Client Orientated Brief

By some divine providence, here I am, in the second year, with new briefs and animations to imagine and create. The first session was extremely different to the first week of last year, we ere given out first brief on that day, which I was very pleased about, no hassling around with some re introduction to waste a week on. From the Client Oriented brief we would from three clients' various briefs, one which we would do. After reading through I decided I would create for the Leeds Armories' brief titled 'Call To Arms'. Which was:

'The famous 'Kitchener Needs You' poster is widely held to be responsible for many young - & not so young – men joining up to fight in the trenches. However, army recruitment before 1916 is thought by some to have been influenced more by numerous press advertisements  some of which verged on blackmail. From “A Call From The Trenches” to “Is Your Conscience Clear”, men were made to feel guilty, while appeals to mothers, wives and sweethearts cast doubts on the honour of the men who stayed at home.'

This brief stood out to me as I'd enjoyed studying about World War 1 history in school, and in my spare time would read up on lesser known information and facts. It was also the only brief where I found myself immediately coming up with ideas for scenes and story after reading, which I found key in deciding which brief to choose.

After receiving the client orientated brief, and being filled in on this semesters schedule and hand in dates, we discovered we would be pitching our ideas to a board, who'd either turn down, ember light or green light our pitch. We were not told much more of what would happen once our pitches were either approved or turned down, other than if chosen we would be given a budget, and if amber light, be made to work with a producer/writer or make changes to the story. We then moved on to the pitches themselves, what we would need to have in preparation for the board, which was scheduled for the next week.

For the pitch we were encouraged to create a storyboard to walk through the scenes with the board, for them to get a grasp of the story and theme, as-well as create character designs and/or perhaps backgrounds for them to see what we visualize for our animations. The most important piece was the storyboard, which we correctly assumed would interest the client, and character designs and backgrounds would only improve their interest in our pitch.

We were also told we would get a chance to meet all 3 clients the afternoon before the pitches began the 2 days after, to hear what the client wanted from their mouths, and respond with questions to see what they were really looking for in our pitches. But leaving the decision on which brief to do until that meeting would have left very little time to come up with an idea and create a storyboard, let alone character designs.

Overall, it was a good first week back. Immediately jumped into work that seemed interesting with real world application in regards to experience working for a client and to a budget in the future after completing the course.