M2 Ethical & Legal Issues

 Legal 

Under 16s in film

If an actor under the age of 16 is in the music video they will need a written consent form by the parent/Carer as they are too young to make that decision.  This is because in the future they may regret taking part in this video but does not see any problem with it now.  There parents however will make the decision as they know what’s right for their kids.

Filming locations

Although we are mainly filming on public land that is only owned by the local council and her majesty the Queen there may be areas where we may need to ask for permission like for example the school field belonging to Ben Rhydding Pre school as it may all belong to them even though it is connected to a footpath.  If you do not ask for permission then you are technically breaking the law and will have to take the video off the internet.  This also the case for my video, even though my video is mostly taken on council property and no one else owns it i will have to email the local council to film as they may not be ok with it because I could damage the places i go to.

Copyright

At first I thought that I won’t have to deal with copyright of the song as the law is that after 70 years of the author’s passing the copyright claim will expire and will be free for the masses to use but I soon found out that Billie Holiday died in 1959 which was 62 years ago so I will still have to ask permission to whomever  may be owning her music as of right now which would be her last descendant Louis McKay III who lives in Memphis.

BBFC Rating for music Video

The British Board of Film is an organisation that rates films and music videos alike to show if they are suitable for different age groups of children or not.  There are seven different ratings for films and music videos, there is U, PG, 12a 12, 15, 18, R18.  the ratings that are written before become more mature when you get a higher rating.  Under the guidance of the BBFC on their website I can show that my music video of "I can't Believe that your in Love with Me" is under the rating of U as there are no scenes that may disturb a child of the age of 4 upwards except for maybe the small consumption of alcohol at the start of the video but this is only a small part of the video and there is no alcohol abuse.  UPDATE:  Because of the 2nd lockdown there is no alcohol involved so the video meets the requirements of a U rating.  This video is suitable children of all ages.

Ethical Factors

Now of course when it comes to making media I must not have anything to do with causing harm or spreading violence through my media that can cause others to harm curtain people.  I must also respect the laws on representation.  It is a criminal offence to show a curtain cultural or racial group in a derogatory way and must not in all circumstances make anything that may offend and harm people of said groups. The protagonist in my media product is a girl and so I must also not make anything that my portray her in a derogatory way.  Now after making my music video and having the setbacks that we had as a team there are only a few scenes with her in.  Because of COVID guidelines there is only one person in my music video who is a white female under the age of 18, there is no one of a curtain ethnic group or race so there is no way of there being any derogatory offence to these curtain groups.

OFCOM

OFCOM is another Organisation with orders coming from the Houses of Parliament and they help oversee a lot of important factors to British Communication including airways, royal mail and also film.  OFCOM have made rules that make sure that media is safe for all to see and will not provoke violence in any way.  OFCOM have a Broadcasting Code that all in the UK have to abide by.  But if you don’t you can get fines as big as £50,000.  For example Khalsa Television Limited got fined £20,000 and £30,000 for encouraging British Sikhs to commit violence and crimes including Murder.  This is completely unacceptable and illegal.  My Video however does not encourage any group to commit crimes and violence and in fact it suits well with all ten sections of the code that there are.  My Video complies with the code in many ways; the video does not have any footage that may cause distress to under 18s (Section 1).

The video does not contain hate and doesn’t encourage violence etc. (Section 2 and 3).

The video does not show any hate towards religion and in fact has no reference to religion. (Section 4)

All other sections have something to do with news and Politics which my video has no such correlation with. (Sections 5 - 10)