M2: Consideration of Legal and Ethical Issues

Legal -

15 – Suitable only for 15 years and over - No one younger than 15 may see a 15 film in a cinema. No one younger than 15 may rent or buy a 15 rated video work.

Imitable behaviour - Dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) should not dwell on detail which could be copied. Whether the depiction of easily accessible weapons is acceptable will depend on factors such as realism, context and setting.


Threat - There may be strong threat and horror. A sustained focus on sadistic or sexual threat is unlikely to be acceptable.

Language - There may be strong language. Very strong language may be permitted, depending on the manner in which it is used, who is using the language, its frequency within the work as a whole and any special contextual justification.

Violence - may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable. Strong sadistic violence is also unlikely to be acceptable. There may be detailed verbal references to sexual violence but the depiction of sexual violence must be discreet and justified by context.

Above are the BBFC regulations for a media production being rated as a 15. I believe Pineclones meets the criteria for being rated as such.  Pineclones doesn't feature any Imitable Behavior such as self harm however it does show the murder of one of our characters however this is done in a non-violent/detailed way and there is no blood or gore. Pineclones does feature the Threat of a masked man chasing the characters be we believe this is a light usage of a threatening character and the costume design used doesn't make the character look scary. Pineclones does feature the use of Strong Language however it isn't used in large amounts with the odd curse word being featured in the dialogue, there is also no use of intense strong language. Finally Pineclones Shows very brief Violence in the final scene that shows the death of the character 'ben' however it is light violence and there is no detail on pain or injury of the character. 

The other legal issues surrounding my production are: Contracts for actors, Permission to Film in Locations and Copyright Laws. All of our actors signed contracts to be in the film and they agreed with the terms and conditions this contract gives us the permission to use the actors and there characters on screen and in our production. We filmed pinecones on Ilkley Moor which is an area with no photography or videography restrictions so there was no legal restrictions on what we could do however Ilkley moor is surrounded by privately owned moorland so we had to stay in the area that we chose to film in. copyright - copyright issues can occur when inputting music and sound effects, to deal with this we used royalty free music from a website so that the music couldn't be claimed. 

Ethical -

Pineclones only shows one specific social group and that is teenage boys, I think that the representation that we used for this group is fair the teenagers are drinking under age, this is not seen in the film but one character asked "does anyone want a beer" in the UK 85% of 15-17 year olds say they drink underage and this has been represented in the film. I don't think that we represented the teenage boys in a bad way as we made them out to be resourceful and smart however one of the characters, Ben, is represented to be a violent character when the masked man is assaulted with a bottle. taking into account the Effects model i don't think that Pineclones features anything that would inspire young audiences to imitate the behavior as it shows not use of drugs and no heavy violence it is also a fictional storyline that would never happen in real life.