Professional Ethics and Conduct

How much of an asshole can you legally be?

Within the film and TV industry, this is a question where opinions diverge massively. While the creative industries do have legal restrictions in many areas - such as copyright and plagiarism - these restrictions still often allow for unethical conduct (as we can see e.g. in the current #metoo-debate and unequal pay/employment amongst the genders).

If I am completely hones with you, I find it difficult to blog about this topic in an educational context. To me, most social and professional rules within a society (and the underlying ethics with them) are a tacit contract within each member of that society where adhering to them should be common decency.

Now we know from the sheer existence of laws and punishments that keeping to an ethic code is not a given even within a single culture, and that certain members within a society will not identify with the rules (and ethics) set as a whole.

We also know, that societies often create and enforce laws that violate other ethical sensations (such as abortion laws and the questions whether the mother's or the unborn child's life carries more weight, to open Pandora's box). And that is the issue with ethics:

They do vary. Not only from society to society and culture to culture, but also from individual to individual.

They change over time. What has been acceptable 5, 50, or even 500 years ago may now be frowned upon or heavily opposed to.

They do clash more often than not.

Having stated that, it is obvious that rules and regulations have to be set in order to guarantee as wide an agreement as possible. And while we as film students are obliged to keep to health and safety regulations, copyright, environmentally friendly film productions, fair and equal pay (at least of Equity actors and travel expenses as of now), there are many other filmmakers out there who do not keep to mutual ethical standards or agreements.

One example of that would be the Midnight Rider incident: On the first day of filming in 2014, the crew of Midnight Rider set up on a railroad trestle bridge in Georgia, believing it to be legally secured and rubber-stamped by producer and director Randall Miller. However, due to sheer negligence on the producers part, this bridge had not been secured by authorities and when a train eventually passed the spot, seven crew members were badly hurt and one - camera woman Sarah Jones - was killed by the approaching train.

During the course of the investigations, it became obvious that the producer was denied permission by the train company to film on that bridge. But being more interested in the shot, he wilfully ignored all Health and Safety regulations and belied his crew into filming there anyways, jeopardising their lives in the process.

But Health and Safety is not the only area where abidance by ethical rules is regulated.

For the longest time in the film industry, both in the US and in Britain, censorship of films has been a heavily regulated area in filmmaking where most actions and plots on screen had to follow the ethical standards of their time, such as e.g. the non-display of sexual encounters, consumption of drugs, violence, etc. This, naturally, led to very creative solutions as to depiction and insinuations.

Artistically, there is another slippery slope which concerns the 'truthfulness to the story'. The question of truthful depiction - especially in the news and documentary filmmaking - is highly important. As every issue, case, or story has more than one side to it, the cinematic depiction of them can cause quite a few headaches:

Whose perspective is going to be portrayed? How is it portrayed? Is it balanced or biased, either by artistic choices (such as camera angles), by the form of questions asked, or by (un)intentional exclusion and/or censorship of material (time-wise, through editing, or incomplete research)?

There are some hardliners within film studies claiming that - as you point your camera towards someone or something - you inevitably censor the rest of reality as it presents itself to you at that point in time. Whatever you capture, it is not the reality as it was present to you; it is an altered version of it. Any angle, framing, or focus you devise on your footage, changes the perception of that depicted 'reality' and can thus, possibly even change the perception of the story itself. And while Susan Sontag initially deployed her philosophy on photography, there is no doubt that this does not apply to film and filmmaking as well.

Documentary filmmaking - on a side note - has thus been difficult to me, since I often do not identify with the philosophy of non-interference that looms behind it. While this might be appropriate in many cases where personal opinion of a minority clashes with official beliefs or reports, there are also extreme areas that are outright cruel. Especially in war documentaries and war reporting, where subjects have been left to their own devices while working as e.g. forced human landmine searchers in Vietnam. Here again, two different kinds of ethics clash: The truthfulness to reality and the right to life and physical integrity.

Which brings me to the truthful use of visual material itself: Copyright and plagiarism! What content is mine and what not? What am I allowed to use and do I have permission to use it? How can I get permission and how do I have to declare it as property of someone else? There are still many cases of visual plagiarism out there where images and music scores have been used but never properly paid for in order to gain more money from a derivative work.

As you can see, in filmmaking - as much as anywhere else - it's all about context. The censorship or depiction of contextual information can change the outcome of a story, film, or documentary tremendously. That also holds true for the depiction of individuals: Don't offend people knowingly, don't portray them in a deceiving way or against better judgment. And most importantly, don't discriminate!

According to the Single Equality Act, it is - after all - illegal to discriminate on the grounds of protected characteristics such as e.g. race, sex, sexual orientation, disability, religion and/or belief, transgenderism, pregnancies, marriage, and age.

This can also clash with proprieties such as freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of expression in relation to the Human Rights Act. Which begs the question on why women are still paid less than men for the same occupation and responsibilities.

But there is also the aspect of sustainability in filmmaking. While that is an area that I did not consider when hearing about ethical conduct (Shame on me!), it nonetheless begs for important questions: How do you produce your films? What kind of materials do you use in all stages of production and are they recyclable? Are you acting responsibly when being on location and tidying up after yourself or do you just dump your waste wherever you can? How do you transport your cast, crew, and equipment?

So what does all of that mean for my work now?

It means that I will have to think about what kind of filmmaker I want to be.

Would I be ready to compromise certain values of mine if the production at hand requires me to and I am, say, financially dependant on working on it? Would I be able to work objectively at any point in time, regardless of the subject matter or will I be able to pick and choose?

The same goes for issues such as payment: Do I overcharge or undersell myself? Can I allow myself to earn less on a certain shoot where the cause is more important to me than the earnings? Do I then inevitably contribute to the underpayment of many beginning filmmakers that need to establish themselves first before reeling in the bigger paycheques?

I also means that I have to constantly ask myself what my work contributes to society and whether it enforces moral values or undermines them. Will it leave the world a better place, even if just for a second?

And that I will have to tackle these issues as they come. But as of now, I am confident that I won't blindly do things I do not agree with. Only a few things are so adamantly set in stone that they remain unchangeable. Maybe I can bring something to the table that changes the outcome of a production to a more balanced, or truthful one.

Well, as they say here in Britain: Crossing the bridge when I come to that.

References:

Acmemag.net (2017) Top 30 Leadership Quotes [online] Image taken from: https://bit.ly/2HnIH6B [Accessed on 29 November 2017]

Cipriani, C. (2014) The Ethics of Documentary Filmmaking [online] http://www.indiewire.com/2014/10/the-ethics-of-documentary-filmmaking-69007/ [Accessed on 29 November 2017]

KBL781 (2011) FFC Guiding Principles for Ethical Filmmaking (2008) [online] http://ethics.iit.edu/ecodes/node/5008

[Accessed on 29 November 2017]

Johnson, T. (2014) U.S. Department of Labor Cites ‘Midnight Rider’ Production for ‘Willful and Serious’ Safety Violations [online] https://variety.com/2014/film/news/midnight-rider-death-osha-violation-1201283204/ [Accessed on 29 November 2017]

Dorian, M. et al. (2015) 'Midnight Rider' Filmmakers Edited Footage from Horrific Train Accident Shoot [online] https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/midnight-rider-filmmakers-edited-footage-horrific-train-accident/story?id=29758781 [Accessed on 29 November 2017]

Sontag, S. (1979) On Photography London: Penguin

Sontag, S. (2004) Regarding the Pain of Others London: Penguin