In today’s lesson, we looked at legal and ethical considerations

Ethics

Ethics are a system of moral principles that considers what is good for individuals and society and also described as moral philosophy.

There are some films/tv that were released decades ago that were alright at the time but nowadays they would be unethical. For example: the 2006 film Borat.

Filmmakers need to take ethics into consideration because they have a responsibility to be fair and inoffensive and to be morally correct. They need to keep the wide audience happy with the content they are showing and try not to upset anybody. To be truthful about culture and representation.

Borat is a comedy film that goes too far into making offensive and unmoral jokes that make people watching feel uncomfortable. It shows his home country as a backward country. This could upset many people who live in Kazakhstan. He made fun of the Americans and Jews and homophobia. There is one clip from the film where he goes into a redneck bar and sings a song from his home country: “Throw the Jew down the well”. This could be seen as offensive to Jewish people. He puts obvious questions to people who don’t know how to answer him because they are shocked by what he’s asking them, as they are not morally correct. Some of Borat’s jokes go too far. We’re not supposed to take them seriously as it is satire, but they are offensive. It is offensive to women and minorities.

The internet responded to Borat with many mixed responses/emotions, like some people were outraged by the content, whilst others found it funny in a cringe type of way. There are a lot of good and bad responses to Borat on the internet, but the audience embraced the clever blend of shocking social satire and slapstick humour and the global box office took 260 million and Baron Cohen won a golden globe. People in Kazakhstan were offended by the film because the only similarity was the country’s position on the map. Everything else was false. They realised quickly that the content was aimed at the American audience. It was not an accurate representation of their country.

Here are some images of the film Borat:

     

Legal

Filmmakers need to remember when making a film are things that might be copyrighted, so they need to ask for permission to use certain things like imagery, music, footage from different films, Trademarks and Intellectual Properties. Sometimes you might see a logo blurred out or photoshopped from an image because they did not get permission to use the logo in their ad such as a Nike swoosh on a baseball cap. They need permission to film in public areas where there are people or using drone footage. Sometimes you might see a disclaimer at the end or at the beginning of a film where the filmmaker would use words like “inspired” to cover themselves if their narrative is about a real person or an actual situation. Have permission to depict a real person, but you have to claim the film to be based on actual events and you have the permission of the person. If you don’t, change the person’s name and have a disclaimer saying “Inspired by actual events”. They have to be careful when quoting public figures as they could be sued if they get it wrong, so it’s best to stick to positive and inspirational quotes to be on the safe side.

An example of a case study where a filmmaker was taken to court for a copyright complaint was Disney’s Zootopia movie. Esplanade Productions filled the lawsuit against Disney. It was alleged that Zootopia was produced from work pitched by Gary L. Goldman. Gary Goldman pitched his product called Looney to Disney at least twice whilst working on another film. He claimed Disney brought out their own project called Zootopia shortly afterwards, basing their ideas on his Looney concept. Disney denied any similarity between the two.

The Judge also could not find any similarities in the plot, dialogue, characters and themes, and Gary Goldman lost the case.

Legal/Ethical considerations in my brief

I think my idea is very ethical and has no problems. I don’t think I will upset anyone by my work. The characters are not portrayed as a different race as they are from Northern Europe. I made it this way because I didn’t want to upset anyone with it.

For Legal considerations, I am not directly basing Flame Of Oblivion on other films. But it is inspired by the Lord of the Rings trilogy by following the conventions used within the films. I aim to make my series as original as possible so I don’t get into any legal trouble with it. I can find various non copyright music on YouTube or other places for the animation. I need to make sure the characters are original and don’t resemble other characters from other series and have similar names to them.

My animation will never be displayed to the public, it is for educational purposes only.