Careers in Film and Television

http://issuu.com/zac113/docs/jobs

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

Ownership

Public Service Broadcasting (PSB)

Public service broadcasting is broadcasting that is concentrated on the public, this means that the benefit to the public is that there is no adverts and the programs broadcast are purely to entice the audience. An example of a PSB is the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) since 1936 the BBC have been a PSB and they have made their revenue by a television license fee. The TV license in the UK has to be payed yearly and for a fee for a coloured TV is £145.50 and for a black and white TV it is £49. This is because the BBC don't sell advertising slots like other channels like ITV. In public service broadcasting you are selling to the audience, so  getting more people to watch will generate more money etc.
Whereas commercial broadcasters sell the audience to the advertisers.

Commercial Broadcasting

The main objective for commercial broadcasters is that it is for servicing the public, not for exploiting.
Commercial broadcasting is one that based on the purchase of advertising slots, an example of this is ITV, ITV sell the audience to the people who want to buy slots. The audience is the one to be sold as advertisers look for the best slots when certain people are watching and at what times they are watching, the most popular times are peak TV times 6pm to 9pm, so these will be the most expensive times after big events. Commercial broadcasters like Sky don't just charge for advertising, they charge for their service, this is called Paid programming, other TV providers now do this like BT, Virgin etc. Commercial broadcasters are normally privately owned. Some commercial broadcasters (ITV) believed that there was no need for them to broadcast children and religious tv but for them to be aloud to broadcast, Ofcom made them produce some religious and children tv.
 There are three types of ways to broadcast TV:
Terrestrial:                               Satellite:                          Cable:
BBC - Not commercial              Sky                                   Virgin
E4                                               Freesat
Channel 5
Freeview

Corporate Ownership

Corporate ownership is an ownership that is controlled by shareholders, more shares a shareholder has more control they have. The shareholders are controlled by a board of directors that make the decisions within the company. The shareholders are solely there for a profit, the idea is that they invest into a company, so they have a bigger capital, so they can produce more to make more money. A corporation can issue shares either privately or publicly. An example of a corporate ownership in TV is ITV. ITV are a public limited company meaning that you can buy shares in the company on the stock market.

Private Ownership

A private ownership is one which is not publicly traded and is not owned by the government. This normally means that only people who are close to the owners of the business can buy shares in the company. An example of an private ownership is Virgin.

Global Companies

In production there are many different companies, but we focus on the 'Big Six' these six are the biggest productions companies in the world, the amount of assets owned by the companies vary from $23 billion to $751 billion. Global companies are ones that operate around the world. The following six companies are the biggest six in terms of media production.

VIACOM:
Viacom have assets worth $22.8 billion (2011) and in the company they have some very popular channels for example : MTV, Paramount Pictures, Paramount Vantage.
For the amount of channels and production companies owned, Viacom has a high rate of assets worth.

News Corporation: Assets : $56.6 Billion (2012)
News Corporation are very well known throughout the UK as in recent years they have been in the news themselves for phone hacking. News Corporation is owned by Rupert Murdoch and in his company he has some key assets that many people would like to have ownership of. For example : BSKYB, 20th Century Fox, The Sun, The Times, Fox channels.

Time Warner : Assets $68.3 Billion (2012)
Time Warner own Warner Bros which is a Global known company, Time warner own alot of magazines and Broadcasting companies. For example : CNN, Cartoon Network, Looney Tunes.

The Walt Disney Company: Assets $74.8 Billion (2012)
Most people will know Walt Disney as they provide many attractions for children and they produce alot of movies for children. Walt Disney own : ABC Channels, ESPN, Disney

Sony : Assets $151 Billion (2013)
Sony are known for many different things ranging from the PlayStation to Sony Pictures. Sony created the Blu-ray disc in 2006 which offered users another platform for their films. Some examples of the companies they own are : Sony Pictures, PlayStation, Blu-Ray.

General Electric: Assets $685.3 Billion (2012)
General Electric own Universal Pictures, which most people know about as they publish some of the the best films ever made. General Electric have a very high asset amount but if the assets amount was done on just media it would be Time Warner. General electric produce alot of electronics products and own oil companies so this is why the assets amount is high.

Vertical Integration

Vertical integration is when the same company is the Producer, the Distributor and the cinema owners. This is illegal as it is said to have 'too much control of a market'. The reason why media companies do this is because instead of paying the distributors to distribute the film and then they make money by selling it to the cinemas, the production company want all the money they can get, so they buy the distributors and then the cinemas. In the 90's the big media production companies did have vertical integration like Warner Bros, they have the production and the distribution rights and they had their own cinemas.

 

Horizontal Integration

Horizontal integration is when the same company buys another company in the same market, like News Corporation they had The Sun and then they bought The Times. Another example is in television, Sky could buy Virgin Media and then this would increase their overall share of that market.
'A situation when two firms in the same industry and at the same stage of production come together. This could be through the two businesses merging together or through one firm taking over another. For example two chocolate companies or two estate agents may decide to join together' (BBC Dragons Den)

Monopoly

A monopoly in a market is one which is in total control in that sector. Being a monopoly you can fix prices, and in this recent year people have been breaking these laws, as a monopoly you are the only supplier of that certain item. Monopolies have some advantages but also have many disadvantages, in broadcasting one of the main advantages of not having a monopoly is that you can compare your broadcast tot theirs, whereas if you are the only company making this product, you can't compare it to anybody. Effectively a monopoly is Vertical Integration + Horizontal Integration as you will control all the other companies.

Sources of funding for broadcast media companies

License fee - Tv license

Subscription - Sky, Virgin , BT

Pay Per View - Box office, Sporting Events

One off purchases - Dvd, Blu-Ray

Sponsorship - Coronation street - Cadburys

 Advertising - Commerical broadcasting/ adverts between programmes

Product placement - CSI - Apple computers

Private Capital - When a individual person invests their own money for a return for profits

Financial aid - National lottery

Development fund - Grants