WORKING TO A BRIEF ASSIGNMENT 2

Working To A Brief -  MoFilm Quaker State

Task

We were put into groups and given the task to work towards making a film for the company, Quaker State, advertising their oil. We read the brief and took that we video should be aiming the video towards males who are proud of their car. We decided that we wanted to make the advert quite light hearted and funny for people to enjoy.

Idea

A dad and his son are fixing up their family car when a salesman comes along. The man talks as though he is in an old 50’s commercial, trying to sell them a brand new car which ironically he calls the car of the future. He uses all the classic car advert gimmicks.

But in the end the dad turns down the guy, saying he doesn’t need a new car all he needs is some “damn good oil”.

Research

As a team, we looked at old car and oil adverts from the 50's, because they would be most likely to display a stereotypical, corny representation of the product that we aim to show in a humorous way when we make our own video. Here are two of the videos which we watched and based the idea on.

Location

We will be using the photography studio in college, as it sets a nice and simple backdrop for the action within the commercial. The photography studio also allows us to control the lighting. We can also place props within the studio freely, which will give another object within the video. Also, the studio is a good place for audio recording, as there isn't much interference from anything or anyone else as the doors and walls are quite soundproof.

Equipment

Here's a list of equipment which we have booked out for the shoot.

• C100 Camera   
• Tripod
• Clip mic
• Zoom mic

Actors

We will be looking for a boy aged between 16-25, who will play the car sales man. His acting should feel genuine, but very over-the-top and animated in his body language to make the video seem more visually interesting to watch and enhance what he's saying. We will also need a voice actor to read some lines toward the end of the video.

Roles:

Here is a list of the roles within our production team, which we have decided upon with knowledge about everyone's strengths and weaknesses within filmmaking.

Director - Penny Eastbury

Editor/Camera Operator - Chris Healey

Sound Guy/ Colour Grade - Daniel Appleton

Storyboard

We created a rough storyboard, which would aid us in the creation of the video and as evidence for the planning of this video. Storyboards are a great way to communicate your ideas and get them onto a page for other people in your team, such as the camera operators to understand and interpret.

Script

Call Sheet

We created a call sheet for our actor, which would give him all the necessary information he needs for the shoot, such as locations, time, date and various other details which he will need to know, such as where to park his car when he arrives.

Project: Quaker State AD

Client: Quaker State

Call time: Crew	14.00	Assembly Point	Middlesbrough College 4thfloor Media Department
Wrap	17.00	Weather	--

Location List

No.	Location	Time in	Time out	Parking
1	Middlesbrough College Photography studio.	14.30	17.00	Middlesbrough college parking.

Cast List

No.	Name	Contact no.	Call time
1	Kane Smith		15.00

Kit Movement

Item	Person responsible
Pocket Black Magic camera	Daniel Appleton
Tripod	Daniel Appleton
Radio Mic	Daniel Appleton
H.4. Mic	Daniel Appleton

Shooting Schedule

Time in	Activity	Location
14.30-15.00	Collect Equipment and Key to studio.	Middlesbrough College Photography studio.
15.00-16.00	Be set up. Actor to arrive at this point. Talk through the script and plan with him.	Middlesbrough College Photography studio.
16.00-16.30	Begin filming ad	Middlesbrough College Photography studio.
16.30-17.00	Film.	Middlesbrough College Photography studio.
17.00-17.30	Finish filming, ingest footage and return equipment.	Middlesbrough College Photography studio.

Finished film:

Here is a link to our finished film, which we submitted to the MoFilm website by the deadline of the 2nd of May. 

Evaluation

When given this project our team discussed the skills we already have in order to distribute our roles. The group decided that I had more technical knowledge on cinematography, Penny had more experience directing and Dan had experience in editing and colour grading and these were all skills that we could incorporate into the production to create a well structured final product. We distributed the pre-production paper work equally and all contributed to the idea and developed it together. During filming all three of us consistently gave our input to make each shot better. Dan lit the scene, I focused on framing the shot and Penny directed the actor. We all then edited the film individually. I chose which clips to go into the final piece and cut them together. I then completed the edit with adding the sound, titles and graphics. 

