what is a brief

What is a brief?
A brief is where you read information on a subject that you are working on or about to study. For example, in college when we filmed the thriller we had guidelines in bullet points. It pointed us in the right direction and made sure that we had the information to help us. Therefore when we read the piece of paper with the brief on it, it helped us because it said things like - when you are filming your thriller look at old and new or even classic thrillers for some inspiration. In the lesson we watched thrillers like Memento, and Shutter Island. Both of these thrillers had amazing twists at the end. We watched these thrillers because our lecturers wanted to give us inspiration for our own thrillers.
With the music video the brief is to film a music video with our lecturer Matt we got to look at music videos for some inspiration as we had done for the thriller. In one of our lessons Matt showed us some classic music video. He showed us videos that stood out and didn't do the same boring thing all the way through. As I am be a hip hop fan I watched rap video but not the boring ones where they get some hot girls and a posh car and get some big muscled rapper rapping and being all over the girl. That is boring and I wanted the ones that stood out. Therefore, I looked at videos like Kanye West Niggas in Paris. That video was filmed during one of their live performances. Also Lil Wayne How to Love video had a story where a young girls life goes horribly wrong and she get raped and she ends up having a child. Then the video changes where she has a great life and everything goes great for her and she gets married and has children. Lil Wayne hardly appears in the music video which I thought was a great change because normally he is a very cocky rapper. I think it is great when rappers show they have a softer side not this whole cocky I'm a gangster type of rubbish. I think more rappers should start making videos with a story and not stick with the whole codes and conventions of their videos with girls half naked and a posh car with a rapper with his shirt off making a fool of himself.
I think that it is important to have a brief because it helps point you in the right direction. If I didn't have a brief for the music video I would be lost and wouldn't have a clue on what I would needed to do. The good thing about the briefs in college is that they have certain deadlines. Sometimes the deadlines really drag out and sometimes they are really short. I think the brief we get helps me to write. If we were set a task without any paper work handed to us I would be completely lost with what I was supposed to be doing. The other good things about briefs is Moodle. The Moodle website helps you on what you need to know to achieve on the task you have been set. Another good way to meet the brief is to write notes on what you have been doing. A good thing about college is that we always get pushed to write notes and they really do help and they help us expand our work. I think to meet the brief it is best every now and then to watch music videos. This helps you with your own which I have been doing. A good thing to look at when doing music video is watch the music you like live because it looks and sounds so much better live.

When it comes to the illegal side of a brief you have to make sure that all the information you have
picked up or gained is true and not false because if you make things up about a person or a brief and you write about it it makes you look like a fool and it looks bad on your grades.For example, if you were given a brief saying Tom Cruise is gay you would know the information is false and you would throw the information away and not think much about it. However, if you were given a brief saying look up and write about the personal life of Tom Crusie you would know that it is a serious brief and you would look up sources that had true information and write about it in your own words. With music videos you would have to look up things about your favourite rap star and write true information about them not false things. Also within the brief you would have to get in contact with the band that will be in your music video and ask their permission to use their track. If you were to use their track to make a music video without their perrmission that is copyright and we all know that to use anything that anybody else has done you have to ask for their permission. If you do not ask the the person's permission the law gets involved and you can get sued and ordered to pay that person money etc for their royalties, so whenever you ask for that person's work always make sure they say yes to save yourself and legal problems.

I think that the key opportunites with briefs are that they always point you in the right direction so that if you follow them you can't fail. We would still be pointed in the right direction with the help of Matt, Steve and Neil as they normally sit down and talk to you with what you can and can't do with the project you are doing. With each bulletpoint on a brief we get we usually get asked to use about 500 words because you can explain a lot with that amount of words. Also with briefs, grades get bumped up because you have followed the right direction of what you need to do. I try and aim for a merit every time I write something but sometimes you miss one part of the brief and that can be annoying because you have spent ages writing up the essay that you need to write but even if you get a pass your lecturers go throught the brief with you and you get the option to improve your grade which is always a good idea because it looks good on you and your work.