This video recordings act 1984 is an act of the parliament of the United Kingdom

that was passed in the year 1984. It states that video recordings offered for sale
or hire within the UK must carry a classification that has overall been agreed
upon by an authority designated by the home office. People follow the important
copyright law because it takes the hard work away from people who deserve it
and can make it so people start to lose money and the whole industry will
become corrupt through using other peoples work. The purpose is to protect
peoples intellectual properties in film and to stop the stealing of certain items
from others like their films and television shows. Its used to protect the creators
from people stealing a certain piece of media from them, and the creators or
makers of a film or license of a property that they own. If this law is broken the
stealers can be sued or sent to jail, examples of this law being broken include
when a person records a film on a camera in the cinema, and then generate disc
copies of it and distribute it to people, the consequences of this can be
punishable by up to five years in prison and $250.000 in fines.
The films act is known to be very relevant to the film industry, it was introduced
into British cinemas as a way to show a quota of British films for a span of ten
years. It hinders the industry, because of an illegal thing called the quickie
quota which were cheap low quality quick quotas.
The important thing to remember in media is also the ethical issues, for example
when using language in a film you will need to be careful to not say anything
that will offend anyone for example when using racism it should always be seen
as a bad thing and in context and also it means to not swear in a kids film as this
could lead to legal issues. Also it should have equal opportunities for everyone,
by letting everyone have access the same things no matter what race/gender.
This is done to show everyone should be equal and to help diversify films; an
example of this would be to let a Muslim help to work on the production even
though the director may be a different religion like Christian. Sectors of media
are need to encourage diversity as well, this can be done by hiring different
races and genders to show that you will work with anyone and respect them for
who they are such as a male might have to work with a female who has a
different gender mind-set than him and they will still have to get along and listen
to each others point of views. Some other issues need to be considered when
working in media, are that all actors have to be okay when shooting during the
production; what I mean by this is that they are not doing certain things against
their will on the set of the production such as pull a stunt they could die from or
to eat a certain meat during one of the scenes like normal chicken when they are
Muslim so they only eat Halal meat. Linking in with the religious side of things,
religion is a source of identity and can be stereotyped quite a lot in the film
industry although a lot of the media industry is made up of many beliefs and
religions that is still present in different reporting and advertising.
When working in the media sector as a director one important thing you need to
be careful about is gender, such as how both genders are treated in the industry;
women are represented quite badly in the film industry as a whole, because a lot
of women seem to have less capabilities seen in films than men do as it seems to
be less focused on the women and focused more on the men this can be seen by
the pic below which through one search of just film director comes up with
every image being of a male film director and not a single female one.

This is probably because women in the industry are seen as weak, and used just
for roles involving sex and nudity, some appear in films without even any
dialogue for them and with no context for the nudity scene. This is sexist as men
hardly ever have nudity/sexiness on screen compared to women; according to
statistics it is shown the percentage of characters with thin bodies in prime-time
shows by gender is 37.5% for females and is 13.6% for males. Although
throughout the current industry a few key females like Diablo Cody and Lena
Dunham are shown as very influential women figures in the industry. Other
figures prove that sexism exists in the industry are 26.2% of women actors get
partially naked while 9.4% of men do, 30.8% of speaking characters are women,
10.7% of movies featured a balanced cast where half of the characters are
female. Although I think men and women should be treated equally, this should
be done to create a feeling of fairness throughout the media sector to create a
bunch of diverse ideas and thoughts that are accepted throughout the media
industry.
I sort of think that people are represented fairly in my industry, as most directors
and actors are male and while there are still women actors and directors working
within the industry; they are severely outnumbered by the men in the industry.
And while religion and beliefs are accepted mostly throughout there are still
some people who will be hateful due to the belief they deserve more power over
others for being a certain race or gender which I believe to be very unfair.
There are numerous bodies that are important in the film industry, one of them
being the British Board of Film Classification this group is responsible for the
national classification and the censorship whiten films in the United Kingdom.
This helps to protect children from unsuitable and harmful content in films and
videos and to advise someone if they should view it or not; For example it will
say if it contains sex or violence in the production or not. Another body is the
Film Distributers Association This group is the trade body of for the theatrical
film distributors located all over the UK which are the people who release films
for the UK cinema audience. This is good because it helps to get cinemas all over
the UK to have films distributed for an audiences viewing. Another body is the
British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) This group is an
independent charity that helps to support, develops and promotes the use of

cinema by identifying and rewarding excellence, inspiring and benefiting the

public. They are important because it helps to publicise a film and get more
people to see it and the award helps people to feel rewarded for their efforts.
There are many different issues that these bodies face on a regular basis, the
first one is Customer choice this is when someone gets offended with a certain
thing involving the film sector that is offensive to them or know it will offend
others. If this complaint comes up they will either have to censor it or remove it
to stop the offensive that is taking place towards them, the common things can
be used to offend people if used in the wrong manner are things such as religion,
gender or race. Also if a film includes copyright materiel they have not gained
the rights to it, the copyrighted part must be removed or replaced at the request
of the owner of the material. If the person using the copyrighted material without
a permit does not either replace or remove the content they can be sent to court,
or result in being sued. Another issue is freedom of information; this could breach
certain peoples privacy and certain confidential files from costumers or other
people if this act is not followed. The act of 2000 provides public access to
information held by the public authorities, and they are authorised to tell the
applicant whether they hold any information falling within the request that they
made and they are not allowed to share any information the person does not
want them to share to others without their permission, such as date of birth, real
name [seen in the credits at the end or beginning of a film, may not want real
name known] and address. The next issue is censorship, this is if something is
either too sexual or too inappropriate it could be censored by either bleeping it
with a horn sound if it is aired on television or covering their mouth with a black
bar if it is in a film the age rating could be hired to an older age if it Is too
inappropriate; or if the whole scene is seen as too out of place, that could mean
the whole scene could be removed or replaced. Such as a sex scene in a movie
[Aged twelve and under] It most likely will be fully removed if it contains no
context for the movie and is used just to be inappropriate. These are censored to
stop the youth learning about these things at a too young of an age to stop a bad
influence on them. Lastly the issue of taste and decency kind of links in with
censorship if something is meant to be funny and is misconstrued to be trying to
take the mick and offend certain group of people. This falls into sections of
language, stereotyping, and privacy. All of these can be seen as inappropriate to
an extent, an example of this would be a black character talking in a slang type
of voice and been seen as stupid as seen in older 1900s films where
stereotyping was much stronger than nowadays.