Current Practices in Corporate Video Production

Current Practices in Corporate Video Production

In this essay I will be talking about the laws that production companies have to follow when producing a corporate video. These include: contempt, copyright, privacy, defamation, courts, ethical and finishing off with technologies. I will be looking at a variety of videos that cover these points.

Copyright:

Copyright is when an individual or company wants to protect something that they have created material and want to protect them from other people using it without permission. The creator can control how the material is used, if a substantial (significant, not quantity) amount of their content is used, then they get a reward. The works that the copyright laws cover is Literacy, Musical, Dramatic, Pictorial/Graphic/Sculptural, Motion pictures, Sound recordings and Architectural. Copyrighted material can be used in certain cases such as the news and by critics for reviews. Copyright is also a territorial right so UK copyright abroad is protected and foreign works are protected in the UK.

https://youtu.be/1DjuUln6xZs This video is a good example as follows the copyright rules as it just uses royalty free music so they can use as much of it as they want without getting any copyright strikes. There are no clips or music that may be copyrighted as clips in this video are all from frontier airline staff and inside their airport, so it is all their own works.

Privacy:

Privacy is when the courts will allow people to live a private and family life over the medias idea of freedom of expression. This law has developed since the European Convention on Human Rights. Privacy law is reporting on someone’s personal/sexual live, their finances, information about their health and filming in their house without permission. Invasion of privacy is when someone takes to court about their private information being realised so they want a reward for the level of damages done, the highest award recently was £60,000 and then the losing party have to pay the legal costs for the trial.

An example of privacy is when a someone is being filmed and there is personal information in the shot that someone doesn’t want the public to know, so that part of the video would either need to be cut or blurred out.

Defamation:

Defamation is the law that allows individuals, companies or firms to sue is their reputation is damaged by a piece of material that is published and makes defamatory comments about either of them. Defamation counts if it: lowers someone in the estimation of right-thinking members of the public, causes them to be shunned or avoided, disparages them in their office, trade or profession and/or exposes them to hatred, ridicule or contempt.

An example of defamation is when companies slander each other and say that one is better compared to the other, another example is when a newspaper/magazine prints information about someone that they know is untrue even before they release it to the public.

Fair Use:

Short clips of copyrighted material may, under certain circumstances, may be used for certain purposes such as criticism, news reporting, teaching, and research, without the need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder. The media doesn’t just have to be a short clip of a video, it can be a small sample of a piece of music or it can be a screenshot from a video/film/television show etc.

 An example of fair use is in YouTube videos when they use screenshots/clips from a video or film

Ethical Issues:

In corporate videos, ethical issues are when a company, product or individual may include footage that can offend a certain religion, ethnicity or individual, or show them in a certain light. These issues can be used to try and change the outlook that the general public have on a specific person, culture or religion so that they get targeted by the public as well. 
 

An example of this, is, if a video that was filmed in an office only had filmed scenes that only included Caucasian male and no one else, this could mean that the producers being prejudice to woman and other people of ethical genders.

Release:

Releases are a form of legal permission that need to be signed by the cast and crew, owners of music used in the production and the owner of buildings and land that are featured in the video. They must be signed by these people for the production to start, if they don’t get the permission or signatures from the people involved filled in then they are not legally allowed to publish the video with the individuals who have not filled in the form.

An example of this would be, if a corporate video filmed in a public location such as a train station or a library without getting the permission from the owners of those locations, then they uploaded the video onto the internet or wherever they are uploading it without them knowing.

Technologies:

To make a corporate video the production team will need multiple items that are required for them to finish the entire product, they include a camera, editing software and any other technological items such as artificial lighting and microphones to complete the production.

An example of editing software a company might use is Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5. This software can support video up to 10,240 × 8,192 resolution, at up to 32-bits per channel colour, in both RGB and YUV. It also has a 5.1 surround sound mixing and allows the user to import and export formats that don’t just include QuickTime or DirectShow and supports a wide variety of video and audio file formats and codecs on both MacOS and Windows. It can also integrate with the following adobe programs: Adobe After Affects, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Story, OnLocation and Prelude.

An example of a Camera that can be used is a Canon EOS 1200D. This camera is relatively cheap for anyone starting off in video as it only cost a reasonable price of £279.99 and is an easy camera to use, so is excellent to start off with. This camera has a 18MP sensor compared to the 12.2MP sensor on its predecessor the 1100D, it has a Digic 4 image processor. It also comes bundled with Canon’s Digital Photo Professional editing software and also comes with a 28.8-88mm lens.

An example of other essential technologies is a Rode VideoMic GO Lightweight On-Camera Microphone. This microphone is a good addition to the camera as it only weighs 2.6 ounces so it keeps the camera lightweight for easy manoeuvrability and can be kept steady. The mic also only requires a standard 3.5mm headphone jack so it will be compatible with almost any camera.