Music Video Regulation

This blog post will discuss regulations we had to follow and how we worked with them. This blog was done by Aurel (me) and Regine.

Regulations

This part of the blog was done by Aurel (me).

Regulation is important to keep audiences safe from content that may not be suitable for them. In our music video, we had to follow regulations set by Cambridge and by our school to ensure our audience's safety.

Cambridge Regulations

• Use English songs or add English subtitles to non-English songs. 
  
• Avoid topics that encourage drug use, harmful substances & content, and suicide.
  
• Vehicle usage was advised against

Implementation

We implemented these rules in our music video by using an English song, excluding creating content that may include drug us and harmful actions/substances.

Initially, we wanted to include the use of vehicles in our music video's intro as we had not known these regulations yet. However, we opted against this anyways as we felt it would be risky to film a vehicle in a tight road.

School Regulations

These rules were created by our school and teacher as our music video will be showcased by the school and so must have content that is appropriate for students.

• No bad language
• No explicit songs
  
• No violence

Implementation

We implemented these rules by using a song that does not have any bad language or explicit themes and by producing content that avoids showcasing any form of violence.

Rating

This part of the blog was done by Aurel (me).

As we are Indonesian producers releasing content to a dominantly Indonesian target audience, we wanted to use the Indonesian rating system for music videos. However, I struggled to find information on it so we decided to use the British Rating System instead. 

According to this rating, our music video falls under (U) Suitable for All. This is due to the reasons listed below:

• No dangerous behaviour
  
• No discrimination
  
• No drugs
• No bad language
• No nudity
• No sexual behaviours or references to it
  
• Lack of threat or scary scenes: Although there are no particularly scary or threatening scenes, death is a huge theme in our music video. This may be upsetting to children but death is not directly shown and the music video intends to give out a reassuring outcome which keeps us suitable for this rating.
  
• No violence or injury

This rating is advantageous to us as it helps us maintain our family friendly brand image and is suitable for our target audience (15-25 yr olds)

Licensing Email

This part of the blog was done by Regine.

To understand why this blog was essential to our project, I first looked into the importance of copyright. Copyright grants exclusive rights to the creators of original music, which allows them to control the usage of their work. Licensing is a legal agreement that grants permisison to use copyright music.
We had chosen our music video to cover Rina Sawayama's song 'Catch Me In The Air' and were told we had to request the license for the music. I researched the label in which Rina Sawayama was under (Dirty Hit Record) but I found that the licensing agent was under Universal Music Publishing Group. Their Contact Us page on their website led me to this email, communications@umusic.com. I wrote the request email as follows;

As I had expected, we did not receive a response. However, we decided to move forward with our project as we felt as though we aren't misusing or profiting off our music video

Self-reflection:

• This task was beneficial as it allowed us to ensure if our content aligns with our target audience as it prevents our target audience from avoiding our content due to the rating not being suitable for them. 
  
• The licensing email was also beneficial since it lets us avoid any legal trouble and ensure that we would be able to gain copyright permission.