Tuesday, 24 January 2012

Preparation, example answers for example questions.

With reference to examples explain the differences between a contractual brief and a competition brief.
The differences between a contractual brief and a competition vary. From my own experience during my course I have receieved contractual briefs in where I am told the guidelines I need to follow in order to achieve a certain grade; we are told what we must do for our work, to follow the briefs, we all have to submit our own versions of the same work. In relation to this, a competition brief is similar to a contractual brief, you are given the same brief as other people, and you must contend to produce the best piece of work corresponding to the brief. For example to a contractual brief, in my Unit 27 Factual Programming unit, we were given a brief to produce a 9 minute documentary on a subject of our choice, then given guidelines corresponding to the brief that we must follow in order to pass the project. In relation to a competition brief, the Short cuts 2012 Film Festival gives participants a chance to enter their film to the competition, with a maximum length of 20 minutes, they give guidelines for the genres that are eligible for entree and they state that the film entered must have been completed after the 1st of January 2009 and not have been entered before to the festival.

With reference to a current brief, give an explanation of your roll in a group project you have been working on. What are your duties? What professional qualities do you need to fulfil the brief?

Within my unit 27 factual programming course I had the role of director and cameraman. These roles meant my duties were to oversee the entire project and give the final say in the editing, I also was in charge of getting all recorded footage and audio. Professional qualities that were needed to fulfil this brief included: time management, good working attitude towards teams and a knowledge of media and camera working.

With reference to a specific example, explain your interaction with the client and what changes, or further understanding occurred.

In my extended project I am collaberating with my project partner Zac to perform three covers. We initially decided to create our own comical song, but then changed our ideas after meeting with our client and discussing how well this project would work. We then changed our project to covering three songs in a performance, given further understanding of our brief.

With reference specific examples, explain what new skills you developed during the undertaking of a brief.

A skill I have developed during one of my briefs in Film Studies would be the creation and development of step-outlines. Step-outlines are an alternative to storyboarding and scripts, giving a more in-depth analysis of a film in pre-production stages so that it can be portrayed in a more exact manner when filmed. My brief was to create a step-outline or a storyboard for my made-up film, I chose the path with a more detailed description - enhancing my skills of pre-production techniques.

With reference to an example, explain the opportunities and constraints you encountered with a brief and how you responded to them.
A constraint I encountered with the brief given in my unit 27 nine minute documentary project was to have on-location footage. Our documentary was about the fear of flying, we initially planned to go to Heathrowe or Gatwick airport, then noticed we would have to get a filming permit - which was near-impossible to obtain for a small college production. We responded to this by using archive footage for this part of the project as a replacement, then used other scenes for on-location footage.

Tuesday, 17 January 2012

Competition brief

The Sundance London Short Film Competition is powered by Greenwich Council.
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SUNDANCE LONDON
FILM AND MUSIC FESTIVAL 2012
SHORT FILM
COMPETITION BRIEF
Event Background
Robert Redford, the non-profit Sundance Institute and AEG Europe have joined forces to present Sundance London
(SDL), a four-day multi-disciplinary arts festival that will include film screenings, live music performances, discussions,
panels and other public cultural programming to be held 26th – 29th April, 2012 at The O2. The Festival will take
place in London at Greenwich Peninsula for the first time in its history.
The Short Film Competition
As part of Sundance London, and in partnership with Greenwich Council and Ravensbourne, we are launching a short film competition with the winning entry being shown as part of the Sundance London film programme. To celebrate the competition and festival links to Greenwich, the place where time began and the home of Greenwich Meantime, the competition theme will focus on the concept of ‘time’. The Brief the film challenge is to produce a three to five minute short film around the theme of ‘Story of Our Time’ Entrants can interpret ‘Story of Our Time’ in any way they choose and films can be in documentary, animation, live action, comedy, drama or any other preferred format or genre. The only mandatory requirements are that you:
• Produce a film that is entirely original in content
• Is between three and five minutes long (including credits)
• Abide by all the rules set out in the terms and conditions regarding areas such as rights, clearances and
defamatory or illegal content.
Deadlines
The Sundance London Short Film Competition 2012 will be launched on Wednesday, 14 December 2011. The deadline for submitting entries will be 5pm on Thursday, 28 February 2012.
Judging Greenwich Council will convene a panel of respected judges to select a shortlist of 25 nominated films to be considered for the final prize. A further panel will be selected by the Sundance Institute to judge the shortlisted finalists.
Judges will assess each entry against the following three criteria —
(a) An excellent creative idea
(b) Excellent craft and technical execution
(c) On Brief
The winner will have their film premiered at Sundance London 2012, which will be held at The O2, Greenwich Peninsula, London in April 2012.
For more information on The Sundance London 2012 Short Film Competition please refer to the competition Terms & conditions and visit the website.                                                                                                                              

