07/07/2016
To whom it may concern,I am writing to you concerning the job advertisement you put it out for digital video production producer for your company of Flipside Media. I want to talk about a number of things concerning this advertisement. However, I would also like to discuss contracts in general. As you know, contracts are of course the legal agreements employees have to sign before entering a job, telling your employee what you want them to do, when they will be required to work and what you will be paying them. As you also may be aware of, these can also include confidentiality clauses, which of course entails keeping things secret from mostly anyone else outside of the work place.
With this job advertisement, I couldn't help but notice that you specify what age and ethnicity you wanted to fulfill this role. Now, I couldn't help but notice this is in slight violation of the Equality Act. As you may be aware, the Equality Act entails making discrimination against grounds of race, gender or age illegal. I couldn't help but notice you specifying specifically that you wanted someone under 30 years of age and someone of the Christian race. Now, I know you are a Christian organization, but what is there stopping a say 37 year old Muslim from doing this job? Really, there is nothing stopping them from doing this job; they're perfectly capable of doing such a job themselves, so you should really take that into consideration if you want to keep within the legality of the Equality Act. This really does link to the equal opportunities legislation, where employers aim to recruit fairly and come up with codes of practice that is evidence that they comply with the Equality Act.
When it comes to employers and employees, we need to discuss a little bit about your employer liability and the employee's rights in relation to this proposed video. As you know, you are liable for any physical or emotional harm whilst in your employment. However, concerning employer liablity, you are not technically liable considering they are not yet in your employment; this is only to get the job. Though you are also responsible for their health and safety. They could be injured on the job and could claim for compensation. Despite going in for employment by you, you could still be liable for any physical or mental harm to them, especially if they go to try and claim for compensation, bringing you to court and getting you to pay them back.
When speaking about trade unions, as you know they are there to protect the rights and interests of employees. Of course, they have to be a member of a union to get those benefits. This is basically linking to the protection of employees, where employees are supposed to be protected against suffering any harm from any work they do they take on health and safety grounds. They should not suffer any harm in the work place, otherwise the employers are liable for paying compensation.
Codes of practices are of course not part of the law, however they do exist to protect the consumer or the citizen; as you may know, this is a very important part and powerful role in TV and film. You as employers are responsible for coming up with policies, procedures and codes of practice that are specific to your institution. To avoid any legal issues with the end product, these said codes of practice, along with practices and procedures should be passed to the applicants in order to protect the consumers or citizens who watch the finished piece of work. Now, I would like to bring up the issue of representation within this project. I couldn't help but noticed you abruptly stereo typing males and females within this issue about rape. You say you must interview "female victims and male offenders". Might I remind you that rape can happen to anyone, regardless of whether they're male or female and the gender of offenders can vary as well. You cannot just make this seem as though it just effects females in the way of them being victims; this is very bad stereo-typing and you need to rethink this proposal through. It'll just make it seem as though males should be monitored at all times since they're apparently "the only ones who can offend" in your point of view. You cannot do this and you would probably have some legality concerns if you did.
There is also a big concern about whether you can actually get people to talk so blatantly to an audience about it. Do you really think realistically that you can get victims and offenders to talk directly to a camera about what happened? No. They'd probably either stay silent or not even volunteer to do this at all. Realistically, you will not get any victims or offenders to talk to a camera about what happened and get it recorded on footage. Also, "compliment the interviews with re-enactments, dramatizations..." First off, you cannot request a re-enactment; it would be traumatizing for both parties and they would refuse to do it. You'd more than likely get a few complaints and also you cannot just do that. Second off, dramatizations of rape is not a good idea. You would get a lot of complaints from many people about this subject. It is a very delicate subject and should not be treated like this at all.
Finally, we come to the legal issues of this project as such. First off, as you know, the Ofcom broadcasting code is the law and this pronounced project of yours may be in violation of a couple of codes. You say that this No Means No date rape campaign will be shown to children in high school. That is in violation right off the bat to the protecting the under 18s code within Ofcom's code. It's not a good idea to show something this serious and obscene to children starting high school, especially if you still want these dramatizations within such a campaign. This is also in violation of the harm and offence part of the code. Young teens such as them could find this offending and something this obscene would be in violation, so I'm afraid you target audience will have to be someone of a higher age. This would also be in violation of the Obscene Publications Act, where factors such as the age range of the target audience and time a production can affect whether or not the material is deemed as obscene.
For the certification this video would more than likely be given by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification), this would probably end up being either a 15, 16 or maybe even an 18 depending on how explicit you make it. This is because the topic of rape, coupled with your want for re-enactments and dramatizations, is very delicate and a very obscene matter. This most certainly wouldn't be a PG or even 12, since something like this would not be suitable for such young people.
Finally, we need to mention about the intellectual property law, which of course includes things such as copyright, trademarks, passing off, etc. Now, I couldn't help but notice you want a "popular music soundtrack", however you only allow a recompense of only up to £20 for the whole production. In order to get the rights in order to use a popular music soundtracks, your applicant would have to pay hundreds, if not thousands for the right to own that song or even songs, otherwise you would be violating the law and get taken to court for the violation of copyright law. So unfortunately, you will not get a popular soundtrack with that amount of money; you would have to deal with royalty free music instead for the video.
Yours sincerely,
Natasha Sandra Louise Mullan
