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Ethics involving non english speaking individuals and foreign nationals:

I looked into the Ofcom regulations revolving around the representation of foreign and non-English speaking individuals. This is important for our production as a lot of our primaries are from India and Pakistan and as such English is either their second or third language. We have to be carful at how we represent these people in our documentary or risk breaking Ofcom regulations. 

The PDF below is a section of the Ofcom Broadcasting Code which explains that everybody should have the right to freedom of expression however there are formalities which dictate this '...interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or the rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.' (Ofcom Appendix 3) 

Music Licencing in film and video:

As the sound designer for our production I want music to play a part in our documentary. Music is a powerful device which can minipulate the audience's emotion and enhance the visual aspect of a scene. Music however has legalities surrounding licencing which we must look into before choosing a soundtrack.

The BBC has a filmmaking guide on music rights which goes through and discribes the processes of obtaining licencing for film. BBC filmmakers guide on licensing.

Points to take from the guide:

• Need to obtain two licenses, first is a publishing license from the copyright owners of the piece of music. Secondly is a Recording License from the people who performed the piece of music. 
• Be carful using incidental music, If the music enhances the scene then it its hard to prove that it is incidental.
• Contacting unsigned artists is a cheaper alternative to seeking clearance from record label that have no artistic appeal.

www.musiclicensingstore.com is an online licensing store run by Rumblefish, its clients include Youtube and Google. The website allows you to browse through a catalog of songs and artists picking invividual tracks or albums which you want to use. The cost of buying the licensing is realitivly expensive in comparison to our budget. Clearance is a one off and only applies to the specific terms that you register. 

Contacting artisits:

Another form of licenceing is to contact the artist and get them to grant us permission. This can be done through individual artists who represent themselves or through their record labels.

Music Libraries: 

Another way which we can find music for our project is online sound libraries which hold thousands of tracks which are accessible via a one off payment. Usually they have special price bands for student projects.

www.shockwave-sound.com - Medium price range between £15-£20 per song

www.audionetwork.com - Low prices for students, from 83p per song, very user friendly search tool.

www.gettyimages.co.uk/Music - Uses a package price system, you choose the number of songs that you want and it calculates the price taking in factors like distribution and audience. Big prices of £100+.

 Release forms:

We need to ensure we get release forms signed from people that are included in our documentary and the owners of the locations that we film at. Release forms are important for several reasons, firstly they insure that we have total control over the footage so if people decided that they no longer wish to be in the film it will not effect our edit. Secondly the location release forms are a legal document meaning that the owner of the property is happy for us to film there.

I have created three release forms for our group to use, the first is for our photojournalism shoot, the second is for participants of our documentary and the third is the location release form.