I hope to increase awareness towards mental health illnesses whilst asking the question if the pressures of school/college are a significant catalyst amongst teens in the United Kingdom. As it's a sensitive issue there will need to be some ethical considerations taken to ensure that no one finds the video triggering.

Contractual brief

A contractual brief is a brief/contract with specific guidelines set by the client that the media company they've employed must follow. If the media company fails to follow the brief exactly it can result in a breach of contract resulting in legal actions.

One of the benefits of a contractual brief include the media company having the ability to have full knowledge of what the client is asking for as the brief has non negotiable specifics and is also highly detailed.

A possible disadvantage is that a media company could end up having a bad reputation if the requirements listed in the brief are not met exactly. If theres any difficulty within the brief the contractor can take legal action against the production company.

Cooperative Brief

This brief is when two or more companies work together to complete a project. It is usually done when one company isn't capable of individually completing the work given.

An advantage of this type of brief is that there is flexibility in the contract so that the companies can negotiate together in order to make sure they can both successfully meet the requirements. A disadvantage however is that negotiations can waste time and delay the production of the project.

Formal Brief

This type of brief is very open and theres only enough information to allow the media company to produce the project. Any issues or misunderstandings can be looked at during negotiations in the beginning.

Clients who give this type brief are open to many ideas allowing the media company to be creative in their work.

One possible disadvantage is that a client can be too vague and give little direction to the media company making it difficult for them to know what to do. If the client ends up unsatisfied with their work it could lead to them having a bad reputation.

Informal Brief

These briefs are non-documented and the specifications in this style of brief is usually made and agreed upon verbally.

An advantage is that the client is able to get a wide range of ideas for their product and chose to work with the company which has suggested the best option.

A disadvantage is that it can be hard for the companies turned down to find replacement work if they have already booked that project into their schedule.

Competition Brief

These briefs are open to the public which allows for a a wide variety of talented people to create a product based on the brief for free.

Due to it being a competition, the prize/reward will only be granted to the winner which means theres loads of ideas to chose from and the cost of the product is reduced.

an example would be the BFX Competition Briefs where teams of 5 people provide a product based on a wide range of briefs provided.
http://www.bfxfestival.com/competition/competition-briefs/

Tender

Theres some noticeable similarities between the last two briefs as they both involve outside companies pitching their ideas to clients in order to receive the job. Once the client has seen all the briefs, the best is selected and the chance to work for the client by developing their product and ideas.
http://www.tendersdirect.co.uk/ is known for their range of tender briefs available.

Paying attention when reading a brief is important because you need to be able to stick to it. Doing this gives you the ability to come up with ideas and being able to actually work on the project. Other than those points, reading a brief allows you to work out final dates, your timescale and what the specific requirements are.
Besides from the money, the longterm results from sticking to a brief include building your portfolio, gaining contacts, self development, experience and more.

What is social action and community media? 

Social Action Media

Social action media is media that's produced in a creative way to both raise awareness to a cause and educate the viewer in an attempt to invoke social action. Its goal is to analyse social issues and problems whilst getting the public to focus their attention on it and take action.

Community media 

A community is a group of people with a shared interest, similar characteristics or who live in the same area.

The goal of community media is to provide an alternative to the corporate media which focuses on profits. They are driven by social objectives which can empower the community by providing local knowledge. It's common to find community media focusing on topics such as social justice, human rights and environmental issues where they provide a voice for causes and people who otherwise wouldn't necessarily have them.

The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia - Vice
The 53 minute documentary by the magazine company Vice is about life in Liberia after the civil war in the 90s. The journalist visits a small handful of ex generals/warlords and asks them about their role in the civil war and also how they spend their life now. The purpose of the video is to raise awareness to the situation in Liberia as like most cases once the initial fighting is over the media forgets what happened and moves on to more current things. 
Shock tactics are used throughout the video to keep the viewers attention. An example of this would be where it shows old footage of a child soldier holding up a bloody, dirty human heart shouting to the reporter and those around him that he intends on eat the heart. Another scene shortly after shows the torture of the then leader of Liberia by rebel forces where he can be seen covered in blood and screaming "enough!". Footage like this is used to set the tone for the rest of the video, so throughout the documentary you can't forget how barbaric some of these people were/are.



