M2: Legal and Ethical issues with in planned production

When filming pineclones, the legal and ethical issues that we encountered were minor, as we were filming on the moors there was no need for planning permission meaning there was no real legal issues. Where as with the ethical issues we had a decision to make on what age rating the movie should be, as it contains rude language , horror and some violence. We decided based on these factors to rate the movie a ‘15’. I feel this fits in with what the BBFC have listed for a ‘15’ on there website.

Further legal issues are: Contracts for actors, permission to film in locations, copyright laws. All of our actors signed contracts to be in the film and they agreed with the terms and conditions. We filmed pineclones on Ilkley Moor which is an area with no photography or videography restrictions so there was no legal restrictions on that. And finally we used no music in our production so there is no restriction on that and we own all the rights to the video footage we used. 

With in the '15' rating by the 'BBFC' it says that there may Strong threat or horror within the violence category , I feel Pineclones fits into this category as it does have aspects of this with a main character being shown dead but the actual killing is not shown, but towards the ending of the movie there is a killing shown but it is done in a way that is nor too violent or gory, through the audiences eyes it as seen that the character has been killed in a supernatural way which they can see is not realistic.

Furthermore, another reason we believe it works well in the '15' category is that in the film there is the use of bad language this is not a reoccurring theme throughout the movie but there is the use of the odd use of profanity in the movie which younger audiences may feel vulnerable to or may end up using words they do not fully understand.

Finally, on a Ethical standpoint there is a hint to underage drinking, which with in this specific social group is very common with 85% of 15- 17 year olds say they drink underage. Thus leading us to say that we feel that we have represented the characters correctly, we have only slightly hinted at the use of alcohol and there is no hint at the use of any illegal drugs of any sort. Even though in the movie we have a character represented as violent this does not go against the effects model therefore we believe that people are not going to copy such behaviour.