Task 2B

(Michael)Consultation with client* (questions you had about the brief & client’s response):

The brief which I and my team are working on is a negotiated brief; after we read and critically analysed the brief we wrote done specific questions that we had concerning the brief and we also highlighted and put down certain things among the brief that we would like to negotiate with the client. when the client entered the room we all composed ourselves in a professional manner and started the meeting with an introduction, we moved on to our first question which was about the budget; according to the brief our budget was set at £50, we wanted to know if we were the ones going to fund the project or are we going to get money from the client to fund the project and another reason why we asked this was that during the time we were reading the budget we made a very rough list of things we might need including travelling and feeding of our crew and it exceeded the proposed budget. In response, the client said that he will not be funding us but however the company he works for might be able to fund us if we meet specific criteria, he also stated that if we go over our budget he will not be covering the other expenses or cash left.
We then went on to asked him if he wanted us to stick to the normal company's colour that we are creating this project for or we could bring in other colours; the reason we asked for this was because of the age group we are targeting in order for us to fully grab their attention we have to use specific colours that will actually appeal to them and make them intrigued in what we are promoting to them. In response the client said that he doesn't mind us changing the colour but not all of it as he still wants to retain specific colours which was good for us in a way because one of the major colours he wanted to retain were purple and there are many shades of purple that we could work around to give us the result that we wanted.
We went further to ask him if he would like us to use any specific logo or symbol in the product that we are using, the reason we asked this was to get an understanding of what the client actually wants the product to look like, he replied saying that he would want specific symbols to be kept so that the product can also agree with their patterns and what they represent. This was alright for us to work around as the symbols aren't too rigid and there are so may creative things we could do with the symbols.
We also asked the client if he wanted the product that we are making to have any specific brand identity or if he wanted us to create a brand identity for the project, we asked this in order to help us with our idea because if we have an idea of the brand identity of the product we will be able to base and wrap our ideas around that in order for the product to convey the specific brand identity that the client is looking for in the product. He answered us saying that; we could tweak the brand identity a little bit from what it is just that it can appeal to its target audience but we can't change it completely so that it differs from the brand identity already set down by the company and the reason he had not want us to completely change the brand identity of the product was that it wouls still meet certain requirements which were agreed with their pattern companies.

(TIM)the degree of discretion in interpreting brief*; (nature or demands of the brief that were negotiated)
When it came to the degree of discretion that we had in interpreting the brief we have various bits of the brief that we felt that we needed to negotiated in order for us to produce the best value of work that we can for the client.
The first thing that we wanted to negotiate was the time constraint between the idents, in the brief it states the idents have to be within 30 seconds each and due to the fact that my group, we are planning on using an animated approach to tackling this project, 30 seconds would be too long for us as making animations are very time consuming and can be very tiring, therefore we had to try and negotiate the time down to 20 seconds. When we put this forward to the client we were happy at the response he gave as he said that the would happy to bring down the time down to 20 seconds. We also negotiated if we could change some of the colours that he insisted that we used which didn't go so well as he still insisted that he wanted those colours present in the ident. We also negotiated that we make the ident very vibrant as it is targeted at a very young audience and leave the parents completely out of it, but the client insisted that the ident in a way should also be acceptable to the parents, he said he didn't have any problem with it been vibrant but it should also be acceptable to the parents and the stakeholders. We also negotiated that we change the main idea of all the idents been seasonal and rather we make a series of four different idents that are appealing to be used all year around at different intervals. We also tried to negotiate if we would actually be given a budget by the client and he responded saying after the work is complete and the product produced is appealing to the client and serves it purposes fully then he will give us a refund of the money we have spent on the project. We also negotiated if the brand identity could be change as it would make it easier for us to work around a brand identity is chosen by us, however the client preferred that we used the brand identity already set down by the client and the company in order to keep the product in check, so that it doesn't look unacceptable to the client's stakeholders and also to prevent us from branding the company with a brand or name which it is not.