'An Evil Scheme': Milonov Attacks Homosexuality - Channel 4

Jon Snow interviewed prolific Russian Homophobe Vitaly Milonov for channel 4. The intent of this video was to demonstrate how homophobic Vitaly is and raise awareness about the national issue which was Russia's anti-gay laws. An example of this was getting him to admit that he believed homosexuality and pedophilia go hand in hand. He asked closed, blunt questions to get precise answers from Vitaly without him having an opportunity to preach hate to the audience watching. Jon didn't ask developmental questions to make Vitaly feel at ease because of the nature of the interview. If Jon appeared to be soft on Vitaly there would be a chance that there would be a large amount of backlash from the interview including complaints to Ofcom. Jon tried to antagonise Vitaly by wearing a rainbow striped tie as rainbows are associated with the LGBT flag and LGBT pride/support. This made it obvious from the beginning of the video that he had no intentions of forming a rapport with Vitaly.

Food for Thought - Covent Garden

An example of local community action media would be the documentary "food for thought" which focuses on a lady called Vanessa Garrett who owns a vegetarian restaurant in Covent Garden. the purpose of the documentary is to "focus on one small story of London in the 21st century to tell a bigger, more threatening one". Throughout the documentary Vanessa discusses the heyday of her business and how its now closing due to the gentrification of her local area making the rent for her business unaffordable. The use of slow melodramatic music helps set the tone of the video and make the viewer feel sympathetic for the people effected. The purpose of the video is to raise awareness of gentrification.

I'm a creative young man who is familiar with youth culture and therefore able to know what the younger generation wants. Having grown up using computers I am more than familiar with how to use them, being competent with most softwares commonly found on laptops or computers. Although I am not capable of building my own website I would be able to quickly develop the skills required to do so and my creativity skills would be a benefit once I am capable of building a website.

Petitions about mental health and CAMHS

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/114608

http://e-activist.com/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1705&ea.campaign.id=38752&ea.tracking.id=q8gicnu4

https://www.change.org/p/stop-cuts-children-mental-health-services

The Canibal Warlords of Liberia - Vice
The 53 minute documentary by the magazine company Vice is about life in Liberia after the civil war in the 90s. The journalist visits a small handful of ex generals/warlords and asks them about their role in the civil war and also how they spend their life now.

For the most part, the video is filmed in Liberia, the reporter visits one of the worlds worst slums and other prominent locations during the war and a few churches. However, some of it shows the journalist back at his normal office narrating what happened there.

Shock tactics are used throughout the video to keep the viewers attention. An example of this would be where it shows old footage of a child soldier holding up a bloody, dirty human heart shouting to the reporter and those around him that he intents to eat the heart. Footage like this is used to set the tone for the rest of the video, so throughout the documentary you can't forget how barbaric some of these people were/are.

General Butt Naked, the main person interviewed in the documentary discusses the reasons behind why he got his name. During the war, he used to make his child soldiers go into combat naked, telling them that when they don't wear clothes bullets cannot harm them. This would have been after ceremoniously sacrificing an innocent child by cutting out their heart alive and feeding the pieces of the heart to the other children. They would then all drink the child's blood and consume cocaine amongst other drugs.

Jon Snow Interviewing Vitaly Milonov (super homophobe)

Interviewer: Jon Snow

Context: Channel 4 interview on prolific Russian Homophobe Vitaly Milonov

Purpose: Demonstrate to the British Public how homophobic Vitaly is.

Question Types: Closed questions. Persisting the interviewer stays on topic.

Structure: No developmental questions, gets straight to the point. Jon Snow is purposefully wearing a rainbow tie as a blatant way to antagonise Vitaly. No confidence building, for obvious reasons.

Communication Skills: Very blunt, no attempt at building a rapport between himself and the interviewee.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy Interviews Richard Ayoade (comedian/actor/author and other stuff)

Interviewer: Krishnan Guru-Murthy

Context: The interviewee, Richard Ayoade is brought on the show to promote his new book.

Purpose: Promoting/Not promoting Richard Ayoade's book.

Question Types: Krishnan asked closed questions with the hopes of getting in depth answers. An example of this would be

Structure: Developmental questions were asked.

Communication Skills: Krishnan clearly lacked communication skills in this interview as he consistently failed to attain real answers to his questions. Richard, throughout the interview, gave facetious answers to every question he was asked by Krishnan leading him to reply with "I get that. But give me something in return…" in an attempt to get at least some valuable information from Richard.

