16:9 Storyboard

Script Breakdown & Shot List

Photo Release Form

Location Recce & Materials

Health and Safety Form

Consent Forms

Call Sheet

Audio Visual Script

Action Plan

Proposal: Sumac Centre Promo Video

We are going to be producing a promotional video for the Sumac Centre. This video will roughly be around 1 – 2 mins consisting of footage of the Sumac Centre, it’s members, the events they run there and maybe an interview or two. The video will also have voice-overs from the members at the centre, as well as a narrator.

The goal of this promotional video is to of course help promote the Sumac Centre, therefore this video is required to be short, yet professional, encapsulating and informative. This video will help publicise the Sumac Centre and show people who they are and what they do, and how much fun the children have who go there on youth club days, as well as how much they learn on homework club days.

The footage in which we require to film at the centre will be interviews, relevant cut-away footage, children playing during the youth club and doing their homework during the homework club. Acquiring this kind of footage is essential towards making sure that this promotional video will be professional and outstanding to any viewer.

Consent forms will be filled out by the children’s parents, allowing us to use them on camera for our promotional video. This prevents any illegal matters being ensued upon the creation of the video.

I will ensure that this video will be edited to a professional standard, using Adobe Premiere. I will also make sure that all footage be acquired on a suitable device for filming, assuring that the quality of the video is crisp and clear. Alongside the camera I shall use a tripod for any footage that will require an extremely steady hand. Overall, the production of this video will be of professional standards.

Evaluation

The first task for analysing the different kinds of briefs that can be obtained, went very well. I discovered a lot of important and useful information about all these kinds of briefs, such as contractual briefs, negotiated briefs and formal briefs. I wrote a detailed essay-like blog post explaining what all these kinds of briefs mean and how they should be approached. The difficult part of this task was finding real-life examples, because there weren’t very many; if not at all.

My tutor Faye mentioned in one or two of my blog posts about the Sumac Centre and social action required some alterations in order to complete them fully. This was very helpful and taught where to not go wrong in further blog posts. “Great work George” is what Faye commented on my #iwill blog post. #iwill was one of the trending social action projects that I had to research to begin with.

The second task began the social action and community media research which played a very critical part for expanding my knowledge on the topic of social action within my community, and the world. Social action plays a key part in our lives whether it be helping the homeless, free catering for vegans or setting up a homework club for children who don’t get enough educative attention at home.

Ashley Carter came and visited us, he does work for the leftlion which is a community driven magazine, in which all the workers there work for free. The main reason he came in was to talk to us about what it’s like to be a writer. It was very informative and helped me understand furthermore what it’s like to work for a magazine. He told us a lot of information about leftlion too. The Leftlion played a part in my assignment, because I had to research how it is social action. The main reason it being social is of course because the workers work there for free. And because it is community driven of course.

I analysed my community’s social action, mostly by evaluating the actions that took place on the University of Nottingham’s website. Here I gathered many examples of social action within my area. Seeing this vast array of organisations trying to make a difference in Nottingham made me re-evaluate how much needs to actually be done within Nottingham. There are particular aspects around Nottingham that require more of our attention and action. E.g. the free catering on Thursday’s organisation, organised by the University of Nottingham. They require more volunteers to help feed more people in need of food.

After conducting all of my secondary research it was time to research into the organisation that I was going to be helping. This was the Sumac Centre. There website provided much information that I required in order to know what I was going to be getting myself into. As well as make it clear to me as to what it is specifically they might need my help for. I learnt that they are a social action organisation, in partnership with veggies, a free vegan catering organisation. These two together help each other b organising events, especially for children, such as youth clubs and homework clubs. I attended both the youth club and homework club to record footage.

After my research was completely gathered, Dominic paid a visit to our college in which we negotiated a brief with him which was very helpful. He discussed with us, what it was he was looking for from us. He didn’t make it quite clear at first, however in the end we came to terms that we would produce a promotional video for the Sumac Centre. I blogged the visit that Dominic did for us. I also blogged about the visit of Patrick and Libby, they visited before Dominic to tell us a little bit of history on veggies and the Sumac Centre.