(DEJ)what the experience was like, how free or limited are you to use discretion in your ideas - brand identity, colours, satisfying client’s stakeholders etc)
Working with an actual client is a very good experience as we get a taste of what working for a client really is like and how we have to negotiate and work our way and our ideas around the client; however, sometimes it gets frustrating as we can't negotiate everything we want with the client. with our client we are not very free with the discretion of our ideas as there are still some things that he wants to be present in the final product such as the brand identity which we tried to negotiate out but we had no headway as the client still requested that the brand identity set down by him should be used which is also according to the clients company's brand identity, however he gave us reasons for this as he wouldn't want a product that isn't acceptable by the stakeholders and the other pattern schools around, when it came to colours we had a lot more freedom as we can use any colour we what but however the client insisted that we kept the colour purple which is very okay with us as there are many shades of purple which we could work around and get a good and polished look to the final product. Also in everything we negotiated or whenever we spoke about changing something in the brief that will affect the final product the client always referred to his stakeholders, saying that anything we make must be acceptable to his stakeholders. One thing that we were very free about was the time of the product we were able to negotiate with the client and get the time down to 20 seconds rather than doing 30 seconds which for a stop motion ident is very tiring and the client understood this and happily lowered the time to 20 seconds.
Another thing that we had a lot of freedom over was if the ident could rather not be a seasonal suite but just a suite of ident and the client happily agreed that it could be any depending on the ones that we want which made our work also easier and didn't restrict us to just using specific colours. One of the things that we were very limited in was our budget as we were not going to be given a budget we had to minimise and reduce our budget to the lowest price possible that we can afford in case we don't get refunded by the client. The client mentioned that about the budget we might be getting a refund of the money we have used only if the product does what its meant to do.


(DENISHA)constraints (legal, ethical, regulatory)*; (Copyright, use of under 18s in the video, discrimination of ethnicity, gender, religious belief): In making our product and carrying out the brief we have some certain constraints that have to be addressed, the first thing is copyright; we have to make sure that every logo and sound that we are going to be using has been approved for us to be used by the owners, if we don't get all the permission to use either the logo and other sounds our content might be removed and we will be sued not us in general but our clients organisation might be sued and have to pay a very large amount of money, another thing is that we have to get consent of the actors that we are going to be using especially the under 18s and we have to be careful on the way we portray them as sometimes it is illegal to show under 18s carrying out certain activities on screen.
Another thing we have to be careful of is how we portray different genders on screen, we will have to portray both genders equal so that there are no offences taken by either gender and no discrimination been held against our final product. Also, we to be careful in portraying different religion as the city we live in is a multi-faith city and we have to balance the equality between each religion as we don't want to portray the company as a single faith company even though it is a catholic organisation.
Also, we have to be careful not to portray a very bad image of a particular ethnic group as again we live in a city that is very multi-ethic and can cause a lot of problems and controversy.

(MICHAEL)amendments to proposed final product*; The amendments we have made to final product idea is that we have shortened the time from 30 seconds to 20 seconds, we have also decided to do a stop motion video for all the four idents because it will be more appealing to the audience that we are trying to appeal to. We also decided to use specific colours (purple) which were stated by the client in our first meeting and also we have decided to incorporate the symbols requested by the client in our first meeting as well.
Finally we have decided that we will no do our idents as a seasonal suite rather we will just do a suite of 4 different ideas which have the same theme across all four idents and the reason we have done this is that it os going to be easier for us to do and also so that the idents don't get boring if the viewers keep seeing the same ident for almost half the year with just its colours changing won't be very appealing to the target audience that we are planning to target

(DEJ)amendments to budget*; As it stands we haven't made any amendments to our budget we are happy with the set budget and it can help us to achieve our goal. However in our meeting earlier with the client, we found out that we were the ones providing the budget with our selfs, we managed to negotiate with the client that after the product has been delivered to the client's satisfaction that we will be issued a refund of the proposed budget that was set in the brief. However, if we overshoot that budget we are are not going to be refunded the amount that we have overshoot we are only going to get paid the initial budget that was set by the client in the brief.

(DENISHA)amendments to conditions; The only amendments that we have made to the conditions that were set by the client was that of the budget and other technical conditions based on the final product such as time, colour and logs that are going to be used in the final product to give it the preferred look requested by the client..