Contractual Letter.

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to you about your job advertisement for the chance to be an apprentice digital video production producer for your company. I have read through the terms of the contract and have noticed some complications with what you are asking of the applicants. There are some aspects of the advert that are missing and are incorrect, such as you have specified a payment but however, it is very vague in how much they will get paid depending on how many hours they are able to work. Also, what are the payment benefits and what do you need to do to gain them in the job. For example, if an applicant works efficiently for 45 hours in the week but only earns £15,000, it will be unfair on them if another applicant worked inefficiently for only 10 hours in the week but earns £35,000.
Job applications and their contracts also require confidentiality clauses and exclusivity clauses. Confidentiality clauses means that the applicants aren't allowed to speak of what happens in the production outside of the production environment. Your advertisement does not contain this clause. Exclusivity clause means that the applicant cannot work with another contract similar to their current position. Your contract has stated that you must not apply for other positions of this nature. Therefor, it's an Exclusivity clause.

I also wish to discuss the Employment Legislation. Such as The Equality Act. The equality act is there to protect the workers from discrimination in the workplace. This can include discrimination against a disability, or harassment etc. It also refers to if you are treated less positively than other people applying for the job, simply because you have a disability. However, it is often that these rules are disobeyed. For example your contract breaks this law a few times. Such as you have specified that you are looking for a applicant who is aged below 30. If someone who is aged over 30 may have better experience than someone who is aged below 30, then you are limiting yourself for hiring a better employee. This is discrimination against your employees age. Another way you have broken the laws of the equality act, is by stating you only want your applicants to be christian. This is then unfair on other applicants who either don't follow a religion, or who follow a different religion to Christianity, but who also have the perfect set of experience and qualifications to fit the terms of the contract. The equal opportunities legislation means that all employees have the right to work and not be discriminated against, especially in aspects such as their sex, race or age.
Employers liability is a legal requirement if your business has more than one worker, it gives you compensation if an employee makes an accusation or claim against you for an illness or injury as a result of their employment.
Employees rights are the negotiation of a workers pay, benefits and working conditions. Also these are legal rights that relate to their labor and working hours. Some of these include:

• Getting the National Minimum Wage.
• Protection against unlawful discrimination.
• To not be treated less favorably if they work part-time.

Health and safety - as a result of your employment your employees, or former employees may get injured or taken ill. It is your job as an employer to manage and insure the health and safety of your employees in the workplace.

In your proposed video job application there is nothing written there to assure your applicants that these three areas are covered and that they will be protected when working for you. This will be a big concern for your applicants and/or future employees.

Trade Unions - occur to assure the rights and the interests of the workers/employees. However, to get these benefits you have to be part of a union, and as a member you will be required to pay yearly fees. The BECTU has a membership that costs £120.

I also wish to discuss the Ethical issues with the job advertisement. You as an employer are required to draw up policies, procedures, and codes of practice for you specific, individual establishment. Codes of Practice, although not part of the law, are there to protect the consumer or the citizen, and in so doing, have a powerful role in Television and Film. It is designed to avoid legal issues and promote good practice. Another issue would be the representation of the video, as some social issues such as rape or abuse can be manipulated or portrayed wrongly by the media; this can cause serious problems within the medias audience. For example in the media and in your advertisement you have stated 'including female victims and male offenders' stating that the male will always be responsible for the rape and the female is always innocent. This is not true as you and the media have portrayed as there are many known female rape offenders and male victims. This wrong portrayal will also lead to social concerns such as making all women either terrified of being raped by their boyfriends/partners or make women rape offenders think they are doing nothing wrong and think they can get away with rape. Also this portrayal puts all men in a bad light when it comes to relationships and are often easily falsely accused of rape, when they are in fact either innocent or the victim themselves. This also make males afraid or weak to report that they have been raped, as they think that it isn't a crime if they are abused and they should be 'strong enough' to fight back and get out of the situation. This isn't always true or easy for all guys to do.