After the brief was sorted, we organised when we would visit the Sumac Centre, and the people we would go with. I went to the Sumac Centre with Ben Homer and we recorded plenty of footage for the promo video.  The volunteers there were incredibly helpful and aided us whenever we needed their help with something, or were confused, or nervous about of the children. The recording went extremely well, aside from some of the lighting at the Sumac Centre due to it being quite dull or too yellow there. I ended up going to the Sumac Centre twice, once to the homework club on the 7^th March and second to the youth club on the 3^rd May.

I managed to get an interview with one of the volunteer’s whilst he was doing the washing up. I would have preferred to interview him when he wasn’t doing the washing up, however he was too busy. We also got some footage of the children having fun, we played around with some camera angles whilst this was all happening. We got some cutaways, zoom-ins, zoom-outs, camera pan fades ETC. All relevant footage in order to produce our final product.

After we gathered all of the footage together, I put it all onto my hard drive. Sersha Rose who was part of a different group that went to the Sumac Centre, gave us her footage and we gave her ours. We used some of her footage in our final piece to give it more character and depth.

Editing the Video went terrifically smooth. I ran into zero problems whilst editing the footage together, found some great royalty free music and put it altogether, with one voice-over of myself. I mostly used hard-cuts with one cross-dissolve for the final scene transition to give it a good fade-away effect. Ben Homer helped me by selecting some of the clips I should use and what order some of the footage should go in, however I mostly did all of the editing.

This project has taught me a lot about social action within local communities, and Nottingham. I now see what social action truly is and how it can be used to bring communities closer together and help form a better society for our future generations. Taking an in-depth look at social action in person too helped me reflect further upon the effects too, like visiting the Sumac Centre’s homework club. I look forward to seeing how much further this could go in Nottingham. I hope the best for the Sumac Centre, and that this video helps them along with their social action within Nottingham.

Sumac Centre Video Link

Here is the link to the Sumac Centre promtional video that I edited.

Check it out!

Thanks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9NEpceYTjw

Editing the Promo Video

I began editing the promo video on the 13th May 2016. The entire editing process for the 2 min video took me roughly three hours.

Firstly I acquired all relevant footage from sources that have also been to the Sumac Centre. Which was only Sersha and Ben. Ben came with me to the Sumac Centre therefore the work he captured was also with min on my SD card. Sersha only obtained cut-away footage, which is fine because me and Ben had already covered the interviews.

Next I began compiling into onto one timeline on Adobe Premiere CS5.5 after choosing the footage I believed was most suitable for the promo video for the image of it in my head and to my pre-production work. Ben also helped me out by suggesting a few clips to be used in the video. I cut down all the necessary clips so that I could fit them appropriately together. This helped the video be cut down to be around 2 minutes in length, as well as be formed in a way that I saw fit to my pre-production work.

I used a cross dissolve for the final cut to the video. This added a nice transitioning to the end title page that displayed the music I used in my video. I exported the final video with the H.264 format in a 1280x720 resolution at 30 frames per second. This provides the video with a suitable memory size whilst keeping a suitable quality for display. After it was exported I used a program called handbrake. Handbrake is a piece of software that can compress video files down to smaller sizes without damaging the quality of the video. This makes sure that I can email it to anyone without having to worry about file size restrictions on any email website.

Overall the editing process for the video went very well, I believe that the Sumac Centre will be happy with the outcome.

Sumac Centre: Second Visit

Me (George Whittall-Weston) and Benjamin Homer visited the Sumac Centre for a second time on the 3rd of May 2016. This second visit was a lot more rewarding in terms of footage gathered. It wasn't all that much different from the first time, apart from that it was during a youth club event rather than the homework club. The children were very ecstatic once again on our arrival. However this time instead of us bringing a camera we had to record with Ben's phone. We were unable to book a camera out at the technicians office due to it being closed before we were about to leave for the Sumac Centre.

