Patrick Rule

LO1- Brief Final Major Project

Importance of working to a brief Across many fields of work employers will find a Brief. This is a brief summary or description of what goals and standards the client wants to achieve to save any misunderstandings. The client could be a customer, boss, audience or even the person writing the brief. For e ample !n the design industry if a carpenter was going to construct a hand made chair, he"she would write a brief for what they want the outcome to be, whether they wanted it to structurally support a certain weight and what materials they want it to be made from etc. !n the media industry its largely the same# The film maker"animator"director would receive from the production company or write their own brief on what the outcome of the pro$ect should be. This could include genre, concept, costs, target audience, style, and so on. %ithout a brief there would be confusion and potential loss of time and money and a lack of creativity.

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A -uirky and fun brief to work to for many people is a competition because there is not only the incentive to produce a piece of work to call your own, but some competitions will come with pri.es. !f they dont have a pri.e you will most likely get a mention by the organiser as the winner therefore getting your name in the public eye. The pros of competitions are that they are usually open to a wide variety of entrants which makes for a large amount of interest in not only the competition but for the production company organising it. !n that sense everybody wins because the winner has had his"her film seen by many people and the organisers have had their competition entered and therefore gained publicity. The cons of competitions are that theyre usually -uite small pro$ects because the best films will take a long time to make and competitions dont tend to run for very long. Take the /0 hour guerrilla film competition as an e ample where contestants are given /0 hours to plan and produce a full short film. This is more a test of intense hard work over a short period of time. Another problem with briefs from a competition is that its not very personal so there isnt a specific person issuing the brief instead the e act same brief, usually in poster form, is given to hundreds of contestants. This leads to another potential issues that many competition briefs are -uite vague however this can lead to the entries being less restricted so there will be more creativity and a wider variety of ideas.

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An informal brief usually occurs in early meetings with the production company when ideas are being thrown around informally and unofficially. These are good for getting creative brains thinking and forming a loose idea or foundation to build on and perfect with the help of a formal brief. !nformal briefs are also useful to pitch an idea to the company and get the idea in their heads verbally because sometimes, although ideas written on paper are more

Patrick Rule

LO1- Brief Final Major Project

contractual and binding, they can be -uite dull and appear as $ust more words on a boring piece of paper when in reality its somebodies idea that is meant to stand out# 2o an informal brief can make that idea stand out when the creators have discussions about what they want and ideas flow better. These briefs usually come before a more formali.ed brief because very few filmmakers will turn to an informal brief as a guideline throughout the process because failure and liability is too much of a risk when using an informal brief alone. Another negative point of an informal brief is that a vital point might be missed in a loose discussion then again they can be added back in with a formal brief.

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2imilar to an informal brief however a formal brief is on paper and as the name suggests it is more formal than a conversation about vague guidelines that may or may not be set in stone for the pro$ect. The good thing about formal briefs are that they can be copied and shared because they are physical documents, this is convenient as most formal briefs arent given to an individual but instead to a group of people working on the same pro$ect. The negatives to a formal brief is that writing on a page can be seen as boring to many creative people who are working in visually creative industries. Also the information given is usually the bare minimum needed for the brief to make sense. Any further details or -ueries would have to be brought up in a meeting with the client.

Patrick Rule

LO1- Brief Final Major Project

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This type of brief is advertised to however many production companies by the client and the production company would respond, assuming they like the idea, with a proposal and a pitch. !f many other companies are pitching the client would have the opportunity to choose which is best. The advantages of these briefs are that they can cause a competition between production companies if the brief is good enough which makes the companies perform higher -uality pitches. !f one pitch stands out then the finished pro$ect will be of a higher -uality. The negatives of a tender brief is that the time of big companies would be wasted by re$ecting their proposal they worked on and the client wouldnt look by potentially insulting a well known production company so the client has to be careful not to drag them out and waste their time if they dont like the pitch or proposal.

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This is similar to a formal brief but with the additional of legal guidelines. The company is obliged to follow the formal brief however there usually arent laws involved. (ore often only the big companies will make contractual agreements such as &hannel /. The contract is legally binding therefore if the points arent followed e actly as the client has re-uested, legal action can be taken and the case could end up in court. The good thing about a contractual briefs are that the clients brief is very rarely not followed. !n other words its not very often a company will breach a contract for the sake of staying out of legal arguments and court cases. Because of this the client will end up with a production to his"her e act liking. The bad thing

Patrick Rule

LO1- Brief Final Major Project

about a contract brief is that the company is risking having a bad reputation of not conforming to clients briefs if the contract isnt fulfilled to the clients e pectation and a court case comes of it.

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%hen a larger company commissions something it means they pay a smaller media company to make a programme for them which they will then show to the client. !f the client is happy with it the smaller media company could get a cut of royalties and profit made from the programme. The discussion of the brief is between the two media companies and then that brief will be available to the client. The advantage of this arrangement is that the larger company has to do less work by commissioning a smaller company to produce the work, each receiving payment for how much work they did so everybody wins. There is however a danger that the production is not to the clients standards because the brief isnt negotiated with them, also conflicts may occur when pitching two media companies with each other for e ample different political views may interfere when trying to make a brief for a documentary about parliament.

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This is when a client will hire more than one production company for a pro$ect. Both companies are given the same brief but are to work together on producing the content. This can work very well with companies that are already working together or have done in the past and have similar creative ideas that combine well however the risk is that not all companies will combine well and there will be conflicts which can only be resolved by negotiating the brief as best as possible to suit both parties.

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Following on from the cooperative brief, when the companies dont agree on a brief they are told to negotiate to suit both parties. For whatever pro$ect, between a client and a provider, a negotiated brief will be made. This merges both ideas and needs from both sides into a perfect idea that suit both parties. 2uccess could come from the pro$ect being more open to ideas with two sides

Patrick Rule

LO1- Brief Final Major Project

sharing instead of one, however the danger is that by spending too long negotiating and arguing over whats best is that time and money is wasted.