Writing for Television and Video: Task 1B

Agent Representation:
The job of an agent is to find a writer work or producers to send their scripts off to. Primarily to gain an agent an upcoming writer will send his work off to different agencies and if there’s one who likes it they will call the writer in for an interview. The next step once the agencies has decided to take the writer on would be to decide a fee, alot of agents will take a minimum of 10% of whatever the writer earns from a job that the agent has gotten for them. Usually the agent takes this fee as commission for his time and effort that he placed into the job. The most important job an agent would have is to negotiate contracts with production companies and try to get the best price for his client. This might be a one off large payment or they may be able to negotiate different factors into the deal for instance a percentage of all merchandise sold to do with the production. Often the most annoying thing about trying to get an agent is that one will not take you on unless some of your work has actually been produced, and usually to get your work produced you will need the aid of an agent, this is a vicious circle as you cannot have one without the other.

Royalty Payments:
Royalty payments are paid to the writer each time their product is shown on television, radio, the internet or on the big screen. The way royalties work for a writer is that once the writers script has been commissioned to be made into a program, each time the program is shown on television the writer will receive a set amount of money from the channel that’s shown it. This agreement is usually worked into the writer’s contract that the writer’s agent will negotiate with the channel and production company. Royalty payments are used mostly with music artists as they usually sign a deal with radio stations and music channels that each time their song or video is shown to the public they will get money from the channel or radio station. This can prove to be a lucrative form of income if the artist’s song gets into the charts as if it’s in the charts it’s more likely to be played. Writers will usually get royalty payments from things such as DVD sales. Again this is usually worked into the contract by the writers agent.

Copyright:
Copyright is when something is protected by law and cannot be copied otherwise the person who copied it can be prosecuted for plagiarism. It usually happens with scripts and books as the writers need to protect themselves and their products. There are many methods of copyright one is just by putting the copyright symbol on the front, this method is not legally binding but it can act as a deterrent to people who’d attempt to steal the work. Another method is to post a copy of the product to yourself and when it arrives don’t open it as on the envelope it would be stamped with the postage date. This is done so then you have proof of when it was delivered and therefore created. The final way is to actually pay out and have it legally copyrighted in your name so that if anyone comes up with a product that’s similar and you believe they stole the idea from you. You will be able to prosecute. Issues of breach of copyright have been in the news alot especially around famous authors. Harry Potter creator and author J.K. Rowling has recently won a court battle in which the author of Willy the Wizard accused Rowling of stealing ideas from her book for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Censorship and Libel:
Censorship doesn’t just affect television programmes or films when they’re released but also in the early development of the script. Once the script is drafted it’s usually passed onto to a script editor who has been told by producers about what time the show is going out and what the target audience is. The job of the editor is to make sure that the script doesn’t contain anything that’s unsuitable for broadcast. If there is it will be passed back to the writer to be amended, sometimes even if the script editor says it’s passable the producer still wields the power to say no and pass it back to the writer to be changed. They have to make sure for instance if the show is going out before the watershed that the script contains no sex, swearing, drug use, racism or anything that guidelines have forbidden to be shown before the 9pm watershed.
Libel is a form of defamation of character but in written form. A writer can get be prosecuted if they published an untrue statement about a person. In 2004 MP George Galloway received £150,000 in damages from tabloid paper The Daily Telegraph after they published an untrue story claiming that the MP had received money from the regime of Iraq president Saddam Hussein. George Galloway successfully prosecuted The Daily Telegraph for the statement and received the money and a full apology. This can be classed as getting off lightly as it’s been known for some cases to run into millions of pounds worth of damages. So a writer has to be very careful about what they right and make sure if they’re going to write something like that, that it’s completely 100% true.

By Gareth Billington

Written Report on Purpose Music Video Task 1 [29.1] Task 1B

The primary purpose of a music video is to promote the band and their music. Music videos are of major importance to upcoming and already recognised bands. Since the creation of music sharing sites and video upload sites such as Vimeo and YouTube, bands and artists are able to get their music videos across alot more people therefore it increases their target audience. Although promotion is the primary purpose of music videos they have many other purposes.
Since launching in 2005 YouTube is used alot by music promotion channels to broadcast new music videos. One of the largest channels that broadcast music videos is VEVO. This channel has many different channels that broadcast many different artists from Lady Gaga to Bruno Mars.

Video sharing websites such as YouTube are powerful promotion tools because they have the power of making a music video go viral. In 2011 the song “Friday” by Rebecca Black was never broadcast on television however it was broadcast on YouTube and became the most hated video on YouTube. It may have been hated but on its own it reached over 20million views. This is proof of the power of the internet, it made the video go viral and reach news channels. This worked as a perfect promotional tool, because the more people hated it the more people were intrigued to watch it and see what all the fuss was about.

Another form of promotion for the band and song is sometimes they’re approached by film companies who asked to use the bands song in a film. An example of this is with the film “Armageddon” the band Aerosmith was asked to produce a song, their song for the film, “I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing”, became an international hit and helped the band reach a new audience because of the popularity of the film and their song. Not only does it increase their popularity but it also increases their income, not only will they release their song as a single and on their next album but it would also be released as a digital download and on the official movie soundtrack. So that in itself has increased their avenues of income as they could have money coming in from many directions.

Just selling the song is one way of making profit from it but there are other ways of making potential profit from their song. One way is to allow other companies to advertise during their adverts in the form of product placement. In Eminem’s video for his song “Love The Way You Lie” the vodka brand Stolichnaya vodka was featured in several scenes. This is extra profit for both the music artist and the vodka company. The vodka company gets an in video advert for their product that could increase sales. Eminem gets money out of it because Stolichnaya paid to be able to feature their advert. Another video was “Telephone” by Lady Gaga which had the most product placement seen in a video for a while. The interesting thing is that it’s a spoof video more than a serious video, so it almost makes fun of all product placements.

A large selling point for music videos and music tracks is something called synergy. This can happen when an artist or band go to a television studio or film production company and ask for their song or at least some of their material to be played during the show or film. The production companies usually have to pay some form or royalties to the artist for every time their song is used, this also happens on alot of music channels. Soap operas use this method quite alot because there is usually a scene where the television is on in the background and the specific artists music is playing. Sometimes they will even have it so the actors in the scene are copying dance moves.