4.1 Health and safety practice

This was the risk assessment we used on our production. A risk assessment is important because it ensures that everyone knows the possible risks and also in the circumstance that any of them should happen, everyone knows how to respond to them.

Health and safety is important when working on a film production for many reasons. One reason that it is important that everyone on a crew is contributing to the production of the film meaning if even one person is injured or not able to work then that delays the process and can cost time and money, something that especially on smaller productions can be already limited. Secondly and equally as important is that you are responsible for everyone’s safety on the crew.

On our production we where all made aware of the potential risks and how we can avoid them so everyone was prepared for if anything went wrong which luckily it didn’t.

Some examples of possibly health and safety risks.

• Heavy equipment

This can be a risk both when it is being used and when it is being transported from place too place. It is important when working with heavy equipment too know how correctly to use it as well as how to best carry it if you need to move it.

• On location

Filming on location can bring with it lots of different health and safety concerns depending on where the location is. If its outside than the weather, the terrain, the wildlife possibly and how easy the location is to get to are all factors that should be considered regarding the safety of the crew.

• Lighting

Lighting equipment, especially professional lighting equipment used for film productions can get very hot and both dangerous to touch and be under for too long. Also any electronics can be dangerous if they malfunction.

• Long hours

Tiredness can be a risk as it lowers the awareness of the crew and this can cause accidents to more easily occur. Because of this is it is important to take long working hours into consideration when thinking of possible risks.

 

 

4.2 Explain why copyright is important in the film industry

Copyright laws are in place to protect somebody’s intellectual property and it grants the creator of that content the rights to distribute that content however they want.

Intellectual property (IP) is any form of original creation that can be bought or sold. Copyright covers Music, Films, Photography, Artwork, Writing and pretty much anything else that is created by someone.

Copyright law exists to protect a creators intellectual property and allow them to control the usage and distribution of there IP. If you where to use copyrighted material in a piece of media (a Film in our case) without permission from its creator you could have that piece of media removed from whatever platform it is on, you might be barred from publishing it in the first place and worst of all you could be taken to court for infringing copyright law.

To make sure you don’t infringe copyright law when making a Film you could credit the person who’s intellectual property you are using, or alternatively only use original content.

In our Film copyright law has been taken into consideration and we have had to make changes in order to stay inline with the law. One of these was to tape over the Apple logo of the laptop we use as a prop. Secondly we have a number of band posters that we do not own the rights to so we have made sure to only have them in the background and out of focus.