Letter

Zac Brown

113 Rosedale Gardens

Belton

Great Yarmouth

Norfolk

NR31 9PL

Dear Mr Cook,

                                 I am writing to you today to discuss the contractual, legal and ethical issues with your latest job post for Apprentice Digital Video Production Producer. I believe that the description of the job role is not in enough detail as the salary for the job is between £15000-£35000, so I would expect more roles to do as the pay grade is high. Apart from the job role not being in detail, the job post mentions everything you would expect in a contract, the hours, the job and the pay.  In a contract employers sometimes have confidential and exclusivity clauses, a confidential clause is a clause which means you won’t leak any secrets about the company otherwise it will lead to legal action, an exclusivity clause in this job role will be that you can’t apply for any other positions from any other company, so you are keeping them exclusively to you ‘Please not that if successful, you must not apply for other positions of this nature’.

 In this job post The Equality Act (2010) is infringed as you can’t look for a certain type of person, you have to allow everyone to be equal, and in this post you state you want a male/female below 30 and religious views must be Christian.  The Equal opportunities legislation is so that all employers will rate everyone equally, so they can’t rate anyone on their age, race, and gender (Just on ability alone).  Employer’s liability means that the employer is responsible for the safety and wellbeing of the employee; I believe that in the job post you could be putting the employee at risk when working, so in this case the employee could effectively argue as the employer is not taking responsibility for whatever happens to them. This links with employees’ rights as someone may get injured at work and the employee has rights to claim compensation (as the health and safety legislation mentions that employers are responsible for their health and safety while they are at work) from their work place if the employer is responsible, I believe that you need to link in with your post that you follow all employees rights and employer’s liability laws. For employees there are trade unions which the employee can pay for, this is not available for applicants, so only people in your work place could be a part of a trade union which they protect the rights of the workers. Also you can be a member of a trade union if you are a freelancer.

Codes of practice/policies and procedures can be passed to applicants to avoid legal issues as some companies do want specific people like the television and film industry, they need a certain type of person to fit the role, they can’t have anybody but as an applicant, people will not be privy to these. Codes of practice are used to prevent legal issues in the future. The representation of the video has to be taken into account. The idea of having a rape campaign to be shown to children is obscene and the way which the ‘female victims and male offenders’ are represented can be portrayed different ways, because not all females are victims and not all men are offenders, and by you making a video about this will manipulate the audience to think that females are always the victim. Social concerns are a part of life as old people look towards youngsters as hoodies and crime, whereas it is not like that in your video you are portraying that all females are victims and all males are offenders, if you are teaching children this, in the future this will become a problem as it will become ‘the norm’ to believe this.

Ofcom  (Britain’s media regulator required by The Communications Act (2003) and The Broadcasting Act 1990) are there to regulate broadcasting but particularly there for protecting the under 18s and as the target age range is within the high school age, the images will be obscene to them,in the video that will created for children I believe that it is unsuitable and so it doesn’t comply with Ofcom’s regulation of ‘1.3 Children must also be protected by appropriate scheduling from material that is unsuitable for them’. I also believe that because you want to portray female’s as victims and males as offenders it will mislead the audience ‘2.2 Factual programmes or items or portrayals of factual matters must not materially mislead the audience.(Note to Rule 2.2: News is regulated under Section Five of the Code’. The Obscene Publications Act 1959 is affected in your video as I believe that the content will be obscene for children to watch. The Obscene Publications  Act is changing some of policies for the future. Here is a legislation that is in the Obscene Publications Act ‘For the purposes of this Act an article shall be deemed to be obscene if its effect or (where the article comprises two or more distinct items) the effect of any one of its items is, if taken as a whole, such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it’.

I believe that the BBFC will rate the video 15 as it will include a lot of sexual references if the video is about rape, therefore the video will be acceptable in higher schools years but not in low high school years but which is intended is unclear. BBFC lists these as the reason for a 15 rating ‘strong violence, frequent strong language (eg 'f***'),portrayals of sexual activity, strong verbal references to sex, sexual nudity, brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence, discriminatory language or behavior ,drug taking’

In the job post you’ve stated that you want popular music soundtrack, this is more than likely not going to happen as with a £20 budget you will not be able to buy the copyright for the music. This links to intellectual property as you can purchase the rights to buy the right to use it in your video like the soundtrack.  As the internet has become a massive problem for copyright, with YouTube people can easily get soundtracks off there to use in their own videos but this is illegal and without the purchase of the content this can lead to legal action and so applicants may feel that they need to infringe copyright or they risk not getting the job.

Yours Sincerely

Zac Brown