L02: Legal & Ethical

Legal

issues are law enforced issues that must be followed otherwise legal action can be taken against you. For example, the song we used for our music video was not owned by us and therefore we had no right to use it without the owners. Since we personally knew the artist of the song we were able to get permission to use it, however if we had failed to gain these permissions and still created the video then we wouldn't be adhering to copyright law and could be punished with a large fine.

Ethical issues are moral issues that should be followed to protect the public who consume the product. For instance, we wanted the video to be quite creepy and make people feel on edge, especially with the Charles Manson based theme - but we had to be careful to not use any footage that may be too scary for younger viewers, because even though our target audience is 18+ it is possible for young children to see the video and if the video is too scary for them then parents would be likely to report the video and try to get it taken down. In order to avoid this we decided not to include any violent or graphic scenes within the video and stick to mostly filming the musical equipment in the video but just added a few small creepy scenes like the video of Charles Manson and of the artist of the song wearing an unsettling mask.

The BBFC (Brittish Board of Film Classification) determines the age certificate of any audio-visual content. Our music video would receive a 12A age certificate, because there is no inappropriate or graphic content featured within the video, but young children may find the video scary and distressing because of the creepy mask worn by the artist. Since the video contains footage of a murderer and cult leader this may also cause problems with parents who don’t want their children exposed to this kind of footage despite there not being any graphic footage. This age certificate will warn the parents of the type of content featured in the video and give the choice of whether to allow their children to view it or not.

OfCOM (Office of Communications) regulates TV, radio and video on demand services in the UK. They deal with any problems/reports that the public have.