Ben helped by adjusting and doing some of the camerawork and I did the same. I interviewed Phil, one of the volunteers there, whilst he was doing the washing up. This was kind of annoying but considering how hectic the Sumac Centre is, it's acceptable. I also briefly interviewed Dominic the chief supervisor for the children at Sumac. This was a very short  interview but may come in useful.

Overall this was a brilliant visit, where we got the final bits of footage needed to complete our promotional video for the Sumac Centre. I look forward to editing all of this together and seeing the final product we have for them.

Dominic's visit from the Sumac Centre

Dominic visited us from the Sumac Centre on the 3rd March 2016. The reason for his visit was to negotiate a brief with us in order to aid us in developing a promotional video for the Sumac Centre. This promotional video will help the Sumac Centre gain more publicity and show people who they are and what they do and how much fun the children have there on youth club days, as well as how much they learn on homework club days.

Dominic co-operated very nicely with us, providing us with an array of information in order for us to provide them with the promotional video that they desire. This will be great for us because it is great experience relating to public relations in the field of Journalism. This will also be great for the Sumac Centre because it will increase their publicity and maybe even perhaps, help them acquire more revenue in order to spruce the building up a bit.

He answered all of our questions and let us know that we must all get consent forms filled in from all of the children's parents, so that they will be allowed to be on camera legally.

Overall, Dominic didn't precisely explain what sort of video he is aspiring to obtain, he merely is just expecting us to do our thing, and they they're sure our video will be of their expected standards.

Visit to Sumac Centre

I visited the Sumac Centre with Benjamin Homer with the sole focus of obtaining footage, in order for us to create a promotional video for the centre. Our college class as a whole are creating one promotional video for the centre in order to help gain awareness of the centre, what they’re all about and what they do.

It took me and Ben a good one hour walk to find the Sumac Centre however we were still okay to record on arrival. The children there were very lively and excited to see us because they thought they were going to be put on TV. Which in a sense I suppose they are, almost. We got all the children to sign a photo-release form as well as the adults helping the children there.

We began recording cut-away footage mostly and any footage that could go over any voice-overs. 

We were also treated to a nice cup of tea from the nice lady who introduced us to everyone there. After we obtained all of our cut-away footage, which we took turns in recording, Ben then decided to have a talk with the children and record it at the same time, which would go great in the promotional video.

We got plenty of footage, however it would have been nice to interview some of the adults that work there, but we were unable to due to us and them being short on time.

Overall it was a pleasant experience at the Sumac centre, we got to meet some very nice people and a fantastic opportunity to gather footage in order to create something special to something that has so much potential. 

Patrick & Libby Visit

We had a visit on the 4th of February 2016 by two members of the Sumac Centre, Patrick and Libby. These two ever-so-kind human beings provided us with the relevant and necessary information we required on the Sumac Centre. Their website was a beginning for us in requiring information, however obtaining inside knowledge of the centre, its ambitions and its accompanied campaigns such as the Veggies Vegan Catering Campaign.

They went into a brief history of the Sumac Centre to begin with, this information was already on their website, hearing it from them however, made it a lot more interesting and concluded it being reliable information.

Their visit overall was not entirely informative than it was reliable, it was all more of a confirmation. However certain things mentioned by Libby were recorded where he states of things that we had not heard of yet. The things we hadn’t heard of that he mentioned were particular events carried out by the Sumac Centre. The only way in which you can find out more about these events is via their Twitter or on their website. One of these events he mentioned was how they allowed metal bands to come play at their centre. He states that all of the events they hold are free, however donations are appreciated.

Patrick was a lot more informative on the whole ‘Veggies’ side of the Sumac Centre and how they came into relations with the Sumac Centre. He mostly covered everything that was already available on their website however.

Having them come in to talk to us was rather interesting however it seemed as though they had no idea what they want to do themselves. We discussed various ideas with the two guys about how we could help their centre and possibly promote it. These two were great to talk to about what it Is like at their centre and the things that they’ve accomplished. However I feel personally that we require to speak with someone that knows what the centre needs, or can discuss critically on how this can all be achieved.

