Regulation in the creative media sectors

In the creative media sector, there are multiple regulatory bodies in place to keep media productions suitable for the public. Different Regulatory bodies moderate different areas of media. They are there to make sure that each piece of work follows it's set guidelines and does not produce anything unsuitable for a public audience. There are many guidelines set for each section  of media that define what would be okay for the public to see or hear. A regulatory body has the power to stop a production being aired before and after it's initial release. Regulatory bodies also work with complaints and will go over a media production if it has been complained about. To do this they will look at the complaints and see what it is that is bothering people about it. They will then look at what guidelines the public think it is breaking and then come up with a final verdict. If it is breaching the guidelines then it will be taken down and the company responsible for it could face punishments such as fines.

The Creative Media sector needs to be regulated as it is protection for the general public. Without it then people could find what they see or hear harmful or offensive. It is especially protecting minors as if they see something that is not suitable for them then it could possibly affect their lifestyle when they grow up. Another reason why regulatory bodies are important is to protect the companies that are creating the productions. If their work is inappropriate and it continues to be aired then the public will start to get bad views on it and in some cases attempts to shut down the company can come in to action. 

BBFC (British Board of Film Classification)

Image from:http://gta.wikia.com/BBFC

The BBFC is a regulatory body that regulates film and videos. They are responsible for the age ratings that come with films and videos. These age ratings are:

• U (Universal)-suitable for all audiences aged 4 and over.
• PG (Parental Guidance)-suitable for anyone over the age of 8 and anyone younger as long as their parents believe it will not upset them. 
• 12/12A-suitable for anyone aged 12 or above. A 12A film requires anyone under 12 to be accompanied by an adult. 
• 15-suitable for anyone aged 15 or over.
• 18-suitable for anyone aged 18 or over.

There is also a special category (R18) which is just for films that contain sex or strong fetish material. These films cannot be shown in regular cinemas, they must be specially licensed and any of these videos can only be sold in licensed shops. The BBFC decide age ratings by watching films all the way through and testing it to their criteria. An example of how this works is that if a film has strong language throughout then it will have to be either a 15 or an 18 rating depending on what else it contains.

One film that the BBFC had to ban from being shown was "The Human Centipede 2". This film was banned as it was sexually violent and potentially obscene. The BBFC felt that the film did not portray any of the victims as anything other than objects and it was potentially in breach of the 'Obscene Publications act'. The BBFC decided that this film could never be reclassified as no amount of cuts would make it suitable. This changed however as in 2011, the film had made 32 cuts which totaled to around 2 minutes and 37 seconds and the BBFC had granted it an 18 age rating certificate.

Image from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Centipede_2_(Full_Sequence)

OFCOM (Office of Communications)

Image from: https://twitter.com/ofcom

OFCOM is the regulatory body that regulates radio, television, fixed line tele communications, postal services, mobiles and airwaves (Wi-Fi). Their job is to keep any harmful material from being used in any of these sectors. Their main priority is to regulate TV and radio as it is easier for people to get harmed through these sectors than it is for any of the others they cover as these are broadcast to the general public everyday. The way they regulate these sectors is by looking at complaints. They cannot watch every program as there is too many being broadcast all the time so they rely on  the general public to tell them if they are unhappy with something. Ofcom look at each complaint individually and access it against the broadcasting code to check to see if any of the programs complained about break the rules.  The broadcasting code is made up of 10 sections, these are:

• Protecting under 18's
• Harm and Offence
• Crime
• Religion
• Due impartiality and due accuracy and undue prominence of views and opinions
• Elections and Referendums
• Fairness
• Privacy
• Commercial references in TV programming
• Commercial communications in radio programming

If any broadcaster was to breach the broadcasting code then they would have to face a sanction given by Ofcom. Depending on the seriousness of the breach, defines how serious of a sanction is given. if it is only a minor offence that happened the one time then the broadcast will most likely only get taken down and a warning will be handed out to the broadcaster. If it is a serious offence or the broadcaster is repeatedly breaching the code then Ofcom can impose a fine or even take away the license to broadcast. Ofcom do not deal with complaints for programs that are still in production. Those complaints must be taken to the producer first.

