Working to a brief in the Creative Media Sector

In the media industry clients can give briefs to companies  if they want something made. They can give these briefs in five different ways. 

These structures are:

•  Contractual - Is where you are under contract. The brief is given in an outlined contract. All of the clients requirements will be in this contract, for the employer to follow. This contract will be signed by the employer, stating that they will follow the requirements given for the client.

 This is an example of a contractual brief. On this all of the clients requirements of given on the brief for the employer to follow. If these are not followed, you have not done what they client wanted and the client can have you sued for not following the contract.

•  Formal - Is a meeting that is or could be organised with the client, to outline the requirements wanted. From this it can be recorded in different ways, so the employer can have all the information that is needed. Within this meeting they can discuss the requirements, and start to organise what is wanted, budgets  deadlines, how the employer is to be paid etc... For this you would dress smartly to show that you are really interested in doing this project.

  Here is an example on what to wear to a meeting for a formal meeting for a brief. Dressing smartly can help towards getting the brief, but you would need to ensure you are clean, not smelling and tidy hair.
 Wearing jeans could show that you are not interested, even if you are.

They way you present your self, can depend on whether you would get the brief or not. Even if you have the personality, and creativity for the job you need to consider the way you dress for the meeting.

• Negotiated - Is a type of meeting with the client and the employer, where they discuss ideas and work collaboratively with each other, discussing and agreeing on ideas for the aims from the objectives. Having good negotiation skills can help towards getting the brief, as you negotiate what can be done for the products. Some of the things you could negotiate are: budget, amount of products etc... Also with it being a negotiated brief, you can decide on the deadline. If you have several editors in your company, then you can more than likely get the product done, as when working as a team you can give out each team member a task to do.

•  Informal - Is the most unreliable types of brief structures. The client can contact over phone, email, social networking site I.E. Facebook or text message. With this they just basically ask you to do so make something for them I.E. a website. But with this if the client ends up cancelling, the employer looses business, and may possibly have to clients order created. Therefore the employer may be stuck with the creation. You might be friends with the person who wants the products done, but working for a friend can be complicated, as things can be changed. But if you tend to work as an informal company, you can get less business, as people might not need or want the items any more leaving you with the final products. But also it isn't very professional

• Tender - A tender is a type of competition brief. A group of people will be selected to do a brief, they could be selected by post, email or phone call. When going to the meeting, you then present you ideas to the client(s), and one of you would be considered to do the brief. To try and get the job, you will have to be a bit like a formal brief, because the cleaner and smartly dressed you are theres a big change you will get the job. Also how are you going to present how you are going to do the brief? Are you going to use flipchart/mood boards/prezi/microsoft powerpoint etc... You would need to show ideas, layout designs, colour charts and paperwork. If you went in looking this profesional there is a big chance you would get the tender brief.

One thing to consider about your brief is:

• To see who your client it, because without know who the client is, you wouldn't be able to create what is needed.
• What is there intention? With finding out there intention, this can help develop what the client wants.
• Who is the target audience and why? As this can help decide on what the creation will look like.
• What type of brief have you been given, from the structure types above.

When you have got your brief the first thing to do is read though it. Then decide what the client wants, and how your going to do to it. Then the most important thing to do is to start doing your primary and secondary research, but before you start your research, get every possible contact detail from your client. For example: Email addresses, Mobile numbers, Home numbers, Office numbers and Work numbers. So with having all possible client contact you can keep in contact with your client thought the project. Now that you have gotten your research you can start your planning. After you have all your planning ideas, pitch these back to your client, and if they want any changes do them to your planning, and then re-present them to your client. Once your client is satisfied, then you can start actually creating what your client wants. Once you have created what your client wants, you can then book a meeting with your client, to present the finished product.

One very important thing to consider when you are creating your clients product is possible constraints.

