Wednesday, 2 November 2011

Law - 28 October

Peter Hodges was our guest lecturer this week. He was the Head of Rights at the BBC but is now independent. He covered copyright and fair dealing with us.

Copyright covers everything from music to film, from the performers to pictures and everything in-between. Copyright covers the object or person as soon as it is published. Showing a film you have made to a friend is not subject to copyright but once you have published it to the internet or put it on to a DVD for viewing this is then copyrighted. A DVD is subject to copyright for 50 years after it has been published and a book is out of copyright 70 years after the author dies.

We should have release forms and get any interviewee or performer to sign these. As well as anyone that may be in your shot. Only for educational reasons are you allowed to use copyrighted products but out of education everything has to be checked for usage. For example if you film a busker singing Lady Gaga you will need the buskers permission to show the filming and Lady Gaga's people's permission for her music.

If you want to use a book or extract from a book the author must give written consent.

We watched two films. An opera called La Traviata and a film called Conspiracy Theory. Watching these we had to pick up on everything that was copyrighted and so would need to be checked. From these we gathered that each individual actor, the music, the composers, the costume designers, the set people and sometimes even the lighting people are credited. Everything that you would normally look over is actually copyrighted and needs to be in the credits.

Fair dealing is when you are allowed to use a small amount of footage from a film, music video, game etc for free. As long as you credit the company and the person you are allowed to use this. Just make sure it is only a few seconds and no longer. A great example of fair dealing is in Ewan and Grahams game piece where they are reviewing games and have a small amount of footage from the games in the review.

Picture by: Mikeblogs

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