Creative iMedia R093: Creative iMedia in the Media Industry

A video editor works in post-production, assembling the recorded footage into the finished sequence by selecting the best takes, trimming shots to length, ordering them and adding transitions so the piece flows as intended. A sound editor also works in post-production, editing and mixing the audio, balancing dialogue against music and effects, removing unwanted noise and adding any sound effects required so that the finished soundtrack is clear and consistent throughout.

A client brief sets out in writing exactly what the client requires from the product, typically including its purpose, the target audience, the deadline, the budget, the formats needed, any brand guidelines that must be followed and any content that must be included. It matters because it gives the designer a clear and agreed basis for every decision they subsequently make, so that choices about style, content and layout can be justified against something concrete rather than assumed. It also protects both parties: without a written brief, a designer may produce work based on a reasonable interpretation that turns out to differ from what the client had in mind, and the work then has to be redone at cost to somebody. The brief also serves as the reference against which the finished product is reviewed.

The first factor is the target audience of 16 to 24 year olds, which influences the style and tone directly. That group responds to bold, high energy visuals, contemporary typography and imagery associated with sport, music or nightlife, so a muted or formal design would fail regardless of how well executed it was. The second factor is the purpose, which is to advertise and persuade. This means the product name, the packaging and the brand identity must be immediately prominent, because a viewer who finds the poster striking but cannot recall what was being advertised has not been persuaded of anything. The third factor is where the poster will be displayed. If it is intended for bus shelters and station platforms it will be seen from several metres away and for only a few seconds, so the key elements must be legible at that distance and the amount of text must be minimal, whereas a poster in a magazine can carry more detail. Brand guidelines set by the client are a further constraint, since the colours, logo and typeface may already be fixed by the company's existing visual identity.

A visualisation diagram is an annotated sketch showing how a static product such as a poster, magazine cover or packaging design will look, produced before any work begins so that the client can see and approve the intended design while it is still cheap to change. It should contain the dimensions and orientation of the product, the position of every element on the page, the colours to be used given as specific values rather than vague descriptions, the fonts to be used with their sizes, and details of the images and text that will appear along with any effects or treatments applied to them.

A storyboard plans the sequence of shots for a moving image product before any filming takes place, setting out what will be seen in each shot and in what order. It allows the client to see and approve how the finished product will look and flow while changes are still easy and inexpensive, and it gives the crew a clear plan on the day so that no required shot is missed and time is not wasted deciding what to film. Each frame should include a sketch of the composition together with the shot type such as a close up or long shot, the camera angle and any camera movement such as a pan or a zoom, the duration of the shot in seconds so that the total running time can be controlled, and the dialogue, sound effects or music accompanying it along with the transition into the next shot.

Music is protected by copyright automatically from the moment it is created, and that copyright belongs to the composer and usually also to the recording artist and the label. Using it in a promotional video without permission infringes the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and because a promotional video is a commercial use the consequences are real: the video would be removed by any platform it was uploaded to, and the copyright holder could demand payment or take legal action for damages against the student and the client. Crediting the artist does not resolve this, because attribution is not permission. The first legal alternative is to obtain a licence, either by purchasing royalty free music from a stock library under a licence that explicitly permits commercial use, or by licensing a specific track directly from the rights holder. The second is to use music released under a Creative Commons licence that permits commercial use, following exactly whatever attribution conditions that licence requires, or to compose and record original music, which gives the client clear ownership with no ongoing conditions at all.

A work plan should include contingency time because estimates are never exact and creative tasks in particular routinely take longer than expected, since the amount of revision required cannot be known in advance. Unexpected problems also occur on almost every project: equipment fails, a location becomes unavailable, a contributor is ill or the client requests a change part way through. If every task is scheduled back to back with no slack, then any single delay pushes back everything that follows and the final deadline is missed. Another essential element is the list of tasks themselves with their durations and dependencies, showing which tasks must be completed before others can begin and who is responsible for each, together with the milestones at which progress is reviewed. A Gantt chart presents this visually so that overlapping work and the critical path can be seen at a glance.

The logo should be created and held as an SVG, which is a vector format storing the design as mathematical shapes rather than a fixed grid of pixels. This means it can be output at any size, from a browser tab icon to a banner several metres across, and redrawn perfectly sharp at every one, which no fixed resolution image could achieve. For the website a PNG export should also be supplied, because PNG is lossless and supports transparency, so the area around the letterforms allows the coloured background of the page to show through rather than sitting inside a solid rectangle. A JPG would be unsuitable for either purpose: it does not support transparency, so the logo would appear in a white box on the coloured background, and it uses lossy compression, which produces visible artefacts around the sharp edges of a logo, particularly noticeable when enlarged for print.

RGB creates colour by mixing red, green and blue light and is the colour mode used by anything that emits light, so it is correct for screens, websites and video. CMYK creates colour by mixing cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks on paper and is the colour mode used for printing. The two produce different ranges of reproducible colour, and some vivid colours achievable with light simply cannot be reproduced with ink. A printed leaflet must therefore be prepared in CMYK. If it is designed in RGB and sent to a printer without conversion, the printing process will convert it automatically to the nearest available ink colours, and the result frequently looks noticeably duller or shifted, particularly in bright blues and greens, with the designer having had no opportunity to see or correct the change.

The first consideration is aspect ratio and file specification. Each platform has its own requirements for aspect ratio, maximum duration and maximum file size, and a video that does not meet them will either be rejected or automatically cropped in a way the creator did not intend. Because most social media viewing happens on phones held vertically, a vertical or square format usually fills the screen far better than a widescreen export and performs noticeably better as a result. The second consideration is captions. A large proportion of social media video is watched with the sound off, particularly in public places, so a video that depends entirely on its audio will be scrolled past. Adding burned in captions or subtitles means the message still reaches those viewers, and it also makes the content accessible to people with hearing impairments, which is both good practice and increasingly expected.

A mood board gathers together images, colours, typefaces, textures and examples of existing work that capture the look and feel the product is aiming for, providing a visual reference for something very difficult to convey in words. Its purpose is to establish a shared understanding between designer and client before any production work starts, because a client asking for something modern and a designer hearing that word may have entirely different images in mind. Discovering and resolving that disagreement over a mood board takes an afternoon, whereas discovering it after two weeks of finished artwork means starting again, so the mood board significantly reduces both the risk and the cost of the project.

First, the company must carry out a risk assessment before filming. This identifies the hazards present on the location, such as uneven ground, trailing cables, weather, water or members of the public moving through the shot, records who might be harmed by each and sets out the control measures put in place. This is necessary because the company has a legal duty of care towards its crew, its performers and the public, and without a documented assessment it has neither protected them properly nor any defence if an incident occurs. Second, the company must obtain permission to film from the landowner or the local authority responsible for the park, which usually means applying for a filming permit in advance. This is necessary because filming without consent may be trespass or may breach local by-laws, and the production could be stopped part way through with the loss of an entire day. They must also obtain model release forms from any recognisable individual appearing in the footage, since a person's image cannot be used commercially without their written permission.