Music Video Regulation

This is my blogpost for my research on music video regulation for my comp 3 project where me and Chelsea did the work together. This blogpost is written by me (Kalista). 

There are some rules that we need to follow before creating our music video, which may be interpreted as censorship or regulation. We had been suggested by Cambridge to avoid talking sensitive issues like the use of weapons, dangerous stunts, suicide and drug usage. Vehicle safety concerns were also discouraged. Since we also attend a conservative school, the teacher and the school must provide appropriate content, things like inappropriate language, no explicit music, and violence are refrained. 

As it is not easy to find the Indonesian rating system, me and my teammates decided to use the British rating system, namely BBFC, which is being broken down into 7 categories from the media content that is suitable for all until the one that is suitable only for adults. Based on the rating system, our music video plan (unrequited & complexity of love during youth) and song choice (“The Weekend” by BIBI) is categorised to be suitable for 15 years and over due to several reasons: 

• Use of substance: We have included an implication of alcohol usage (red cup) whilst in fact it is containing water. It is appropriate for our star to act "tipsy" when utilising this prop because she is 18 years old in real life, which is similar to her artist's age. However, since the scene will only last a few seconds, hence the audience is not particularly encouraged or promoted by it. 

• Language: Only one bad word—the "S" word—is used in the song's lyrics, but in order to avoid encouraging strong language, we won't have the artist say the word in our music video. Instead, we will show a different scene without lip-syncing. 

• Theme: As previously stated, the theme of our song and music video centers on complicated romantic relationships and unrequited love, which tend to be more relatable to teenagers who are much older. For this reason, we believe that it is appropriate for those who are at least 15 years old, as those who are younger may not fully comprehend the context, which could lead to misinterpretation and encourage them to engage in negative behavior.

SONG PERMISSION

Since we want to use BIBI & 88rising’s song "The Weekend" for our music video, we must ask the record label for permission to use it. Chelsea found the email address to contact 88rising, the record label that BIBI is under, here: https://88rising.com/terms-of-service. This includes the licensing agreement that grants permission to utilise the song. The email address was info@88rising.com. The email request that we sent, which Kalista (me) wrote and delivered, is below: 

Since this is simply just a school project and we are not seeking financial gain, we are not expecting any replies to the email and in fact we end up not receiving any. As long as it's being utilised for the proper purposes, we have chosen to just stick with it. By sending the email request to 88rising (BIBI's record label), we have taken this action to avoid any copyright restrictions and further problems, like the ones on YouTube. 

Self-reflection: Before creating our music video, it is essential to follow the rules that are being set by our school, Cambridge, as well as BBFC. We consider these rules to avoid including content that might cause any unwanted issues or harm to third parties. Moreover, we also want to prevent re shootings if any of our scenes is against the procedures being published online. Since we would be posting our Music Video (MV) in Youtube we made sure that we did not break our school rules and did not include harmful, negative, or sensitive content in our MV. Additionally, we also established age rating category in which our product falls under and we decided that our MV rating is suitable only for 15 years and over since we did include a brief alcohol being implied by 'red cups' however it was actually filled with water. We also did not include any violence, dangerous behavior, discrimination, etc that is not aligned with the BBFC. 

We also agreed that it is still needed and important to ask for song permission from the record label to notify them and for us to receive permission and proper license since using copyrighted song without their permission would be against the stated law. Hence, we decided to ask permission to use the song professionally. However, even though we did not receive any email response until the end this awareness will help me to take responsibility of my action.