Component 3: Music Video Regulation

This blog post is written by my teammate, Beatrice, and will discuss the ways in which our music video was regulated. This includes a permission letter we sent to the artist's record label to gain the rights to use the song.

Music Video Regulation

To create our music video for this project, we had to follow specific guidelines, which acted as a form of regulation or censorship. According to Cambridge, we were advised to select songs in English or add English subtitles to non-English songs. We were also instructed to avoid representing themes of drug use, harmful substances, or suicide, as this may be considered inappropriate or triggering. On top of that, we were encouraged not to film while driving due to safety concerns. These regulations influenced our decisions on shaping both the narrative content and visual representation in our final music video.

According to the school and our teacher, we must make sure our music video content is appropriate for a school environment. This meant avoiding bad language, explicit songs, and any form of violence. We were also required to ensure the content is age appropriate, as our school includes students around the age of 13-18 years old. 

For our guidelines, we decided to follow the British rating system as a guide for shaping the content of our music video. We decided to follow this system because the language of our chosen song is in English, and personally, I found the Indonesian media regulations a bit harder to interpret. The British rating system includes seven categories, ranging from "suitable for all ages", to "adults working for licensed premises only." Since we still wanted to target childrens and the ages above, we aimed for our music video to fit into the PG category, since the music we chose "BIRDS OF A FEATHER" by Billie Eilish, contains a little bit of swear word. 

Furthermore, no animals were harmed during the making of our music video. Although we featured birds in a few scenes, they were handled with care and consideration throughout the filming process. We purchased them responsibly, and they were transported in paper bags with breathing holes to ensure their safety. During filming, the birds were either gently held by the actress or released carefully by patting the bag softly at the end of the scene. Animal welfare was something we took seriously, and we made sure our representation of nature remained ethical and respectful.

Permission Email

We have chosen Billie Eilish's song "BIRDS OF A FEATHER" as the track for our music video. To make sure we were following copyright guidelines, I decided to research which record label she was signed to during the release of the music video. I found that Billie Eilish is signed under two labels, which are Darkroom and Interscope Records. Jasmine and I then searched online for their contact details, but we weren’t entirely sure which email would be the right one to use. In the end, we chose to send our permission request to Darkroom’s email address, which was info @thedarkroomco.com, as we were unsure whether the one listed for Interscope was only intended for their merchandise store.

Jasmine then wrote the request email as follows : 

Although we understood that we might not receive a response from Darkroom Records, we still decided to send the licensing request, as we believed it was important to use the song for the right reasons (strictly for educational purposes). We also sent the email to prevent potential copyright restrictions, especially when uploading the video to social media platforms like YouTube, where copyright detection systems can restrict or take down content. More importantly, it didn't feel right to use their music without asking for permission, as we wanted to respect the ownership rights of the original producers.

Self-Reflection:

Initially, I didn't think we would have many issues with regulation since I didn't feel like we did anything inappropriate in the music video; however, I realized that regulation is quite strict. It turns out, the song uses a bad word "shit" and I had lip synced it in the music video. This on its own already made it so that our target audience, teenagers, would normally be unable to view the content; however, as Livingstone and Lundt's Media Regulation theory has stated, regulation is extremely hard, and those teenagers can bypass it, therefore, an age restriction wouldn't limit us significantly. In addition, I forgot about the fact that using the birds in our music video may seem unethical, however, we didn't harm the birds and instead helped them by setting them free. Lastly, making the letter, requesting the rights to use the song for our music video, was quite complicated since I had to make sure that I was expressing my intentions in a way that was clear and formal. I did realize afterwards that I made a slight typo in the letter, however, it is still understandable, so it should be fine. I think that regulation is a very important factor in the production of media, and I overlooked that fact until we had to make this blog post, which made me realize the limitations that content and media producers have to go through, which may limit creativity to some extent.