The Sumac Centre

The Sumac Centre is a social meeting space ran by volunteers. A computer resources room, café, library and gardens all reside on the property of the Sumac Centre which is located in Forest Fields, Nottingham.

A group of people during the 1980’s with the Environmental Fact Shop, Friends of the Earth (FoE) and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) had an idea to form a ‘rainbow centre’. In 1985 the Rainbow Co-operative obtained its location at 180 Mansfield Road, next door to the new FoE shop in Nottingham. In 1988 FoE closed its shop in Nottingham resulting in the Rainbow Centre inheriting the FoE’s library materials. This allowed the Rainbow Centre to increase the range of inventory in its boutique, which was originally sold by the FoE.

The Rainbow Centre over the next few years started to team up with the upcoming Veggies Organisation which specialises in vegan catering. Veggies developed their work from their own homes, however they wished to acquire their own kitchen. As years proceeded, the Rainbow Centre’s initial members had to move on.

Veggies began employing more and more full-time workers, this was their opportunity to maintain the centre themselves. In 1989 the Rainbow Centre expanded its library once again by signing a lease for the property next door. As years came and went, the Rainbow Centre and Veggies Catering Campaign incorporated themselves within its community.

Image from veggies.org.uk

From 1985 to 2001 the Rainbow Centre was established between the Victoria Shopping Centre and Forest Recreation Ground on Mansfield Road junction however all of the buildings part of it were rented and not properly maintained. This led them to move their establishment by purchasing a Ukrainian Social Club within the Forest Fields/New Basford area of Nottingham.

After purchasing and renovating the building hey grasped the buildings character to be known as the Sumac Centre. The centre opened up in 2003 and became home to its café, library, computer resources and gardens.

The Sumac Centre is a support community resistance project and home to the Nottingham Animal Rights and Veggies Catering Campaign. The centre is used for hosting meetings for making an impact on social justice, environemtnal awareness, peace and animal rights within the area of Nottingham, however if given the opportunity to spread this across other areas of England, or the world, “We would be ever so happy to do that.” Says Libby, one of the members of the Sumac Centre, during a talk with journalism students at the NCN Adams Building.   

Image from sumac.org.uk

Musical events such as a ‘DJ Night with The Lizard King “Matt” and Scratch & Sniff “Owen’ on the 4^th of March 2016. These musical events at the Sumac Centre to help raise funds for the Sumac Centre, to improve its providing’s towards the community of Nottingham, as well as help raise money for the charities they support. For example there is a People’s kitchen that is hosted some days, where people are allowed to give a reasonable donation in order to obtain a good vegan meal. One half of the donations are used to help keep the Sumac Centre open, the other half would go towards fundraisers for grassroots causes.

“The Sumac Centre is fab, I’ve only been there once but I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. I’m not much of a vegan, but veggies make a great veggie burger. Everyone is really nice too. I would like to go back there but places like that aren’t exactly a priority during your free time.” – Mike Adams, Nottingham citizen.

The Sumac Centre is overall a fantastic place for anyone interested in improving the quality of communal living-space and wellbeing within Nottingham. The members at Sumac are all incredibly supportive and are willing to give up their free time in order to bring joy into people’s lives, whether it be through vegan catering, or a games night of scrabble; backgammon and Cluedo. They may have had a confusing past in terms of accommodation, however they appear to have got back onto their feet and are eager to please and help anyone that is in need, or looking to make new friends.


Sources: All research gathered from sumac.org.uk, veggies.org.uk

Contractual Brief Examples

Contractual Brief example 1

Here is an example of a contractual production brief (example 1). As you can see it contains the necessities in order for agreement, description of the project, who the client is and the producers. There is detailed information as to what the client expects of the production company as well as that the client will be proofing each stage of development to make sure they’re doing as they asked. It is stated that and delay in completion of the project that is out of the producers control shall alter the delivery date. This means the producers must notify the client of any delays. This brief has been kept at a simplistic format I order to waste less time reading for production companies. This still accomplishes everything as a normal contractual brief would, it has just been broken down into fewer paragraphs and less detail on price/payment.

