Health and Safety

After having a lesson on health and safety I spent some extra time researching health and safety about filming. This is what I found from the filming council, its list of rules that must be followed.

''It is recognised that most production companies act in a responsible and professional manner. However, all film makers are asked to take their surroundings into consideration.

Productions must be sympathetic to the environment they want to use and work with any restrictions they find with locations that are in areas of outstanding natural beauty and are preserved or with historic buildings or monuments that are considered delicate and fragile.

The local authority has a duty of care towards residents and businesses and will exercise control if a particular production is causing an unreasonable nuisance or noise.

Every precaution must be taken to ensure the safety of the general public at all times and a contact number for the production must be available to the council and the police.

Clear guidelines of what the script or scene involves and appropriate caution must be taken for filming in sensitive areas or at unsocial times

Areas that require any sort of set building, dressing, disguising or are subject to any sort of special effects will require a grantee to be returned to a required standard.

This code of practice sets out the standards that we would ask production companies and/or their sub-contractors to follow while filming in Hampshire."

As i could not find a set of rules for Essex Council filming, I have used Hampshire as they are most likely quiet similar.

I made a simple list of what we would have to do in order to follow the rules :

As a group we will have to make sure all rubbish is thrown away as it is harmful to the public and the habitat it lays in, for instance Bobs can props could be harmful to animals in an outdoors surrounding. As well as being harmful and unpleasant, littering is a crime that is punishable with a fine so as a group we don't want anyone to become criminals.
To not get overly excited and loud. As filming is quiet a fun and enjoyable task, its easy to get carried away. the rules clearly state that you cannot disrupt other members of the public. This means we cannot be a nuisance in any way. Meaning when filming our group will have to be calm as well as keeping the actors calm as they are our responsibility as well. We have to take into consideration the home owners of where we are filming, by being polite and sensible this will help keep us following the rules.
To avoid dangerous and illegal things (even if they appear to be dangerous or illegal but in fact are not). I didn't think this was as important to our group as our opening doesn't show anything dangerous, illegal or offensive. 
Always carry a script, storyboard and shot list. This will give us some evidence that we are a media group ready to film. This way if a member of the public is uncertain about us we can show them what we are planning to do. 
To film at the right time and in the right area. In our group we have chosen good times to film as it should always be daylight, this makes us seem less suspicious and we also decide we would film at more social hours, like after school and the end of the work day (6pm) we also chose the right areas, places with hardly any crime and the people in that area are trustworthy and calm.
Cleaning up the area after we have finished. As we are mainly filming in our own rooms, we decide this wasn't as important as other rules but to do this we would each go around the room and take away our props and equipment. We will make sure we leave everything the way it was found.


As where we are filming is a safe and calm area there are only a few minor rules to be kept when filming:
To not argue back with public. As some of our shots are outside we have chosen a few places to film as if we are asked to move from the first one we are prepared and have a back up. We agreed as a group that if a member of the public tries to argue with us and move us on that we wouldn't argue back and we would simply move. This applies to the home-owners of the homes we are using as well, even though this is unlikely as they have already agreed to let filming happen.


Look after the actors. As a group we decided we wanted our actors to feel the most comfortable they could, by asking them how they were feeling about filming, and letting them watch back there shots this ensured they were comfortable. We also had to ask about allergies as one of the characters will be eating a muffin we wouldn't want them to be in danger of a reaction.