During the SAA project and "The Road Trip" project, as we had a client they gave us a brief with the specifications of the video which we we're going to create for them.
Both the SAA project and "The Road Trip" we worked towards two types of briefs...
For "The Road Trip" Project our client was a website called "IdeasTap" in which they enlisted a competition involving a small phrase "The Road Trip" where people would post a submission of their work and their idea with the inspiration based around what the phrase "The Road Trip" inspired them to create. The brief we received contained little detail as it was a formal, yet open-end flexible competition brief, meaning it was deliberately low on detail to leave the people partaking in the competition with a large variety of possibilities, the competition had a deadline which was strict as no submissions we're being taken after the date. When I first read the road trip brief I realised the massive amount of possibilities it left with as there were little requirements, the only requirement was that it had to have connotations or leads to the phrase "The Road Trip" and from their on out it was what I made of it. In class we did an ideas generation lesson which involved mind-mapping out ideas relevant to the requirements of the brief, immediately I thought of an idea as I believe every idea you make for it to truly work out it needs to be relatable to you, as I'm quite interested in controversial subjects in society I decided to involve drugs in mine, despite being a risky subject I had faith that I could pull it off in a mature way, even through my project being a comedy. After deciding upon my idea through 'Market Research' which involved pitching our idea in fair detail to our class of around 20, once I had confirmation that they believed it to be a good idea if pulled off, I proceeded to read the brief in-depth to make sure I understood it fully. After reading through the brief multiple times I searched for the deadline in which once found I believed I had the basis of my idea and knew exactly how to set out my project. We then undertook the project in groups in which I made mine in a group of two of us, we had to establish some sort of contact with the client, which we could do through two ways, email and direct questions through the "IdeasTap' website, we believed after trying the direct questions through the website that the best way to contact them would be E-mail in which we found out that copyright could create a massive problem. With this in mind we considered the other legal issues we could get caught up by, with this being a formal brief the legal issues were strict, however we managed to overcome the issues, these included: Soundtrack Copyright, Avoiding public spaces etc.
For the SAA Project our client was the 'Society for Abandoned Animals (SAA)'. We had to make a short educational advert, in which would be used in schools and to promote the charity. The brief we received from SAA was an informal brief, therefore increasing the amount of communication and cooperation between us and the client, seen as this was an informal brief a lot more communication and cooperation was required, however this made it easier to understand what are client wanted and expected of us, moreover there were disadvantages such as he deadlines not being an official set date, thus creating confusion as to the creation of the schedule and time management, nonetheless we got the project finished. Once we had been briefed and made sure we had the requirements and details of the video, in which we were given topics to choose from to center our video around, these being, the microchipping of domestic pets, mainly dogs and cats, the re-homing and general care for your pet and neutering. With these requirements in mind we carried on to generate our ideas, after selecting our final idea it was time to create a pre-production folder and to expand and reinforce my idea in preparation for the pitch to our client where I would find out if my idea was going to be selected and then produced. I made many documents such as storyboards, research and a rationale. Once we pitched our idea to the SAA they then took some time to decide upon the best ideas. Due to this being informal it was very mix and match therefore I was selected to combine my idea with another student in my class. I then proceeded to make sure I had the deadline date secure and memorable so that I wouldn't forget it. We made initial contact with our client through pitching our ideas and also a short trip to the charities shelter and office, this included a tour of the shelters and some more personal areas of the charity, which I believe really helped us connect with and understand how the charity runs. During the filming process of our project if we had any questions upon the content of our video we would contact the charity through email, or directly ask the members of staff during our visits. We did not encounter any legal issues during the making of our video as there was no need for popular music.
Once we had completed our projects and submitted the finished videos we reviewed how the process of making a video for a client went. Starting with the skills I have learnt during the time of "The Road Trip", as director I had to show superior leadership and organisational skills to pull off the project, this involved being able to direct a small crew of two and a small amount of actors. I believe I handled the small crew and actors well, however each member I had known for at least three years, so I believe this made a considerable difference as their was no need to familiarise ourselves with each other. Also on this project we worked with my dog for a single shot, which we managed to do in one take due to the skills I had learnt during the SAA project. Finally, during "The Road Trip Project" we only ran into two constraints which were song copyright as we wanted a song from a much smaller group however copyright still applied therefore we had to swap the song for a soundtrack with a creator commons licence which didn't take too long. The second constraint was a requirement from 'IdeasTap' which was that the final piece had to be two minutes long, due to the entertainment we got during "The Road Trip" project our final piece ended up being six minutes and fifty seconds which was over triple the allowed time, so through many hours of editing we eventually managed to get the best out of our project and squeeze it into what was considered a very short two minutes, however we managed to tackle both constraints for the project and were happy with the outcome.
During the SAA project I learnt a few valuable lessons, time management and communication skills. These played a vital part in the making of our final piece however it took me some good time to realise that, I believe this happened due to the lack of communication which caused some members of a certain party to not fully understand their role in the project , such as I didn't understand what my contribution to the project was other than a small amount of clips that were edited together to create a story, however once overcome I can say in confidence I was happy with the final piece and to leave it at a lesson learned. The second constraint I faced during the SAA project was Time Management which could also be considered to be part of the communication constraint as time management was only a problem as it was a product of the communication breakdown as I personally wasn't too sure of the hand-in times of my certain clips, however we overcame this through the use of internet 'drop boxing' as it is called to get the clips to my team as quick as possible.
Overall, I believe both projects as a whole had their issues however we managed to tackle them in the end, I believe you can see this through the quality of our final pieces, upon judgement you can see that they are fairly well-done however there is always room for improvement.