Above is an example of a competition brief used to appeal to a mass market drawing in severeal competitors all striving to achieve the goal of producing the winning entry conforming closely if not perfectly tothe brief given.

Negotiated brief

negotiated brief
Victoria Kate Cichocki

Section 1

Brief Title- Alice in wonderland animation

In this project I will work towards producing a stop motion animation based on a paragraph from the book Alice's adventures in wonderland, This will include making models and scenery, drawing concepts and storyboards and animating.
The final animation will be of a length no shorter than 30 seconds.

This project relates to my work and ideas because I have studied a chapter from the book Alice's adventures in wonderland in a previous project and was able to understand the text so that I could make an accurate representation of it, I have also experimented with digital storytelling in a stop motion animation project, and came up with concepts for 3D models of scenes and characters.
This use of 3D relates to the course I will be studying at university as it involves the design and creation of 3D characters and environments from concepts and will help me gain a better understand in 3D modelling, increasing my understanding of the subject and also helping me to extend my creative ability and experience in 3D modelling by learning from the mistakes I made last time to ensure that the standard of my 3D modelling increases. I will put emphasis on trying to make the 3D models reflect their description in the book because I think this is important to show my ability to design characters based on somebody else's ideas.


Section2

My main influence for this project is 3D sculpture, particularly 3D characters and scenery. The 3D part of this project has inspired me to conduct research into the design of 3D models as a starting point to this project. This will include the methods of building of armatures, how to build the models so that they will move correctly. This is relevant to my project because this research will help with my understanding of the correct procedures and techniques involved in the making of 3D models. I will find examples of 3D models from current and past animations to help me develop my ideas.
I will also research into representations of the characters and scenes from the book and look to the text in the book to see if they have been created as they where described in the book.

I will get my research from the following sources;

Books and magazines

The complete animation guide
Get started in animation
The fundamentals of animation
The Animators survival kit
Imagine Magazine
Alice’s adventures in wonderland

Websites

Aardman website
West midlands animation forum
Hot animation studios


Films and television programs

Aardman animations

Wallace and Gromit
Chicken run


Tim Burton animations

The nightmare before Christmas
Coralline
The corpse bride
James and the giant peach

Hot animation
Bob the builder
Luna Jim
Fireman Sam


Section 3

I will research different methods of creating models for stop motion animation and I will experiment before I make a decision about what to use. Plan to make models using modelling clay (plasticine) to develop my 3D character models. This will include using modelling tools. I also plan to use the correct lighting .I will use my research along with the chosen media to influence experiments to help me develop the best methods of creating the models.
I plan to plan my animation with storyboards , sound effects and lip sync that will lead to producing an animatic in adobe premiere pro I will then use dope sheets to plan my animation. I will use an appropriate program such as monkey jam or make AVI to put my final animation together.

Time-scale

Week 1: Mon start research

Week 2: Mon have research finished

Week 3: Tues start development

Week 4: Mon Scripts, record voice and sounds, make storyboards and animatic, fill in dope sheets

Week 5: Make models and set

Week 6: Mon start animating

Week 7: Put animation together in program,

Week 8: Evaluate project.


Section 4

I will make notes throughout my project and my method of recording the critical response to my ideas will be to record my progress with the project on my blog so I can go back to it later to help evaluate the project. I will also make a questionnaire for people to fill after they have viewed my animation to help me critically review my work to determine its success.
I will also evaluate and compare my work against my original plans and intentions and also compare my final work against the animations I have researched.
                                                                                                                                                

The work above is an example of a negotiated brief, it's key characteristics are defined by the negotiable clause generally defined within the contract meaning there is room for edits to be made to the task in which to reevaluate the parameters of the said tasks.