Contractual Brief example 2

This brief (example 2) is a little different because it includes a lot more terms and conditions. This brief is a lot more thorough and would require a bit more time to anaylse compared to the other one. This contractual brief is not more complex, it is very similar to the other one in terms of what the client expects from the production company. However this brief provides projected costs that gives the production company a lot more preparation and perhaps motivation. This contractual brief also has an addendum with a large box. The client provides their detailed description on what their production idea is within this box.

Negotiation Brief Example

An example for a negotiation brief would be negotiating with estate agents in order to buy your own house. The client would be the one wanting to buy the house, resulting in a discussion between client and estate agent on the types of deals they can get with different houses. The client and business will come to a conclusion in which the client will eventually sign the release papers when happy with the house. The estate agent will try to convince the client to buy the house by remaining positive and showing them all fo the great aspects of the household.

Another example which is similar to the previous would be negotiating with car dealerships. You would have to negotiate a deal with the car dealer  in order to purchase one of their vehicles. The whole process is very similar to buying a house, the company will try to persuade you as well as giving you a 'test ride' of the vehicle. They'll show you the interior, let you sit in it etc. Eventually the client will have to come to a decision, if they end up buying a vehicle they will need to go through the signing process.

Types of Brief

Contractual Brief

A contractual brief is a contract between a client and a production company. The production company is employed by the client and will go over the contract with the client before agreeing to the terms and conditions which are constructed by the client in an easy-to-understand format. If the production company break the guidelines set by the client in the contractual brief, they will consequently be led towards legal charges.

The client and employer may discuss the total project cost, as well as the other payments at specific times like: Contingency day cost, due upon signing of contract, due upon approval of storyboard & scripts and due upon final completion and delivery of all media. Payment to the production company is usually split in half, payment before the project, then payment once the project is complete for the client.

This form of brief allows the employer to analyse specifically what the client is expecting from them, and if they can provide it before signing, therefore the employer is given the final decision. However this means that the employer doesn’t know what to expect to provide the client before encountering the contract.

These contracts also have a big box for the client to describe the project and deliverables needed. If this box were to not be filled out in complete detail, it could be misleading and/or confusing for the employer, potentially leading to the client burdening the employer due to heavy workflow.

Negotiated Brief

A negotiated brief is discussed and negotiated between the client and production company. This allows both the client and production company to consult both of their ideas and wrap up how they will achieve their final product through the use of their creative ideas.

Meetings will take place for a negotiated brief, during these meetings; all details will be discussed until a brief is agreed upon, which both parties will end up signing and agreeing to. Due to the negotiation, it allows the client to have their own input included in the brief.

It is advantageous for the production company also as it allows them to gather ideas from other perspectives, leading to a brief that they may not have thought of before. This is likely to lead to less arguments and conflict as the company and the client are brought together to form a more sucessful brief overall that it suitable for both of them. However, there is a possibilty that the company and the client may disagree with the ideas suggested, which could lead to the creation of the brief being time consuming and a potential loss of a client for the company if they cannot come to an agreement over the ideas.

Formal Brief

A formal brief is a contract which details the rules and regulations for a company to follow – decided by the client – when carrying out the production of product they want, but only covers the information needed for the production and nothing else.

The formal brief is given by the client to the production company, which is agreed on between the two parties before the production is carried out. The brief contains only the details needed for the project, so it does not cover legal issues. One advantage of using a formal brief is that it is easy to read and simple for the client to understand, as it is open and only contains the information needed to produce the product, therefore it is not time consuming.

 

As the brief is decided upon before the project is carried out, it cannot be changed which is advantageous as it means that the contract will be stuck to. However, this could also be problem because it means that the company is unable to buy any more resources if they need to, due to how fixed the contract is. Also formal briefs are not always legally binding, so this could be risky for the client if the company breaches legal guidelines.

