Client Requirements

A client is the person or organisation that commissions a media product. They ask a producer to make something for them. A client does not have to be a large company: it can be a single person, a charity, a business or another organisation, such as a school or a local sports club.

Before work begins, the client sets out the client requirements: the details of what the finished media product must be and do. They are the headings a producer works through when reading a brief, so that nothing important is missed and the client's wishes can be turned into a plan.

The standard requirements

The requirements you are expected to recognise are:

• type of product
• purpose
• target audience
• client ethos
• content
• genre
• style
• theme
• timescales

Together they pin down what the product is, who it is for, why it exists, what goes into it, how it should look or sound and when it is due.

What is not on the list

Cost (the budget), the number of users, designing a brand identity from scratch and choosing which software to use are not normally treated as part of this list. They still matter to a project — a small budget might mean filming in one room rather than three — but they are limits the producer plans around, not one of the standard requirements to identify in a brief.

For example, a climbing centre might commission a 30-second video to play on a screen in its reception. As the producer reads the brief, they tick off the type of product (a video), the timescales (ready before the new climbing wall opens) and the other headings, then plan the shoot around them.