Working to a brief in the creative media sector

Working to a brief

When working to a brief you need to think if idea’s towards the brief and making sure that you need to first read it and then analyse the words behind to make more ideas to suggest towards the client.

What you can do is make sure that you think of ideas instead of sitting and not doing anything do the following:

1.     Get a good rest

2.     Listen to music

3.     Stay relaxed

4.     Go for a walk

5.     Eat or drink

To develop your ideas further you need to do the following

1.     Draw boxes around your work

2.     Time management    

3.     Draw mind maps

4.     Search other ideas and improve them

5.      Share your ideas with others `

If you’re unhappy with the brief you got off the client then contact the client and ask for an extension if you’re not happy with the time scale you have been given, also if you want to change what you have been give then negotiate ideas back and forth with each other so you can agree on something without changing the deadline and know how to speed up your process.

Different Structures of briefs

·      Contractual- A contractual brief is between a client and an employee, it explains the duties required and how the company scheme works it will also explain how much they will receive and it also includes area such as what the employee is agreeing too before signing to do anything     Negotiated- is between two different parties who have different ideas but both want to a decision on what they should do and compromise with each other.
·      Formal- it contains specific and precise details about different goals that need to be achieved; it sets a straight to the point and doesn’t contain any unnecessary detail or information.
·      Informal- it’s normally not written but requires word to be spoken; it can be where the company and client discuss the requirements for a certain product.
·      Tender-it is where the advertise a brief to a production company and bring together a different proposal and pitch it to their client, there can be many different pitches to many different companies, so different people get the opportunity to pitch to different people.
·      Cooperative Brief – it is a type of brief was two or more companies are hired to write a specific project to be completed. After the brief has been received work can be preceded and begin on the different projects, if there is a disagreement or any fights things need to be negotiated to resolve issues.
·      Competition – it is where people can put a brief out and different companies can access it, sometimes there can be free competitions but there is also paid competition.
·      Commission- it is where you get paid to do something in general or for specific terms.

When reading a client brief the word understanding come to mind, the thing you need to understand is how to respond to the brief given to you by the client but the one thing you must do is get it right and make your client happy. When choosing ways to get around the brief and finding the best ways to deal with it the best way to do is have a face to face discussion with the client to help you understand the context of the work, your objective is to make the client happy and to overcome all expectation and achieve your goal. Some Key things to look out for are:

• ·      What is the overall objective?
• ·      What will the benefits be?
• ·      Who are the other people involved?

It also helps to talk to other people working in your team who are relevant to the work and get other ideas together so that you’re not the only working on the brief and stuck with all the most important and that you give other people the credit that they deserve. Example of this is if you’re working on a corporate video for an important client and you’re working with other people and you give out job roles but then the other people don’t work on it with so you’re stuck with the work, the important thing to do is give out the work equally and not get angry when you’re the lead directorate on the video

The most important step is actually discussing the brief with your client and that can be the hard thing but you should be able to reach an understanding when coming to terms with discussing things that you both want to include into the work when working on the brief. When finally deciding to consult with the client you have to come up with a proposal to show what you are putting forward towards the client and making sure those are the right ones to include, the consultation is normally a face to face thing because you feel comfortable when discussing thing with them and knowing what you should talk to them about instead of over the phone. There is always issues when it comes to costs when showing it to your client and how much everything will be, as a directorate you need to estimate on how much it will actually on all cost because you need to know on what you’re all doing sometimes if there is a good relationship between you and the client then you come to an agreement on how much everything should cost. Even in a tender and bits situation most directorates let it down to the people so most companies aren’t afraid to let money be part of assessment when it comes to making everything right.

For Example when working on a commission based brief you still have to negotiate a few things with the client, like for example figuring out different characters for like a short animation you have been asked to do, you talk to the client on what they want and present your ideas so that it can work both ways and you have put something towards it and you can build a reputation.

There can be many different constraints between legal and ethical when working on a brief for the first time because with legal you need to get all the basics down so that your not doing anything illegal and that your breaking any laws with different companies and you have to think of copyright so that your breaking the copyright laws with any companies so that you can come up with your own ideas, and then with ethical you have to think of other people and their religion because other people may not be comfortable with things that you have done and could be hurt be so you have of different ways to approach it with out hurting the ethical sides of people.

When working to a brief you develop different skills which make you understand the different skills that you put towards working with different clients on many different things, you gain new skills when working for example when working on like a camera brief for a corporate video you become very organised afterwards because you learnt on how to apply yourself to many numerous tasks so that you don’t fall behind with anything, also you learn how to multi skill which means you gain different skills when working with many different clients so that you don’t have to apply the one skill you gain more skills each time you work with a client. After Working with many different client you slowly try to gain your self a reputation for working many different high name people so that you can branch yourself out and not stick with the one person and grow yourself out and know many different people so that you can work on many different briefs.