Informal Brief

An informal brief is created through informal discussions through the client and production company, such as over the phone or face to face in an informal meeting. The brief is formed through a number of informal meetings to discuss what each party requires. The terms are then verbally agreed on. Due to this, the brief is not down in writing therefore both parties must rely on each other to uphold their agreement based on trust.

An informal brief contains basic information exchanged between two or more individuals, groups or companies, without formal need. The brief does not contain any contracts or documents, but the brief must appeal to the client and company and be verbally agreed on in order for the project to go ahead without any formal contracts.

One advantage of using an informal brief is that there are no strings attatched, so the process is not time consuming and it allows changes to be made within the project without having to adhere to the terms of the brief. This makes it easier for both the client and the company, as if anything is not going as planned both parties can discuss changes to be made without the fuss of going against the brief. However as this brief is not written down, it can be disorganised and this means it cannot be assured that everything will go as planned. This is risky for the client as well as the company as there is no contract and both parties do not know whether they will have the desired outcome.

Commissioned Briefs

When a client or company hires an independent media company to come up with innovative ideas for the product that the client desires, this is a commisioned brief. An amibiguous description will be given by the client for the media company  to work with and develop the kinds of ideas the client desires from them.

The company will proceed to pitch the ideas that they came up with to the client, which the client then also adds their own ideas too. Therefore the final ideas the media company came up with, is their final input until the client has reached a conclusion with the final product whilst inputting their own ideas and are happy with the justification.

This type of brief means less work for the client, however the company should be getting paid well by the client and also a chance in obtaining a share of the profits. Therefore this could be disadvantageous for the client as well, due to them losing money for work which they could essentially be doing themselves, but might not have the time. However whilst the company they hired is doing work the client paid them to do, the client could be working on other projects in the mean time.

The client also doesn’t exactly have an effective part within the decision making, since the ideas are mostly revolving around the media company accordingly forming something to what they may not had anticipated.

Tendered Briefs

A Tendered brief is what a client will use in order to advertise that they want a media product. An ambiguous exlplanation is given as to what they require, resulting in multiple production companies responding to the advertisement.

These production companies then begin to produce a proposal that reveales projected costs and who will be producing the material that the client requires. The client then chooses the proposal which they admire most, contact the company that made it and then negotiate with them on how they can perfect their proposal.

This brief is similar to a negotiational brief in the aspect that a negotiation is involved once the media company is chosen by the client. It is also similar to a commissional brief due to the fact that in a tendered brief, the client is asking the media company to come to them with ideas up front. A commissional brief is very much the same in terms of being ready with ideas up front and then negotiatiing them afterwards.

A tendered brief  provides the client access to a much larger range of ideas from multiple companies. This provides them with many ideas they have not yet thoguht of, they can then incorporate some of these ideas for their own, or choose between them. However a disadvantage for this brief would be that not all companies that applied will get the job. A disadvantage for the client would be that there’s a possibility of no compnay applying, or no company applying with the proposal they’re looking for.

Cooperative Brief

A cooperative brief is when a company works with another company for a client. These briefs are usually done when the requirements of the brief request a specific set of skills that cannot be obtained by only one company. However the amount of work required might be abundent, meaning more than one company is needed to be hired to share the workload

An example of this brief being used in the industry would be Weta Digital working with the production team on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Weta Digital cooperated with other teams on the visual effects for Lord of the Rings.

An advantage to this brief would be that the client will be provided with a more thorough and open minded product because two companies will be combining their ideas. The two companies working on the brief will also be at an advantage if they are both organised, by dividing the times they’ll both work and what they will both work on. This can also help them evaluate on each of their strengths and weaknesses.

The biggest disadvantage for this brief overall would be the chance that the two companies won’t be able to work together very well, or at times be out of sync with one another. This can lead to bad reputation, or an unfinished product.