Copyright

www.jezweb.com.au

The regulatory rules for television and film are vast and detailed; therefore it is very important that I am knowledgeable of them. Today’s media world is making the accessibility to music, imagery, dialogue and film far easier, which has lead to a rise in illegal misuse of media content.  When producing films for my freelance work, I always have the copyright rules in mind. Music is always the key aspect, finding royalty free music is challenging and very restricted, especially when seeking it for free. www.incompetech.com and www.freeplaymusic.com are the websites I use most frequently. When filming for a company I also keep awareness of imagery, product placement and trademarks in my shots. For example when I‘m working for Kärcher UK it is important to ensure that other products logos and names weren’t within any frame as this could be seen as an infringement to the trademarks, as Kärcher is a large international company.

Not only in film but the uses of images online also need to be used wisely. Using other peoples images in your own work is stealing. For example as an Editor of an online magazine, we are very strict about using any photos from a secondary source eg, Google images. We use online photo banks that supply royalty- free images. Such as Wiki commons and Flickr Commons. There are also image banks for specialise images such as www.prshots.com, which supplies Fashion images to be used by journalists.

Having said all of this it is also important for me to protect my own work. When uploading any of my photography on to the Internet I always make sure I have my company logo over the images. However something I should start doing is adding, ‘Copyright © [name of artist] [date]. All rights reserved" in the caption of the image to assure full observation of my copyright. Prior to writing this I was unsure about the rules regarding the ownership of the copyright when commissioned by a company or client. From research I found, that in general, copyright will remain with the freelancer unless agreed that the Commissioner will own the copyright.  They say that you should always ensure that you have a written agreement with the commissioner. This is something I haven’t thought about therefore I will definitely formally do this for my next freelance commission.