The constraints are:

• Legal: you will have to consider the law when you are creating your clients product. For example then entire creation is your own work and not copyright. Another example is to make sure nothing is obscene  but as obscene can be a large range of things, you need to consider what your going to put in, from images to words. Another important Act is: if your going to include images of children under the age of 18, you need to permission on the parent or guardian  but you need to have this in writing as, if you have it from word of mouth and create the product needed, you can be sued for using the image of that child because the parent or guardian can say 'no I didn't you permission to use that image.'
• Ethical: you need to consider the ethical constraints when creating your clients product. With this you need to ensure that there is no racism in the product as it could cause the creator and the client serious trouble. Also with ethical constraints you need to make sure that aren't any swearing on the product unless it is required for a certain thing, as the reader(s) of the product can again cause the creator and the client a lot of trouble.
• Budget: You would need to consider your budget from your client. You client can give you a budget that they want you to work within. Therefore you need to ensure you don't go over this budget.
• Timescale: Your client will more than likely give you a deadline for when he/she wants there products. Therefore you need to work within this timescale, because if you do hand in your clients products passed the deadline, they can give you a bad review, which could cause you to loose clients or not gain any clients.
• Conditions: What conditions has your client given you? Even if you don't like these conditions you need to follow them. They can be from something so very simple for example: certain colour scale, to something very complex, for example: details on the client for a web page, but with information about there life on how they got to where they are today. If you don't follow these your client can sue you for not following there conditions

When you have been asked to do a brief for a client, just follow these steps:
1. Generate ideas based on the key concepts in the brief.
2. Assess the ideas - how relevant and workable are they in relation to the brief?
3. Identify the strongest, most relevant and workable ideas.
4. Identify and problems or constraints that might happen with each of your ideas.
5. What solutions are there? Research and evaluate the solutions against the requirements and constraints.
6. What further changes could improve the fit of the brief and strengthen the product.
7. Select the strongest idea(s), that best fit the brief and then present them to your client using the most appropriate documentation.
8. Develop the preferred idea(s) further in the response to the clients feedback.

During pre-production for your brief you need to undertake a few things. Some of these are:

• Primary and Secondary research: Primary research is what you do by yourself. This could be anything from emails to surveys  With these you can collect responses for people that you know. Secondary research is where you go to library read though different books and journals to collect information on what you need for you client. Also you can look on the Internet to see if people have already created what your client wants or something similar.
• Photographs: Does your client want any photography in there product? If they do, you need to go  out and take them yourself, to prevent copyright of other people. If this didn't happen you could be sued for the copyright act
• Layout Designs: Create more that one layout design. As with having more that one, your client can choose which one he likes best. But he also might want to take some things from one layout and put then in another layout.
• Consider Typefaces:  Which is better to use? When creating a product create a list of different typefaces for your client, as then he can choose which one he likes, also it needs to be readable for he buyer.
• Software: What software are you going to use to create your clients product? This is because some documents don't open in different software. This is because some can be .JPG or .BMT
• Risk Assessments:  In most photography and video projects you need to have a risk assessment. On these you need to write all possible risks that could or can occur, and what you can do to prevent them or what to do if one occurs. Without one of these, you and the client can end up in trouble, as you didn't set out the assessment and didn't make plans on what to do if something occurs. 
• Contact lists: In a project, you need to have the contact details of your crew. Also you need the contact details of your client. With having these contact details, if one of your crew gets lost you can ring the other members to find out where they are, or you can ring the other members of the crew to see how they are doing.

When doing a Brief or a live brief you can get a lot of opportunities out of them. For example, if you are a student doing a live brief, this that you consider from you opportunities are: Putting the brief on the personal statement for your UCAS Application. This can help towards getting into a University that you want to go to, as it shows that you can work with clients. You can also put it on your CV. This can help towards getting a job, in the industry you want to work in. When an adult, you can also put the brief on your CV, to get other live briefs in the future or to get another or different job. Some other opportunities that can happen from doing a brief are: Some examples when you are in education can be: they can be a reference you applying for a job or in getting another live brief. They can say to the person who is offering you the job, what you did for them, if there were any problems, what you did to resolve them.

 An example from my experience is when I did a live brief for ST Peters School. For them we had to create a video for the new year sevens, to show how the school is like. We were given a 'little book of worries' which contained worries they current year sevens had when they started the school, some of which were: not making friends, getting head flushed down the toilet etc... From this the opportunities i can have from this are: good use for my CV, my UCAS personal statement and a copy for my portfolio.