Legal and health- What're the rules?

 What are we talking about?

So when we say legal maybe your brain automatically goes to lawyers right? Courts about goodness knows what and laws seemingly dropping from the sky but actually when it comes to the laws and conventions of film and video production it's actually pretty simple when you know what you're looking at ad how they're broken down.

So lets start with the most well known. Copyright. Now the way it works within the UK is that there is no official register for the protection of your own copyright and the essential is that if you come-up with an original piece of work like literature or creative works. So in terms of protection for the client we know that we can say he's safely protected against anything that might be ripped off as long as he can provide the evidence the idea is his. This actually comes from the government themselves in their most recent reports on the copyright protection of ideas and distribution within the UK themselves.

Now onto the bigger one, how could we step on it and there's a fair few ways that this can be done but for the sake of argumentum and the fact that a few won't be related to this production we'll stick with the relevant ones. The first is music, now music or backing tracks are what can make a an ad into a great one and can help to set the tone for what you want, when picking a track unless you make sure that you have permission to use protected music in a licensed production as this you need to make sure legal protection on both sides is available. How can you tell whether the track you have chosen is licensed? Well there's a few ways but a general one is to simply search it on the internet if you've found it on the internet or its come from a link so chances are if you want to be safe then the best way to find music without the legal hassle is to place 'Fair use' at the end of your searches as this will help to filter what results you get for the music that you look for.

Now for my production in an effort to keep costs down and work in time constraints with the processing for the licensing the most effective way to make sure that we can get the tracks that we want to ensure that we can get the production off to a good start and since these tracks are edited but in the base form we have a bit more leeway in making the track fit our production better.

So now we've talked audio lets talk visuals, now for my production this isn't a majorly impacting factor to the production we won't cover it as deeply but it essentially follows the same pattern as audio where licensing or permission is needed for the use of restricted and protected images and therefore would take more time for the production but as any images used within this are made by us or given by the client we didn't need to consider the ideas of using protected images in order to add emphasis to our productions outcome.

The final thing to worry about is the idea of talent release. This is a form that is signed by actors or anyone on camera to make sure that they're okay not only with being on camera but also that we as a producer and the client are protected against getting sued for deliberately using someone likeness or voice without permission in a monetized and corporate way helping to protect all parties involved with the production. For context of what this is and how one can look in its basic form I have a premade one attached below.

  So now we have the technical and legal stuff out of the way we can get into the health of it all. Now when I say health I mean the health and safety of the production during the filming within the filming area and other similar areas.

So we are filming within a small park during an off-peak time (during the week roughly at a high point of business/school time) legal issues are at a lesser risk, however as we are filming in a public park there are numerous health and safety areas to cover within this. I'll talk through a few here.

So the first is waste, now you may think that in a public park the rubbish collection services and bins around the area would help but it's still a major concern as there could be broken bottles with glass surrounding the area making potentially dangerous hazards not just to the actors but the film crew as well, there's a lot of travelling with cameras in this production making them more susceptible to injury by the feet. Now for actors the injury to the feet is a similar concern but for those who have extra interaction with the ground could risk more serious injury.

The second is the equipment itself, not only are we renting which makes us responsible for damages to the equipment themselves but also there's the risk of accidental injury to one of the crew or a pedestrian with the motions of the camera itself. From the storyboard and our script we have a lot of dramatic and fast motions which need to be highlighted, without proper indication of the movement and the timing of said moves one of the actors could potentially get injured from a transitioning shot; and its not just them but pedestrians too, as we are using a public space we can't keep pedestrians out of the area permanently for the entire length that we're filming for so there could be some who come past the production area and get caught by an actor mid shot or by a cameraman performing a tracking shot.

Hopefully this has given you a clear idea of what legal and health concerns are present in a production and how they are considered before being tackled through my own productions examples.

Have a great day!