I think we only hit parts of the brief. It does have more of a comedic vibe and its obvious that it isn't a real car that's being sold. To improve, we could have organised our time a lot better, got some more experienced actors and looked for more interesting locations. We were on such a tight schedule that we had to change various parts of the script and storyboard which was a compromise we decided to make and subsequently made the final product not as good as it could have been. Personally, I think we did a nice job of creating the film, however if we genuinely put a bit more hard work and improved on our time management skills, we could have made the video much better in the end.

Unfortunely, we later received this email from the client after submitting: 

WORKING TO A BRIEF ASSIGNMENT 1

Working To A Brief

Briefs are handed out in many forms of creative projects from website design to film, the purpose of this is to avoid any confusion between what the client wants and what the contractor produces. This is done by usually outlining exactly what they want before paying you and setting you off on a project. Different briefs suit different clients better, you can't use the same brief structure for all of your work as it simply won't be applicable.

Contractual:
Contractual briefs are briefs generally given by much larger companies but are still sometimes done by smaller ones. The definition is basically as it sounds, you would be hired into a contract to do a job, when the job is done to the specific guidelines you get paid. Unlike other briefs there is no room for negotiation as to what they want, they will have a clear budget, deadline and frame for the project. 
Once you have signed the brief you need to be putting all of your attention into this, because the brief is so clear as to what they want and when they want it you can't afford to hand it in late or not completed as they simply won't pay you. There isn't much room for creative viability sometimes in these kinds of scenario's, the person issuing the brief will probably have a clear vision of what they want it to look like which can make it difficult if your end product doesn't like identical to what they had in mind.

Negotiated:

This form of brief is very self explanatory, unlike contractual this is much more open to discussion between the two parties involved in making the product. Where contractual has outlined exactly what they want, when they want it and the budget involved, a lot of these can be re-negotiated with the contractor. Sometimes some of them will be fixed, often the budget doesn't have much room for negotiation since it's all the money they have to spend, sometimes they can push it a little more here and there to get the best end product. 

Commission:
A commission brief is where you (as a production company) would be employed by another company to produce a video for their use. However, once the video is produced the company can then sell the product to an external client and the production company would take a cut of the royalties. This brief is always negotiated between the client and the production company before or after the production of the video as to how much of the commission the production company would be given percentage wise. They also include exactly what you are going to include such as the style, key, time limits etc. 

The advantages of this form of brief is that the company paying for the original video do not have to do a lot of the harder work themselves, they have the option of sub-contracting the work set in the brief to another company who will receive money for their work plus commission.

Here's an example:

Tender:
A Tender brief is one produced by a company with a budget and clear idea of what they want as well as the deadline and restrictions, at this point several production companies or contractors will generate ideas and pitches for the company at which point the company chooses who they think would be best to complete the project. 

In some cases such as MoFilms a brief will be put out into the public for a film they want doing, tens sometimes hundreds of people will get back to them with their finished product and the company chooses the one they want and give them a prize money/payment clarified in the initial brief. 

An example of a Tender brief can be found on Mofilm.com:

Cooperative Brief:
A co-operative brief is one where multiple production companies come together to work on the same project to get the best outcome for the client. The reason for doing this would be that different companies specialise in different things, if you had broken your leg you would want to see the best Orthopedic specialist rather than your local GP, in Film you want the best person for different jobs. 

The difficulty with this form of brief is that sometimes when lots of different creative people come together there can be arguments about the best way to do something since everybody has a different process. If you argue with somebody you are working with but are contractually stuck with them then this can make things difficult for everybody involved and make the whole project take longer. 

Reading a brief:

When you get handed a brief, you have to read through every detail to make sure you know exactly what the client wants and if you can do it. The best way to do this is to break it down into the most important parts of the brief and work out out if you can do them and what you will need to do it. Sometimes the brief isn't as clear as it could be as to what the client wants, in that case it might be open to interpretation by the production company which is not always a good thing. Sometimes if you have to interpret it yourself you might make something your client doesn't want, if something is unclear it's best to ask the client to specify rather than doing it incorrectly. 

Negotiating the brief:
Sometimes there will be the option of Negotiating the brief with the client, of course for some briefs they are set in stone and won't budge. Depending on the company will depend on whether or not they can budge on things like the budget, often companies will offer as much as they can afford but occasionally they might hold some back for room to negotiate. Things such as the Deadline are normally set in stone and can't be moved, but a good production company will have contingency plans to ensure they hand the product in on time for the client. 

