Legal and ethical

Legal considerations:

There are several legal issues that must be avoided when making a film. The six that are of most relevance are below. 

• Copyright, designs and patents act 1988:

This law protects the creations of people within the market place. It means that we are not allowed to take music which we have no claim to, or permission to use and other people are not allowed to steal scenes from our film and put them in their own products. 

For our product, we will need to gain copyright permission from the owners of the music which we plan to feature in our short film.    

• Data protection act:

This law means that we have to be very careful to protect the contact information of the people who we have contacted for this film. It also means that we have to have our actors sign release and consent agreements so that they can appear in our film. This will include the actors in our film such as Joe Facer. 

Ethical considerations: 

• Discrimination:

Discrimination refers to the hiring policy of our film. We must ensure that the policy of the film does not exclude anyone because of their ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation as well as this we must do everything in our power to make sure that our product is diverse.        

• Representation:

Our film risks being accused of misrepresentation due to the protagonists being portrayed as middle class while the antagonists are to be working class (and are shown in the script to be struggling financially) To this end we will ensure that our characters are portrayed in a grounded and realistic manner which could not be considered offensive. 

The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) is responsible for the classification and censorship of films released in the United Kingdom. The promo for The White Room would receive a "12" rating from the BBFC as it would feature a moderate amount of threat and violence with little to no explicit language. We will adhere to the BBFC guidelines by not using an excessive amount of explicit language or any graphic violence.

OFCOM is the UK regulatory authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom. OFCOM are relevant to the trailer for The White Room as it is being distributed online. This means that it must abide by OFCOM's regulations if it is to be advertised online on websites such as YouTube. There are rules set by OFCOM (section 3 of the broadcasting code) that state they must prohibit material that is likely to incite crime or disorder. Although our film does show part of a kidnapping taking place; it is not overly graphic and I believe it does not incite violence.

If we have a scene that features a recognisable brand we would need to ensure that we seek permission from the owner for use of the product. We will also need to get rights to the music that we use (if any) or any sounds as we are intending to use ticking noises in our trailer to create suspense. However, we are planning to use copyright free noises and if we do use any other noises we will try to ensure that they are copyright free. To gain permission for our noises we can find the website/owner and email them for permission to use the content.

We intend on having a ticking clock noise going over the video to build suspense, to avoid requiring to purchasing the royalties we will use royalty free audio track courtesy of creative commons, but may be required to give credit to the artist, this would depend on the terms and conditions of the provider, this must be checked before using the sound track.