4.1 Health and safety practice

Our risk assessment:

4.2 Explain why copyright is important in the film industry

Copyright is ‘the exclusive right to make copies, license, and otherwise exploit a literary, musical, or artistic work, whether  printed, audio, video, etc. Works granted such right by law on or after January 1, 1978, are protected for the lifetime of the author or creator and for a period of 70 years after his or her death.’ this essentially means giving creators control over their products and ensuring nobody steals their work and protects them from plagiarism. IP or ‘Intellectual Property’ is ‘a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect.’ It can often cause issues as it’s a lot harder to regulate compared to a physical piece of art or film. Without copyright, people could use unoriginal work and brand it as their own, taking credit from another’s work by claiming it as their own, profiting of someone else.

Art, film, books, any literary work or artistic work, whether it’s printed, audio, or video- is covered by copyright.

Luckily in our film, we haven’t used any copyrighted material as everything we’ve made is completely from scratch such as our film, the music we used and any title sequences or credits etc. Therefore we wouldn’t be picked up on any sort of copyright or IP infringement. making all of your won content or asking creators if you can use their work before placing It in your project are the two easiest ways to avoid copyright infringement and if you do use parts of someone else work, make sure to credit them to ensure you are not claiming any ownership of the piece.

If however, you do use copyrighted material in your film, it can lead to companies who own the rights to the material you have used fining you- or worse if they decide to take it further. It’s better to do the research and end up leaving out sections than having fines or having to take it out and re-upload your work.