Finally I wish to discuss Legal Issues with the contract. I'll begin with the Ofcom broadcasting code. This code exists because of The Communications Act (2003) and The Broadcasting Act (1990). The two sections I will talk about are Protecting the under eighteens and Harm and Offence sections. Protecting the under eighteens section refers to the safety and protection in the media of children who are under eighteen. To avoid emotional or physical harm to children, programmes that contain; Drugs; Smoking; Alcohol; Violent and/or Dangerous behavior; Offensive language; Sexual material; Nudity; Films, premium subscription film services, pay per view services; Exorcism the occult and the paranormal; involvement of under eighteens in programmes. That's why programmes that contain this sort of content are on after a certain time of day when children are less likely to be watching the television; such as school hours and evenings to late at night. This is a problem in your advertisement as you have stated that 'You should interview teenagers and other individuals who might be/have been affected by the topic, including female victims and male offenders who will talk candidly to the camera. You should compliment the interviews with re-enactments, dramatizations'. This is a problem because it is not an appropriate topic for teenagers and this might be triggering or traumatic for these children if they are victims of rape. Not to mention the re-enactments will involve nudity and could traumatize the victims even more and cause further damage to their mental state. Also the dramatizations may cause offence to the victims as it will be like a 'mick-take' on something that was genuinely traumatic for them to experience. This will result in causing them more mental harm.

The Harm and Offence section refers to the accepted standards that are applied to media content that provides the public with the right protection from harmful and/or offensive material. This includes material such as; Violence; dangerous behavior; suicide; Exorcism the occult and the paranormal; Broadcast competitions and voting. This is a problem in your advertisement as you have stated that you want 're-enactments, dramatizations' also you have stated that you wish to show this content to high school children; 'plan and produce a short documentary that can be shown to children at high school'.  This is highly inappropriate for children of a high school age, as it could cause them emotional scaring and make them traumatized or terrified about such events,
Another thing I would like to mention is the Obscene Publications Act (1959) which determines certain factors in the media and broadcasting of certain programmes. Factors such as the audiences age range and the time the production is broadcast, this will effect how obscene the material is seen to be. The British Board of  Film Classification (BBFC) - that is responsible for classifying  a media product and determining what age group/s it is appropriate for. According to the BBFC's  website, your production would be rated a 15. This means that people under 15 aren't allowed to see the content because it is deemed inappropriate for children under 15. The content that is in a 15 rated film are things like;

• Strong violence.
• Frequent strong language.
• Portrayals of sexual activity.
• Strong verbal references to sex.
• Sexual nudity.
• Brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence.
• Discriminatory language or behavior.
• Drug taking,

Some of the aspects for this age rating accounts for the content of your production such as the ones related to references or on screen portrayals of sex, nudity and violence, because you stated you wanted 'interviews with re-enactments, dramatizations' all on the topic of sex, rape and violence. Needing/ requiring your production to be rated a 15 is also problematic concerning your target audience. As high-schoolers leaving age is just before they are due to turn 16. This means the majority of your target audience wont be able to watch the video as it's content will be inappropriate for their age group/s.
Also I would like to discuss the Intellectual Property Law which is there to allow people to own what they create. This also links in to Copyright laws whose job it is to protect all written, theatrical, musical and artistic work, film, book layouts, sound recordings, broadcasts. It protects these works from being copied or used against the original owners permission. Therefor, you have to pay to have permission to use something that is classed/marked down as copyright material. Without the right permission it can lead to legal disputes. This is linked to the small print regarding recompense in your job advertisement. You stated that 'you will be recompensed up to the value of £20 for the production of the video' and you also stated that for your production you wanted it to contain 'a popular music soundtrack that will appeal to the target audience'. This is a big problem and a poor sum of money as to get popular music you will need to use a well known tune/song which will be protected by copyright laws, and to pay for it will be much more than a mere £20. Then the applicant will have no other funds to make the rest of the production and will have to use their own money or simply have to break the copyright law, which will be much worse for you and you applicant.

Yours sincerely

Victoria Brooks


References:

• http://www.ofcom.org.uk
• http://www.bbfc.co.uk/
• http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=3017
• http://www.healthyworkinglives.com/advice/Legislation-and-policy/Workplace-Health-and-Safety/health-safety-legislation
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_2003
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcasting_Act_1990
• https://www.hg.org/intell.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_Kingdom