In Depth Analysis

Jon Snow interviewed prolific Russian Homophobe Vitaly Milonov for channel 4. The intent of this video was to demonstrate how homophobic Vitaly is. An example of this was getting him to admit that he believed homosexuality and pedophilia go hand in hand. He asked closed, blunt questions to get precise answers from Vitaly without him having an opportunity to preach hate to the audience watching. Jon didn't ask developmental questions to make Vitaly feel at ease because of the nature of the interview. If Jon appeared to be soft on Vitaly there would be a chance that there would be a large amount of backlash from the interview including complaints to Ofcom. Jon tried to antagonise Vitaly by wearing a rainbow striped tie as rainbows are associated with the LGBT flag and LGBT pride/support. This made it obvious from the beginning of the video that he had no intentions of forming a rapport with Vitaly.

THE PURPOSE OF SOCIAL ACTION AND COMMUNITY MEDIA

• to bring about local, national and global change
• to change attitudes
• to raise awareness
• to create access to media production for non-traditional groups
• to challenge dominant representations and agendas
• to create or strengthen community ties
• to provide information
• to campaign (work in an organised environment and active way towards a goal)
• to change voting behaviour
• to infiltrate mainstream media
• to build relationships with subjects

Clip 1- Homelessness

1. Which of the list of purposes apply? Changing attitudes, bringing about national change, infiltrating mainstream media and raising awareness are the purposes that apply to this video. 
2. What is this media form trying to tell us/make us do? let us know about the causes of homelessness and how they are helping to change the lives of those effected by it.
3. What emotional techniques do you think they have used and why? Upbeat music is used to encourage positive thinking and real life stories from homeless people on how they ended up in that situation is sued to encourage empathy. They also use somewhat inspirational quotes by various people to help incite hope.

Clip 2- Food for Thought

1. Which of the list of purposes apply? Brining about local change, changing attitudes, challenging dominant agendas and campaigning are purposes that apply to this video.
2. What is this media form trying to tell us/make us do? The purpose of this video was to encourage local and national change by challenging the social norms where big companies take away the sense of community in small towns through greed.
3. What emotional techniques do you think they have used and why? Soft music in the background was very solum. it created a dark tone to pull on the viewers heartstrings.

Clip 3- The controller

1. Which of the list of purposes apply? Raising awareness is what I believe this video is about although I'm not entirely sure.
2. What is this media form trying to tell us/make us do? Its trying to raise awareness to abuse both physical and verbal at school and at home.
3. What emotional techniques do you think they have used and why? Sad music is played to incite emotion. Having the boy sobbing on the floor after abuse from his father and school bullied in public was used to encourage pity.

KONY 2012

I remember back in 2012 when my entire school started talking about Kony. I first heard about it from my form tutor one morning when she asked the class if we had seen the video being shared on Facebook. Initially I didn’t watch the video for a while as I just ignorantly brushed it off as an extra bit of homework, which I wasn’t particularly interested in doing. It wasn’t until I started overhearing conversations in class about the video, and my friends starting to tell me about little bits of facts they had heard through watching the video or word of mouth that I decided to watch it. I wanted to know why everyone felt so strongly about what was happening in Uganda in comparison to everything else happening in the world.

I was aware for a while that there was trouble in Uganda but I never really paid much attention to it. Watching the news every other weekday began to take away the shock factor when it came to finding out about horrific crimes across the world as it happens so often, I became desensitised. This is why I was so thrown off when I watched the video. I was expecting it to be like just any other news report, where its mostly just facts being released and lacking any real emotional content.

Jason Russell’s 30 minute documentary was very effective at encouraging me to feel some empathy towards the civilians living in Uganda. I believe one of the main reasons I felt so moved by it was the fact that Jason constantly spoke about how we could get involved and help the situation. When Jason discuses the impact social media can have on western politics it made me feel empowered. When I discussed this with my friends at school we all agreed this was something we all felt whilst watching it. It’s what encouraged us to share the video. We believed sharing the video online would help let more and more people know about what was happening and encourage more people to take action. Being around 14/15 at the time the video released a lot of my peers, including myself felt like we had no influence in the world as we were still children unable to do things such as vote.