Legal:

Copyright:

The main purpose of copyrighting your work is to protect yourself and whatever you create from it being stolen or used without your permission down the line. Having the option to copyright your work means if somebody uses your work without your permission you can either ignore it or take action. There are two main reasons people copyright their work:

• Money - If your work is capable of making money, it should be you making it, not somebody who stole your work and claims it for their own. People have been sued huge amounts of money from stealing peoples work and being sued on the basis of how much it could POTENTIALLY make. For example, if I was a photographer and somebody stole my photograph and used it and I registered it with the United States Copyright Office then I could sue them for Punitive damages, which is the idea that they not only stole the image but potentially damaged its value therefore I can sue them for considerably more.

• Creative - When you create something whether its a film, a piece of art or a book your name goes on it. If the thing you create does well and is of a good standard then you deserve to be credited for it since it could get you future work and build your reputation, by somebody taking that work and putting their name on it, they could get those benefits and deny you of them.

Risk Assessment

Every risk in a risk assessment has its risks severity scaled from Negligible, low risk, moderate risk, severe, very severe. However, each risks likelihood is on a different scale of: Very unlikely, unlikely, possible, likely, very likely.

Here is an example I found on the internet:

In order to do a risk assessment you need to understand what, on your film can go wrong and potentially harm people on set. Once you figure this out you then need to take preventative measures to stop these from happening but also have a plan of what to do if something does go wrong.

Firstly, identify could potentially harm people on the set. Then figure out who could be harmed and what could harm them. After that you need to evaluate the risks and decide on the correct controls to stop it from happening.

Libel Law:
This law is to protect people from their reputation being damaged on TV because of un true facts about a person, the law is broken when someone releases something false about somebody which will harm their reputation. This is a dangerous thing to do, for example if a celebrity was incorrectly called a racist then on the back of that there would be strong hatred towards the celebrity as well as news programs reporting on it. In order to avoid breaking this law, when printing only quote people for their exact words used and only stick to the absolute truth and un-biased opinion. With social media becoming the norm for celebrities, their tweets are often misunderstood and can lead to huge lawsuits and issues for them later on.


Ethical:
Ethics is a completely different thing to the law, the obvious difference is that there is no set ethical code, it's opinion based. You can't get arrested for being ethically misguided since it's all opinion based. Ethics is all about whether something is equal, fair, responsible. Ethical codes aren't the law however your employer will often set them for their employees at a large production company to make sure everybody knows what they can and can't get away with, this is highly recommended for a production company.
As a production company when it comes to making an ethical decision it's all on you, you will need to take into consideration the ramifications of what you're about to publish and the effects it could have on you and your company.

Regulatory Bodies:
Regulatory bodies are government founded organisations whos job it is to monitor and control media sectors in. There are all kinds of media that fall into their jurisdiction such as Radio, Movies, TV, newspapers and much more. The whole point in having regulatory bodies is to protect the public from any indecent content that they may be subjected to as well as producers and those working on the project. Without the regulatory bodies audiences might be subjected to obscene or damaging content without being warned. Thanks to regulating bodies they can warn people about such things, if a film has violence or bad language there will be a warning on the front of the DVD or before the program.
Having the regulatory bodies there means that they can enforce rules and guidelines for producers to follow when making something, these are a few considerations:

• Peoples Sensitivities 
• Product Placement
• Stereotypes
• Avoiding Harm and Offence
• Violence
• Bad language
• Sexual Content
• Representations

Opportunities:
With every new project comes a host of opportunities and knowledge that you can get from taking on the project, you will often be working with people you have never worked with before and learn how to deal with people individually. 

Multi-skilling:

Depending on the size of your production company you might end up having to undertake several of the roles yourself, if it's quite a small company chances are the CEO will handle the finances, deal with the clients and organise shoots. When there isn't the budget for it the camera operator might also be the sound operator or lighting technician, the more roles you can personally undertake the more valuable you are to the company.

New skills:
Similar to the previous section you will learn things from other people on your projects, meeting new clients and new people will lead to new opportunities in the future and could lead to potential work. People skills is something that you will only develop with more practice and dealing with more clients so naturally the more work you take on the more confident you will get. A useful skill to have is editing under pressure, this is once again a skill that will only develop with more deadlines and more projects over time. Having a faster turn around means you can do more projects and therefore generate more revenue.