On 2nd November 2014, Kiss FM breached the broadcasting code. They did this as they had played the song 'Open Wide' by Calvin Harris featuring Big Sean. By playing this song they were in breach as it contained multiple swear words and has sexual references throughout. This is not acceptable to play at quarter to 6 in the evening. Kiss had not listened to the track before hand and had trusted the record label, Sony, to have provided them with a radio edit. This was not seen as a good enough excuse however as Kiss should not have allowed a track to be played that hadn't previously been listened to by the station itself. As a sanction, Kiss FM were made to widen the procedure for checking new song content and the producer in charge of that particular show was punished for his actions. 

Image from: https://www.fabriclondon.com/blog/view/radio-waves-kiss-fm-presents-fabric

IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organisation)

Image from: http://www.prweekjobs.co.uk/jobs/public-affairs-policy/london-central-/

IPSO are the regulators of the Newspaper and Magazine industry. IPSO have not always been the company that regulates this sector of Media. before them it was the PCC (Press Complaints Commision) that were the regulatory body. The PCC was shut down as it was claimed to be 'inadequate' and 'absent' by David Cameron. It was described like this as it was expected to do serious research into the News Of The World scandal however the work produced from the company was not good enough, especially considering there was so much controversy surrounding the topic. On the 8th August 2014, the PCC was shut down and replaced with IPSO.  

IPSO's job is to uphold the Editors code of practice and make sure it does not get breached. The code basically looks at things like Privacy, they make sure that no paper or magazine is invading someones personal life or taking details from them that should be kept private. It also deals with things involved with harassment. They make sure that none of the press are harassing anyone when they are trying to get some information for their newspaper/magazine. 

Recently the Derby Telegraph had been found by IPSO to have broken three rules of the Editors code. The Newspaper had published an image of a girl that appears to have been hit by a car. Their was a complaint made by the girls mother. She was not pleased with the fact that the picture was taken when everyone involved was in a state of shock and emergency services were yet to arrive. The image was seen to have breached clause 3-Privacy, clause 5-intrusion into grief and shock and clause 6-Children. After Ipso had investigated further into the subject, they saw it to only breach Clause 5 as it caused distress to the family. The Newspaper had to take down the image from the article and write an apology to the family.

Image from: http://www.beatingangerderby.co.uk/anger-management/derby-telegraph-article

ASA (Advertising Standards Authority)

Image from: http://www.isba.org.uk/news/2014/11/26/the-asa-has-warned-video-bloggers-to-clearly-label-advertising-content

The ASA are the regulatory body that regulate advertising. They are an independant company that has been set up since 1962. Their main job is to regulate adverts and make sure they do not lie or make false claims about a product. The majority of advertisements that are broadcast are checked to see if their content is appropriate before they are cleared to go on air. Every advert that is broadcast on TV must follow Ofcom's UK code of broadcasting. If the ASA find one of the rules has been breached then they will refer them to Ofcom and they will hand out a sanction to the offender. Adverts that are not being broadcast, for example billboards or online ads, are not always checked by the ASA before they are published. This is because there are millions of ads published every year so the ASA cannot check all of them. These kind of ads have to follow a CAP code. If the publishers do not follow this code then they will get punished. The most serious punishment that they can receive is that all of their future advertisements that are not being broadcast have to be pre-checked for as long as 2 years. Once an ad has aired then the viewers/listeners have the right to complain about it. The ASA handle all ad complaints. They can take action on an advertising publisher from just one complaint as long as it presents a valid point. It does not take multiple complaints to take down an ad. In 2012 the ASA recieved a total of 31,298 complaints for around 18,990 different ads. 3,700 of these ads had to be changed or taken down. When an ad breaches the codes, it is either taken down or has to be changed until it is suitable. If a broadcast advert is in breach of the broadcasting code then like TV, the publishers can also have their license to broadcast taken off them.

