4.1 Health and safety practice
Heath and safety is incredibly important whilst working on a film production, the personal safety of your crew surpasses everything.
There are many key safety issues relating to film production: for example, there would be a great deal of wires strewn across the set which could prove to be a trip hazard. Furthermore, the constant stream of heavy equipment could result in an injury. Finally, hot lights would be around on a film production which could result in burns.
During the making of our film, we compiled a risk assessment which detailed any possible injuries which could occur on set. This meant we could make everyone aware of exactly what to avoid and which pieces of equipment to handle with care.
4.2 Explain why copyright is important in the film industry
Copyright is the exclusive or assignable legal right given to an originator to produce a piece of music, art or film. Intellectual property (IP) refers to a creations of the mind which can be copyrighted.
Copyright law exists in order to protect people’s intellectual property and prevent others from stealing it and portraying it as their own.
Usually, it is creative works such as literacy, music, art and film which is covered by copyright. If you were to use copyrighted material in your film, you may risk, if you are distributing on an online platform, having your channel shut down. You may also be fined.
In our film, we had to make sure not to infringe copyright by creating our own original score, designing our own posters and not referencing any other licensed images. This proved to be a challenge as it was written in the script that the main character’s bedroom was to be plastered with popular film posters of the 80’s in order to ground the film in the intended aesthetic of that era. We overcame this issue by still proceeding to print and display the posters, but we were careful to place them specifically in the background. This would mean that the shot would still include the posters, however, due to the nature of the shots they would be blurred and obscured.
This is good work showing a sufficient understanding of the legal and practical issues pertaining to film production and show that you applied these to your working practice in creating your film. Well done you have achieved learning outcome 4, Understand film industry working practices and legislation. The film soundtrack is excellent evidence of how you ensured that all work was original.
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