Legal and Ethical Issues (D1)

Before starting to advertise Umbra Hominis we needed to consider possible legal and ethical issues that may arise based on our advertising. This was needed because Umbra Hominis deals with a mental health issue so if we fail to portray it properly then we could cause lasting emotional harm to viewers who suffer from psychosis.

The first legal issues concerns wasted time for the staff of Twitter. This is a possible legal issue because due to the nature of the tweets that we will be writing it may seem that we need professional help. This may cause some of the people to see it to report the tweet to Twitter so that they can contact somebody who will be able to help us. Obviously because this is just an advertising campaign we wouldn't need this help, meaning that any time lost would mean that Twitter would have been paying their employees to follow a false claim. This could mean that Twitter could take us to court for payment equal to the cost of that employee following the report. It's not likely to happen. However it is a possibility that we need to be aware of before we start our advertising. It would likely be resolved naturally because we will be paying them to promote our tweets, making it very easy to let them know that they don't need to follow any of the reports from it.

The first ethical issue is that people may believe that our advertising is real. This doesn't just apply to the Spotify adverts, it also applies to the Twitter adverts (and links to our first legal issue), however people are a lot more likely to stop using Spotify than they are to stop using the other services that we will be advertising on (they can block the account, but the only way that they can block the adverts is by paying. Which some people are unwilling or unable to do.) The aim of our advertising is for people to believe that it is actually happening and that somebody is asking for help, however we do have to take into consideration that we will be dealing with a topic that a large amount of people have experience with. As such we will have to include a disclaimer at the end of our messages that lets people know where they can receive support if they have been affected by the advert in a negative way.

Our second legal issue links back to the ethical issue. We need to ensure that we let people know where they can get help from. This is because we want to show mental health issues in a realistic way. Because of this they will be more disturbing than if we used something that we made up. Of course we are using the Umbra Hominis as the physical embodiment of the psychosis that the main character suffers from, but the root cause is still something that can happen to anybody at any time. A mental health crisis.

Once again our second ethical issue links back to the previous issues that we have explored. This is because our advertising isn't going to be individualized. We have no way of knowing the situations that people have been in and would have no way to exclude them from the advertising if we did. Therefore we are once again morally obliged to ensure that people know where they can get help and that we aren't using mental health as a boogieman for the movie. We want to spread awareness of the negative effects of it so that people will pay more attention to it.

Our final legal issue is that we will need to spend the BFI money that we receive properly or we may be legally required to pay it back to them. I know that when you receive a grant from an organisation they will require an application that will clearly outline the way that you will be spending their money. If your application is successful then you will then need to complete a report once the "project" is complete (in this case the project being the production, advertising and release of Umbra Hominis) to ensure that you spent the money on the things that you said that you would spend them on. This means that as we spend the money we will need to clearly document exact amount of expenditure, these will range from paying staff to buying props and equipment. And if we have proof that we can present to the BFI in our report then we aren't likely to run into any issues. Showing them the movie is not likely to be enough for them. For all they know, we made the movie completely out of pocket for less than we asked for and then ran away with the money.

Our final ethical issue is very similar to the previous ones. It continues the theme that we will need to let people know where they can receive support. And this is because it is extremely important for us to do. We will not be using a mental illness as a plot point that isn't anything like the actual negative effects of the illness. We will be using the mental illness as our main plot point and we will be working hard to ensure that we present it in the most realistic way that we can. Those 2 ways of using a mental illness as a plot point are vastly different and because of that it is imperative that we remember the aim that we had when we first thought of Umbra Hominis. We want to spread awareness of how truly horrible the negative effects of a mental illness can be, and we want to show it in the most realistic way possible.