When creating our music video, we need to consider different legal and ethical issues. In terms of our music video, the term "legal" means making sure that none of the content that we use is copyrighted. As “The Sundowns” song is copyrighted, we need to ensure that we get permission from them to use their music within the music video because they own intellectual rights. This also applies to if we want to use their logo in the intro of the music video, as we would need to get their permission as this is also something that they hold the intellectual rights to. The copyright, designs and patents act (1988) is an act that allows creators of products such as music to control how their work is used. This is something that is important because it prevents the band's music from being used in ways that they do not approve, so therefore we would need to make sure that we first get permission off of them before using anything which is Copyrighted. If we did not do this, it could cause us to have to take down the music video, and if the issue was not resolved and was sever enough we could end up having to pay for damages. Another legal issue that we would need to think about is the intellectual property rights act, this is when rights are given to a company, or in our case, “The Sundowns” band hold rights to their intellectual property. This covers things such as their music. However, unlike the copyright act, the rights are held by the band rather than the individual, Regan Jones, who has written the music. This law determines whether it is fair to use someones intellectual property in a certain way. As our music video is being used to promote the band, we would most likely be allowed to use their music within out music video. However, by not sticking to this law it could have bad consequences such as our music video being taken down or in a more serious case, a lawsuit.
Ethical issues differ to legal issues as they are just things that could be seen to be morally wrong but not against that law. An ethical issue is when something could be deemed offensive to a certain group of people. This means that media product, such as our music video, need to represent all and not alienate or discriminate against anyone. This could be discrimination against race, gender or anything else. Within our music video, we need to make sure that we include a mixed group of people, in order to make sure that everyone is represented. We can do this by making sure that the people we include in our music video are a range of people who are of mixed gender including different sizes and races. If we did not do this in our music video it could end up ruining our reputation and also cause our product to be banned or took down.
The BBFC is the British Board of Film Classification, they are a regulatory body who look at the suitability of content for different media products, such as music videos. It is important that in the pre-production and planning of our music video, we make sure we know who our audience are and the age of the audience who we want our music video to be aimed at. This is in order to make sure that the suitability of the music video is right for our chosen audience. The BBFC control the classifications of films and other audio-visual based media product, this includes thing such as our music video. They give age certificated to the products based on the content that is included. As our music video does include some content that could be offensive or explicit to a younger audience, the age rating for our music video would be a 15. The target audience for our music video is 16 to 21 year olds, this fits with the age rating that we have given our product as it means the audience we want to view it will be able to as they are all over the age of the certificate.
