to use the 10 second soundtracks provided by E4 and another was that it had to be exactly 10 seconds in length otherwise it wouldn't be accepted.

     When reading a brief it is important to make sure you carefully analyze it and go through every detail so that you can meet the standard that the commissioner expects from you, by using the brief you can use it as a guide to aid you in the making of your product to make sure that it is what is being asked for. Another criteria for the E4 Esting competition brief was that it had to have the E4 logo in it weather it's a picture at the end or integrated into the idea however it does say that the preference is for it to be integrated into the idea so by using the competition brief you can come up with a better idea that may even help you win!



     When working with my brief I made sure that I understood everything in it and if I didn't I would ask for help from my teacher so that I could fully understand. It's important to fully understand your brief in the media industry so that you know what is expected of you and to know exactly what your commissioner wants and doesn't want. When it came to interpreting a brief you may be challenged depending on what was asked of you for example if you were asked to write a script for a TV series then you creativity could be challenged or restricted however there may be some guidelines to help you along the process. If you really are stuck then it can sometimes be a good idea to research the company you are commissioned under and by looking at some of the previous and newest work you can begin to form an idea of what the commissioner may be expecting from you.























     When working to a brief you may face some constraints and legal issues, the main causes for these would be company logos, copyrighted music or other items that may be copyrighted. The best way to avoid this is to not put in any company logos or song that you don't have permission to use however these may not be you're only concerns. Sometimes you can face ethical constraints this can occur if you have used any extreme explicit or offensive content and could result badly in your name. As for my own E4 Estings project I made sure there was no legal or ethical issues meaning that I easily met the brief.

















      When my project was finished the only things I needed to amend were the photos as they were not quite bright enough so during the editing process I would just turn the brightness and contrast up slightly to make the background slightly brighter. Sometimes you may have to make amendments, this can be for multiple reasons such as not being able to afford certain things such as props due to budgeting or maybe there was something specific outlined in the contract that was left it. By talking to your commissioner and getting a budget set for what is needed can save a lot of time and future problems helping to resolve this issue.

     There are many reasons as to why someone would respond to a brief, one of which is to increase their skills and knowledge with directing, camera work or pre-production work depending on what they have been asked to do. Another would be for experience as this would help them in future projects and could even help them get on to future projects if the final product is successful however someone could possibly just respond to a brief based on the money which is a valid reason. When making the E4 Esting I had several opportunities for self development with many things such as directing, camera work, editing and pre-production paperwork. Sometimes I would have to do multiple things at once such as directing and operating the camera, although this was difficult it did provide me with some essential new skills as this time around we were filming with DSLR's which I hadn't done much of before hand so I picked up some new skills for filming on DSLR's. When I look at the project brief I notice that I made some contribution to all of the requirements for the E4 Esting competition. I done this by managing my time effectively and made sure I was always doing something and always contributing to the project and by doing so I met the requirements for the E4 Estings competition.

           

Bibliography:
http://estings.e4.com/competition
http://www3.hants.gov.uk/arts-commissioning/what-is-commission.htm