UNIT 12- ASSIGNMENT 3

REPORT FOR AARDMAN STAFF

ROBERT EASTWOOD

CONTRACTUAL

TYPES OF CONTRACTS
There are loads of different types of contracts. The law can change depending on
what country you are in. A contract is normally done when you agree to something
for a amount of time. Aardman will have different contracts with different
companys. One company which Aardman have a contract with is Data Return UK.
You can get a contract on a phone with a certain amount of money you can spend
on the contract every week, month or year.

NEGOTIATING CONTRACTS
Accommodating- This is where people solve problems and help preserve others personal
relationships.
Avoiding- There are some companys that dont want to work with others unless they have to.
Collaborating- This is where you work with other people and will negotiate the situations with
people.
Compromising- There will be some people that will negotiate and finalize the deal and
compromising can be a fair way for both parties to get what they want.

NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENTS
A non-disclosure agreement can also be known as the confidential agreement or
a secrecy agreement. This type of agreement is a contract between two people
normally and it will contain details. All of the information within this contract
are between people and are only the people involved unless they want to
include someone else. There are two types of non-disclosure agreements and
the first one is the Unilateral NDA and this is known also as a one way
agreement where only one side wants to share their information but the other
party wants to keep their information secret. The second type of agreement is
the Bilateral NDA; this is where both parties will show their information instead
of keeping their information secret.

COMMISSIONING PROCESS
This process is where ideas are sent to broadcasters and then the programme will
have a budget, actors or characters and a sales pitch. Aardman would have been
using the commissioning process when they wanted to air their shows such as
Creature Comforts and Shaun the Sheep. For example, for Shaun the Sheep they
would have had to contact the broadcaster in this case it would be the BBC and they
would send them all the characters that will be in the show such as Shaun, Bitzer,
Shirley and Pidsley and they would also what to see the costs. But Aardman are a selfcommissioning, self-scheduling department and it also operates a rolling
commissioning process which means that they will accept and look at ideas at any
time.

COSTING
Contract costing focuses normally on high value jobs. High value jobs are jobs that are
in a single accounting period. The financial accounting focuses on the revenue and the
costs and the business will set a budget for the contractors when they are working out
expenses for jobs. Contract costing is that method of costing in cost accounting which is
used to collect and identify all the expenses relating to a specific contract.

SCHEDULING
When a schedule is made it is normally contracted. This means that the optimizer
cannot reschedule the work that has been given to them. Most of the time the
optimizer will be multithreaded which means that they can take more than one tasks
request at a time. As the optimizer can complete one task at a time they will have to
make a schedule and decide which tasks need to be completed first.

TIME MANAGEMENT
Contact management is about making and negotiating the terms and conditions in a
contact; it will be all about the vendors, customers, employers or the partners. With
time management you are mainly finding how much time you have to finish a project.
Aardman would think about the production then documentation and then agree on
any possible changes that may occur while in production or even post-production.

RISK MANAGEMENT
When a company is made they will have to look at all the risks that could happen if you
took the job. If a risk is found it will be fixed as soon as possible to prevent anyone
getting injures. If there are risks that cannot be fixed then they should go in a log book
for future references. Aardman would have done a risk assessment when they started
as well to make sure all the machines and cables work and are not going to trip or
electrocute anyone and they would make sure to make the fire escapes quick and easy
to find. Many risk management standards have been made and they include Project
Management Institute, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and ISO
standards.

WORKING TO A BRIEF
Mostly ever company works to a brief and the brief will explain what the task is and who
is working on it and how long they will have to complete the task. Also to help, on the
brief there would be aims to do for the task. When a company takes on a new project
they will probably get a client brief and the brief could be a set brief with no room to
negotiate; but it could be negotiable if the client allows it. There are two types of brief
you can get the first one is a contractual brief; this is a brief between the producer and
the commissioner and if the contract was broken then it could go to court and legal
action could be taken. The other type of brief is the negotiated brief which is where a
commissioner and a producer negotiate on certain parts of the production.

PENALTIES
A penalty is a set back and is not good for business; it is a fine. A penalty for a business is
if they spend too much time working on a project. The company got given a specific
timeline to follows and they didnt meet the deadline they could get a penalty for that.
This could ruin future developments for the company and some other companies may
not want to use them after this. Subcontracting is useful in situations where the range of
required capabilities for a project are very diverse.

REGULATORY ISSUES

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION
The freedom of information act 2000 provides public access to information held by the
authorities. The act is an act of parliament of the parliament of the United Kingdom and
it creates a public right of access to information held by the authorities. The full
provisions of the act came into force on the 1st of January 2005. The act covers any
recorded information that is held by England, Northern Ireland and Wales. Information
held is Scotland is covered by the Freedom of Information Scotland Act 2002. Public
authorities include government departments, local authorities, the NHS, state schools
and police forces. Recorded information includes printed documents, computer files,
letters, emails, photographs, and sound or video recordings.

CENSORSHIP
Censorship is the suppression of speech or other types of communication which
may be considered harmful or sensitive or politically incorrect by the government or
a media outlet. Media censorship gets news to you in many different ways but there
are decisions about keeping some peoples information or giving it out to the public
but this will probably make the person you target lose his/her privacy. When a
creator engages in censorship on his own work it is called self-censorship. If
censorship is indirect it is called soft censorship. Censorship is needed on loads of
different types of media such as books, music, films, TV, radio, press and the
internet.

