Planning Reflections for Client Brief

Planning Reflection for Client Brief

Planning for Mill Meadow was not my primary duty, as I was mainly the editor and camera operator. However, I did do some of the planning for the Mill Meadow video. I started by reading what Jack Baily and Anna Barret had both come up with, which was very good, but it needed some improvements as some of the grammar was not quite right, and the equipment list was completely wrong. In my own time, I went onto the shared research document and added some bits here and there, and grammar checked it also just so all was ok, some parts about the dates of Mill Meadows founding were also slightly off, so I tweaked this to reflect the correct information.

After this, a Hazzard checklist was produced by Jed Stansfield, he did a really good job, and this was important as it would enable us to book any equipment out from college if we needed it to make our film. However, we ended up not needing to do this, which was fine.

Next, I helped write up the proposal for Mill Meadow which again had a lot of fixing to be done, as highlighted by Gina in a client brief meeting for our team, where we were told we needed to change or proposal and simplify it for our client Chris. For this, Jack and Anna completely restructured the proposal, to a point where it was almost unrecognisable compared to the previous version. At this point, I got involved and completed my part of the proposal, grammar checking with my spell checker and again reading through it thoroughly to check for any more mistakes. After grammar checking, I wrote a paragraph or so about the equipment we would be using such as the drone, cameras and Gimble, as well as the resolution we were recording in. That was pretty much all I worked on for the proposal; I guess I also worked out how long it would take me to drive to Mill Meadow which was around 40 minutes from Worle, after I would have picked up the crew, I also worked out each trip which cost me roughly £20 in fuel, which would be refunded by Chris as confirmed over email.

This next part was my last involvement for the planning of the Mill Meadow video, which was my infamous hot tub research! I spent a whole day writing about how to use a hot tub just for us to create and edit using three clips of some good-looking shots. I can confidently confirm though; I did not need to write that much time! Anyway, it makes quite a good story and to be honest; the Centre Parcs video did influence the slow-motion shots I captured, so I guess my time was not completely wasted. The hot tub shots did look good, and I also knew how to use all the hot tubs as I watched a video on how to use the covers and all the controls properly. So maybe my time was well spent!

So, in conclusion, our group started with the clearest intentions to create an informational video for Mill Meadow on how to use the facilities, and yes, I have talked about this in much more detail in my other blogs, but in short, we have come full circle with various ideas from animation to a full-fledged video of the whole Mill Meadow complex, I do not even think Chris knew what he wanted which did confuse me, as I do work best to a finite ending. Our planning was very helpful though and did its job helping us understand the logistics behind Mill Meadow and what they do before we first arrived on site, after that the hot tub videos helped us make better-looking shots in that department and my experience from drone flying and having a newly acquired done licence enabled me to capture some quite extraordinary shots of the Mill Meadow complex.

The research was a solid foundation for us to develop our video idea, and that was what it was for, to that I say we did a good job.