How to respond to a Negotiated and Informal Brief
When given a negotiated brief, you initially need to know and understand that you are not the only party involved in the production, in fact there can be sometimes up to three parties. Usually, a client won't involve more than three parties. Having to many people involved will leave plenty of room for disagreement and lack of production. A negotiated brief allows you to suggest and put forward your own ideas on how the brief you should be written and tackled. However, the other parties involved will have to agree, if there is any disagreement you will have to start over until everyone is happy. Negotiating with your client is expected, this gives you the opportunity to put forward any concerns or any of your own ideas. This could include re-scheduling the deadline, the budget or organising materials. An informal brief is very similar to this but in this brief, you are the only one involved. There are no other parties and you are the only one in contact with the client. This allows you to be creative with your ideas and design the brief to suit you in the most productive and beneficial way.
Once a negotiated brief has been confirmed, it is essential that all parties have agreed with it. Your client wouldn't be pleased with some parties unhappy with the ideas for production. To avoid this, you may like to keep referring to your client with different ideas and letting them choose their favourite before you begin any production. However, if before you have negotiated ideas with the different groups, there is no harm in suggesting minor changes along the route of production. Whereas in an informal brief, you can use your ideas without having to put it past any other parties. This allows you great room for creativity, but with this responsibility, your client will have expectations and you will have to meet them. If not your reputation will fall and other clients may look past you and not offer you briefs.
As important as it is, liaising with your client is very relaxed. In a matter of negotiating, just as much as a few simple e-mails either way could be sufficient. Both these briefs don't require much liaising with clients but if any drastic changes are made, the client should be informed. This will give the client no reason to suggest you changing the brief without their consent. The negotiated brief will require slightly more contact with the client purely because there will naturally be minor or major disagreement on an element of the brief.
It is important for both briefs that you carefully plan out your production. It is also important that you know exactly what you will need to create the product, if it be the hiring of equipment, actors/actresses or a special effects team. Along side the planning, you will need to produce documents that show how you decided upon your ideas. For example, a brief for making a TV advert will require you to produce a crew/material list, location recce, risk assessment, shot list, storyboards etc.
As the production you will need to create similar documents so that any faults during production can be repaired. This also gives the client reassurance that you or a team including you can capably repair the problem. In doing so you can build a good relationship with the client and if they are pleased with your work, may hire you for more briefs.
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