TASTE AND DECENCY

Some people may find some things not decent meaning they are offended. Certain
things people can get offended at include:
Blasphemy
Violence
Bad language
Nudity
Bigotry
Explicit pictures or videos
Sedition
Obscenity
When it comes to the interactive media industry, companies such as Aardman create products they
would need to make sure would be suitable to show the public. Also Aardman mainly focus on kids as
their target audience so they dont want to put any violence or nudity in their films because mostly
young kids are going to watch it.

COPYRIGHT
The Copyright act was created in 1988. It was introduced for two reasons. One, making
sure peoples hard work is rewarded and two, to make sure that the creator never has
their work stolen. Before 1988 people didnt have really anyway of protecting their
work. This law covers a lot of different types of multimedia. This applies on copying
MP3, software, images, text, videos and songs. You are breaking the copyright law if
somebody creates something and you take what they created without their permission.
The copyright law also forbids you from giving a copy to a friend, making a copy then
selling it, renting the software without the permission of the copyright holder and
unless the licence allows it you cant use the software on a network.

TRADEMARK
Trademarks are used to show others that this company has made this product.
Trademarks can be images, symbols or text and the trademark can only be used by the
company that owns it and who made it in the first place. The purpose of a trademark is
so that nobody can copy the companies creations, if people do copy there work or
creations then they can be taken to court for copyright purposes. A trademark is a
recognizable sign, design or expression which identifies products or services of a
particular source from those of others. Aardman have their own trademark for their
work so nobody can steal it.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Intellectual property stands for IP. There are a number of creations which set different
rights. The owner will have some rights to different assets such as discoveries, words,
symbols, literary and artistic work. There are also other types of intellectual property
rights such as trademarks, copyright, trade secrets and industrial design rights. Aardman
may hire out different places and equipment and Aardman will have to0 follow the
rights of the equipment and the place they have hired out.

PROFESSIONAL BODIES

BRITISH INTERACTIVE MULTIMEDIA ASSOCIATION

The British Interactive Multimedia Association(BIMA) support and promote the British
digital industry. They also share knowledge, reward great work and also encourage the
next generation to take part to continue the great work of others and to make the work
even better. Benefits of working at BIMA include working with the government and other
professional bodies to get access to the market and they will also have talk about key
issues. Aardman will have to comply with BIMA meaning they will have to promote the
British digital industry, share knowledge and best practice, encourage the next
generation and reward great work.

PROFESSIONAL BODY CODES OF PRACTICE

A professional association are usually a non-profit organization that seek a particular
profession. People at Aardman could join these types of organizations. All leading
professional bodies have a code of conduct to guide members and raise the level of
trust and confidence of the public in the profession. All members must commit to the
code before joining. The rules and procedures for dealing with any allegation of
infringement against the code are in the professional complaints procedures. These
codes and procedures are available for everyone to look at.

ETHICAL

ETHICAL REQUIREMENT
When working with a media product, restrictions always apply in regards to exactly what you can and what you
cannot say. This is to protect people from things such as racist comments which may not only offend people but
cause even bigger problems. The internet is not somewhere you can escape these rules. It is hard to break the rules
on the internet because things can be tracked. Different media jobs such as television and radio presenters have to
follow more restrictions. If someone finds anything offensive they can sue the company for a lot of money. Rules to
avoid this include:

You are not allowed to use a picture; sound clip or video of anyone unless you have their permission.

You cannot make a verbal statement about an individual which is abusive. This is Slander.

You cannot make a written statement about an individual which is abusive. This is Libel.

You cant use any part of someone elses work without their written permission first.
You have to be careful how you represent and describe content and characters in your work because you dont
want to offend and seem bias and inaccurate. This applies to race, gender, sexuality, disability, regionalism, age, class
and nationality.

SOCIAL ISSUES AND SENSITIVITIES

When people work with multimedia products they must always obey all laws that you
do in day to day life. The internet is not a place where you can make racial remarks and
be sexist if you are breaking the law doing these things you can face legal action, the
same thing would happen if the racism happened if said right in front of the person.
Personal data is data that relates to an living individual who can be identified from the
data. Data controller sensitive personal data concerns race, religion, politics, health,
sex life and criminal record. Companies have a legal obligation to not sell or give
anyone information about a worker without the workers consent.

REPRESENTATION OF GENDER AND RELIGIOUS

BELIEFS
Aardman make sure that before releasing any promotional material they make sure it
doesnt seems prejudice towards any gender, race, religion. Aardman have to make
sure models are varying in race and ethnic origin so they dont seem racist and to
ensure nobody gets offended. Aardman products go to every major country in the
world so if they dont research the country their products are going to it could offend
somebodies beliefs.

POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

The Code applies to all areas of BBCWs business and to its direct Suppliers3 as well as to goods and
services sourced by BBCW. BBCW requires all direct Suppliers to observe the provisions of this Code
and requires that such Suppliers, in turn, obtain similar compliance with its provisions from their
Suppliers. All parties to whom this Code applies are required to comply with applicable national and
international laws. Where the provisions of this Code afford greater protection than national law,
the terms of this Code prevail.

CULTURAL ISSUES AND LANGUAGE

Within the media industry its important to understand the different cultural and
language issues before anything else is done. When making a product for a industry
it needs to be checked so that there is nothing that will discriminate anyone.
Aardman would need to make sure all of their productions were suitable and also
need to make sure that the characters the create do not offend people.