Recently the company, Virgin Media has had an advert banned from TV after their rivals, Sky and BT, had put in complaints about it. The advert featured athlete Usain Bolt dressed as different characters using the virgin media services around a house. The ad states that Virgin media provides 5 times faster downloading speeds than BT and Sky. This was complained about by BT as they did not provide sufficient information to prove that this was true. Sky also complained after this as well as BT complaining again as Virgin implied that everyone would always be able to download things 5 times faster however this was just based off average speeds. Despite Virgin trying to defend their ads, the ASA stated that Virgin did not supply enough information about their speeds on their website. The ASA staid "the information provided was not sufficient to ensure the details of the comparison could be verified". To deal with the second complaint, the ASA said that the statement "download five times faster Sky and BT's regular broadband" was misleading. This is because they made it out as though it was always 5 times faster than it's rivals which would not be the case. The ASA said it would have been acceptable if they had showed that it was based on average speeds and was not a definite figure.

Image from: https://recombu.com/digital/article/virgin-media-usain-bolt-bt-sky-filed-complaints

Issues related with regulation

Consumer Choice
Consumer Choice in media is basically that people can watch/listen to what they choose to. This is an issue in regulation as some people think that some areas of media should not be regulated. This is because it is there choice for what they want to watch and so they can choose whether to watch non regulated productions. For example some people may want to watch films without all the cuts in them, cuts that will have had to be made after regulation. This means that people are questioning the job of regulators as they believe it should be their choice as to what they 'consume' and not someone else's.

Freedom of Information
Freedom of information means that people should be able to learn what they want and should not be restricted from learning new information. Everything should just be open to the public. Due to the Regulatory bodies this is not always the case. Some information is withdrawn from certain media sectors as it breaches some of their rules. Lots of productions, especially anything based off an actual event, will have content removed as a regulatory body feels it would be inappropriate to share the information. This is not something everyone is pleased about. Many people feel they have a right to know this information as much as anyone else does and it should be available to them if they want to know it. Also some people think that letting the government keep hold of the information is giving them too much power and giving the public less freedom to do as they please. In countries like China, the government have complete control over the media and restrict the general public from many things. This has led the public to be scared of the government as they worry for their lives if they break the rules and use some of the band areas of media. The people of Britain do not want their country to turn out the same way and so would want more freedom so they can be certain we are not heading in the same direction as China.

Censorship
Censorship in media is ensuring that there is no harmful or offensive content in a media production. All the regulatory bodies are involved with censorship. When they regulate their sectors of media, they are doing so to ensure that everything is suitable for it's target audience.  For example, films will be regulated before they are broadcast by the BBFC. Films generally come with an age rating that shows how old you must be to watch it and most films that can range from 12 rating upwards are played from 9 o'clock upwards. This is because after this time children are not expected to be watching TV and if they are then it should be with the parents consent. If an explicit film was to be shown before 9 then it would need cuts. Any part of the film that would be too explicit for a child would have to be cut out. This is what Censorship is. It is mainly in place to protect minors and prevent any harm coming to people who would not be happy seeing explicit content. It is argued whether censorship should even exist. This is because some people would like to watch what they want, when they want and they will decide if it's appropriate or not. People don't like to wait until 9 o'clock for a wider range of programs to come on that they might enjoy more. Others would disagree as they would not want to risk their children seeing any inappropriate content. As long as there is a watershed then they can tell what time programs may start becoming more explicit.

Time lapse

Time lapse

A time lapse is an animation created by a series of images. The images are automatically taken through a timer and when all the pictures are taken they are sped up into a video to make a time lapse. A time lapse animation is usually made to film things that would usually take a long time and make it shorter. They can show people how something can progress without them having to watch the actual thing for hours. Time lapse can also be used to tell a story however this is would not be very affective as they generally go too fast to tell a story, this is why they generally are used to get one point across.

This is a time lapse video. It shows a man drawing a bag of M&M's. He takes a picture every couple of seconds from a birds eye view of the picture. The video lasts around 3 minutes yet the actual drawing will have taken around an hour. This video is one of many. There are a lot of other videos that are similar as they show someone drawing something different. These videos are popular because people will take interest in the persons talent and they can also be watched as tutorials.

