Copyright...

Introduction to Copyright:

What is copyright?

Copyright applies to any medium. This means that you must not reproduce copyright protected work in another medium without permission. This includes, publishing photographs on the internet, making a sound recording of a book, a painting of a photograph and so on.

Copyright does not protect ideas for a work. It is only when the work itself is fixed, for example in writing, that copyright automatically protects it. This means that you do not have to apply for copyright.

A copyright protected work can have more than one copyright, or another intellectual property (IP) right, connected to it. For example, an album of music can have separate copyrights for individual songs, sound recordings, artwork, and so on. Whilst copyright can protect the artwork of your logo, you could also register the logo as a trade mark. (http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-about.htm)

Research:

To begin with as a group we decided to breakdown the brief in order for us to gain better understanding of copyright law. We then began watching some videos and documentaries related to copyright and then began taking notes and creating brainstorms about it.

The video that we thought was very interesting was “Everything is a Remix”, which consisted of scenes taken from different movies and ombined together to show the similarity and the fact that alot of scenes from movies are the same. We liked the idea of sharing the content throughout the different movies, however does not mean every detail should be copied exact. We then went onto looking at other documentaries and came across “RIP: A Remix Manifesto”, which showed us that sharing material is a good thing as stated in the video “Sharing is an es-sence of change”. we thought it was good to have knowledge of what different people thought about copyright so that we could use it within our idea. Overall A Remix Manifesto inspired us as a group and gave us ideas as it consists of a lot of wise things said by people that we could later use when developing our idea.

Overall i would say that this gave us an insight to what copyright is about and where it applies, which meant that we were now ready to go onto further develop our research and begin looking at the different areas affected by copyright issues, such as film and tv.

Initial Ideas...

Ideas:

The first idea we came up with consisted of showing the difference between effort in action, which meant that we would portray the hardwork that goes into making a film or other material which include factors such as preperation, time/hours of work put in and money/cost to make it; and then show this in comparison to the lack of effort that goes into simply downloading this film illegally of the internet, showing no respect for all the effort and hardwork that has gone into making his movie for our pleasure. we decided that if we were to further develop this idea it would be shown as a video/advert.

Another idea we came up with was a series/ensemble of posters again portraying a similar message to the previous idea of effort. however as a group we decided that we did not want to use any famous actors to get the message acrosswithin our posters or other design ideas, the reason for this would be because we felt that it may give the audience an instant feeling of degradation that the actor is being used because they are better than us and as if they are looking down on the audience, which we thought would create envy and make the audience want to download illegally more.

We then thought of another idea that we could use to portray our ideas and thoughts about copyright, which consists of creating a proverb or a saying that has meaning to it and that has influence. we decided that we would incorporate a series of proverbs within digital poster designs that would be installed in significant areas. The posters would consist of the hardwork and effort theme as in the previous ideas however when looked at changes to a black reflective screen that shows your reflection overlayed with a proverb making you think about whether you are that person that takes part in piracy/copyright.

Research:

After completing the research on copyright within my group, we then went onto developing this research into ideas for how we were going to protray being against piracy without being negative, scare-mongering or finger-wgging. we began thinking about factors such as where anti piracy can be shown and came up with ideas such as: adverts both online and in cinemas and also key points that we would like to incorporate within our ideas such as: respect for copyright, positive impact on consumers, emotive moments and effort.

by this stage we began looking at ideas for how we are going to present our idea, whether it is going to be a video, interaction or interactive website, and came across some examples for each idea and how we could use it within our own work.

Final Idea...

Chosen Idea:

After completing our research and thinking of different ideas, we decided that using the research and ideas we had, we were going to stick with the idea of creating a proverb and presenting it as a digital poster display and combinig elements from our other ideas within it. The reason for why we chose to use this idea and further develop and explore it would be due to the fact that we thought that this would be the best way of getting our message across showing respect and also considering the fact that we dont want to be negative or finger-wagging.

We decided that we were going to portray this idea within a digital poster installation which is going to show an image of the hardwork and effort that goes into making film, music etc. for us; and as you walk and look at the poster a black reflective screen similar to how your computer or mobile phone screen looks when it is off and appears as a reflective screen will come up with the proverb/saying overlayed on it, the aim is that as you are reading this text and you can see your own reflection it makes you think “Is that me?” Is that what I am doing?” etc. we thought that this method is very effective and will have influence on the audience.

Development:

As part of some further development for our final idea we decided to go onto researching what a proverb is how we were going to relate these proverbs to our idea and what it represents.

What is a proverb?

We came up with a brainstorm/list of ideas of what we thought:

• Life Lesson• Applies on a day to day basis• Guide to be respectful• Something to learn from• Inspirational• Example• Words of wisdom

This is an example of some of the things we came up with in relation to proverbs and our idea. We then went onto sketching out some ideas and planning out how it was going to look.