Privacy

Privacy and the Human Rights Act 1998The Human Rights Act 1998 (the “Act”) incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights (the “Convention”) into UK law. Article 8(1) of the Convention provides that “everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.”

Legal issue to consider How this may effect my work What I can do about this?

Copyright of contentmusic and videos/archive footage

I would need to pay royalty fees for my use of found footage or music under-copyright.This will effect the choice of music that is available to me as I may not be able to use music that would appeal to my target audience.

For music I will need to get music from a copyright free source such as Soundcloud. I could contact the relevant copyright holder to see if I can seek permission as a student film maker. The other way I could avoid copyright infringement would be if I do not upload my finished work to any pubic sources such as YouTube or Vimeo but this may impact on my distributionI also have access to a selection of music tech students who would be happy to make a soundtrack for my documentary

Location release/Recees

The company owns the rights to the location for my interview at “Slam city Skates” This means I have to have their permission to film there. This could limit the amount of places I can film. Furthermore I will be filming at Skateparks which can be an unsafe area.

I will have to get them to fill out a location release form. If they say no I will have to get the interview at another location, this is not too much of a problem as there are many well known Skate spots that I can film at which can set the scene. For filming at Skateparks as they are owned by the council this does mean I will have to get them to fill out a release form for filming their, if I don’t this could cause trouble later on if I don’t have permission. I will take precautions to ensure the safety of my camera and myself by filming around the edges and not getting in the way.

Talent release/Personal release

Some of the people I am interviewing may turn around last minute and not want to to show the footage even if they previously agreed which could mean I could lose substantial amounts of footage and potentially disrupt the flow of my documentary.

To prevent this I will get all participants in the documentary to fill out talent release forms so that I can definitely use footage of them. I will make sure they are happy throughout the shooting so that they do not feel as if I am releasing the footage without their consent so I will take their ideas into account when filming to make sure everyone involved is happy with the result.

Privacy The Human Rights act 1998 states that “everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence” This won’t really affect my work as I am not planning to film any part of the participants private or home life.

I will be careful to not ask personal questions and make sure that anything private caught on camera is not published. I will do this by showing the footage to the participants after shooting.

Legal issues

Ethical Issuesethical issue to consider How this may effect my work What I can do about this?

Handling sensitive information

If a participant has suffered has suffered some sort of trauma or injury getting this information may be problematic if the participant is emotional about it. This could mean that I could have to remove some parts from my documentary if the participant does not want to talk about it.

I could get around this by making sure before I start filming that they are okay with the spreading of this sensitive information. A way in which I could do this is by giving them a copy of the questions I will ask them a few weeks before so they can get to grips with the questions so they are not shocked when it comes

Balance and Bias In my documentary I have to show a balanced view on the topic. This means that although I am very passionate about it I cannot really include my personal opinion as it could influence the audience to think a certain way. This also means that I cannot have too much footage or interviews for one side of the argument. For example if all the people I interview think skateboarding is the best sport the show would be very biased.

To get Around this I will ask open questions and I will not ask leading questions. This is to get a personal qualitative answer from the people I interview. Furthermore to make it interesting I will keep my opinion unknown as if I am learning as I film the documentary.

Representation of subjectSome participants in my documentary may fell embarrassed if they feel they look bad in a shot or feel like they’ve been misrepresented which could mean I cannot use certain shots and interviews.

To get around this problem I will make sure to go over the clips I film with the participant to make sure they’re happy with what ive filmed and if they feel it is a fair representation of their opinion. Furthermore I will not edit any parts of the interviews to change how their arguments sound for example I could cut bits out to quote them out of context. This would be unfair on the participant so I will avoid cutting too much out of the interview.

Injury of participants In my documentary there will be lots of footage of people skating, this is a risk of potential injury. This could backfire as they could argue they were skating for my documentary and were injured whilst we were filming which could be grounds for suing me.

To get around this I will need to create a release form and get all participants to sign it just in case. This release form will be specially for extreme sports and the contract will be that they had a choice in skating in my documentary so if an injuries do occur it does not come back to me.

Cont.

Representation of subject Some participants in my documentary may fell embarrassed if they feel they look bad in a shot or feel like they’ve been misrepresented which could mean I cannot use certain shots and interviews.

To get around this problem I will make sure to go over the clips I film with the participant to make sure they’re happy with what ive filmed and if they feel it is a fair representation of their opinion. Furthermore I will not edit any parts of the interviews to change how their arguments sound for example I could cut bits out to quote them out of context. This would be unfair on the participant so I will avoid cutting too much out of the interview.

Ethical issues How this may affect my work What can I do about this

Injury of Participants In my documentary there will be lots of footage of people skating, this is a risk of potential injury. This could backfire as they could argue they were skating for my documentary and were injured whilst we were filming which could be grounds for suing me.

To get around this I will need to create a release form and get all participants to sign it just in case. This release form will be specially for extreme sports and the contract will be that they had a choice in skating in my documentary so if an injuries do occur it does not come back to me.