This is another time lapse video .The video is 14 years in 4 minutes. It shows a girls life from a baby to 14 years old. A picture will have been taken once every few days for 14 years. This is a one of a kind video which is proved to be very popular. It is the only one of it's kind as the timescale needed to create it is extremely long however the end product is interesting to everyone.

This video is of a homeless army veteran. In the video he is given a complete makeover which includes his outfit and hair. The camera takes a picture around every 2 seconds and through it we see him gradually change in appearance. The actual makeover will have taken around about an hour to complete. This video is for all audiences and many people can watch it as inspiration to show how you can change. There are similar videos to this that show how people can change their look as this is something that interests a lot of people. It is done as a time lapse animation because the makeover process is generally a long one and it would be too boring to watch it go on for an hour or so,

cut out animation

Cut out animation

A Cut out is a form of animation that creates stories by using paper or card cut outs. Each moving object in the animation will be a different paper cut out. The animation works by taking a picture and then moving the different parts to move how you want. Common uses of cut outs is to create characters. A character will be made by cutting out each body part. This way you can move each body part and make it look as though the character is moving. 

This is our animation. We made this by taking newspapers and magazines and cutting out images that we thought would look good in our animation. We then moved each image a tiny bit at a time to make them move. Our background is also a cut out image which we took from a newspaper. The difference with this is we stuck blue tac on the back of it so it didn't move out of place when we were moving the other cut outs.

This clip is of the TV show South Park. South Park's first episode was made in 1997 using cut outs and stop motion technology. It took around 3 months until the episode was finished. Nowadays, it is helped a long using digital animation. The south park episodes will have used a lot more cut outs so they can make their characters do more actions. An example is they will have their eyes and their pupils as cut outs so they can make their characters look around. South Park has become an immensely popular franchise with 18 seasons a feature film and even their own video game which all started out with just a few cut out paper characters.

This animation is made by Lotte Reiniger. The animation was made in 1926. It was one of the first animations created and was made entirely using cut out paper characters that were made to look like silhouettes. Reiniger made feature films using only paper cut outs. The process for this will have taken an extremely long time as the paper can only be moved ever so slightly in between shots to make it look realistic and get a good end product.

Pixelation animation

Pixilation animation

Pixelation animation is a stop motion animation which is made using people. It is made in the same way that the other stop motion techniques are however it is most commonly made using real settings as well as people rather than fake sets and and objects. The People will have to move slightly between each shot which would make the whole production harder to complete as it is harder to keep a person or another living thing completely still. Pixelation animations generally do not contain other living things as it would be too hard to get them to move exactly as you want them too.

This is a pixilation animation that I was involved in making. To make this we used a hue webcam to take pictures of ourselves. We took around 5 pictures each and on each picture we changed our facial expression. This meant when it was played it showed the person in the centre of the screen pull 5 different faces in less than a second and then the person would change and the next person would do the same. The whole video lasts around 6 seconds even though we had to take 5 pictures for each person.

In this video we see a boy being chased by another boy. Throughout the video they come together and battle in different environments that relate to other animations such as "Mario". To add in the animation, the creator will have had to insert the images to each shot. If the animation was made by taking lots of pictures then the animated objects would have to be adding to each picture for as long as the animator wants it in the production.

This is another pixelation animation. In this animation we see a man acting out his daydream. In his daydream he pursues all different kinds of adventures. including running away from a boulder. This animation is done by making the man lie on the grass and make objects move past him. By taking the pictures from a birds eye view it looks like the man is stood up and when an object goes past it looks as though it around him. This video was created in 2012.

This pixelation video shows a couple going on an adventure together. They travel through all different environments including the ocean and riding in a hot air balloon. They have made this animation by making the pair lay down on a laminate floor and have created objects using basic materials. Like the last video, they take pictures of them from a birds eye view and making them move between each picture taken. This video was uploaded in 2011.