Ethics Resource Library

Keywords
Type of Resource
Clear Filters
February 7, 2024
HuffPost

'Heroic' True Crime Sleuths Helped Identify Hiker Years After His Gruesome Death

Drusilla Moorhouse

Audience, True Crime

Article, Case study, Interview

Filmmaker Patricia Gillespie told HuffPost she was inspired to explore amateur sleuths’ “generosity” and “endurance” in her new documentary, “They Called Him Mostly Harmless.”

Pub. Date Unavailable
Channel 4 Television

4Compliance

Channel 4 Television

International, Post Production, Pre-Production, Production, Journalism, Crew

Guidelines / Framework

Channel 4’s legal & compliance hub for producers and editorial staff. Find practical guidance on the main areas of law, regulation and best practice that apply to the making and publishing of content at Channel 4.

October 31, 2024
Dear Producer

2024 Producer Rate Sheet

Rebecca Green

Compensation, Crew

Article, Guidelines / Framework

A fee/rate guide for producers who are striving to build a sustainable career

November 5, 2021
Santa Clara University: Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

A Framework for Ethical Decision Making

Fundamentals

Guidelines / Framework

The Markkula Center’s Ethical Decision-Making Framework is a tool designed to 1) help users see and identify a broader set of ethical issues than they would have without it, and 2) guide users through a process that includes both pre-decision and post-decision steps.

The goal of the Framework is to help people make better informed, more carefully considered decisions that will ultimately be more congruent with their own choices and values—decisions that they are less likely to regret later.

The Framework does not tell users what the right or most ethical thing to do is. While applying the Framework, the user is still the one who has to make a judgment call.

Pub. Date Unavailable
IllumiNative

A Guide for Addressing the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Crisis in Media

IllumiNative

Representation, Race, Consent, Crew, Care & Safety, Participants, Compensation

Guidelines / Framework, Report

Filmmakers, creatives, artists, and other entertainment industry professionals have an opportunity to bring visibility to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples (MMIP) crisis. For too long, depictions of MMIP in television and film have shown high levels of violence that center the death of Indigenous people rather than the lives they lived before. This guide comes from countless reviews of MMIP content and includes guidance from leading Native creatives and subject matter experts on the best practices around MMIP storytelling.

This guide includes a glossary with terminology and definitions, case studies, and additional resources.

Pub. Date Unavailable
Archival Producers Alliance

APA GenAI Tracker / Cue Sheet

Archival Producers Alliance

Post Production, Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Template

The APA GenAI Tracker / Cue Sheet is a companion to APA's guide Best Practices for Use of Generative AI in Documentaries. The cue sheet can be used to track GenAI for legal purposes, internal record-keeping, and to aid in fact-checking. Attorneys may only require the "Streamlined" Tracker. However, using this robust tracker will assist production with long-term record-keeping, and in cases where GenAI is questioned by distributors, copyright holders, audiences, critics, or other interested parties.

These forms are meant as only a guide - make adjustments where necessary, according to the needs of your show. The information you track will be useful later in creating deliverables.

January 8, 2018
International Documentary Association (IDA)

A Place at the Table: Doc Filmmakers with Disabilities on Building Careers and Disproving Stereotypes

James LeBrecht

Accessibility, Authorship, Representation, Diversity / Inclusion, Crew

Article

In this piece, James LeBrecht discusses how the disabled community is "still far behind" when it comes to the "emergence of filmmakers from underrepresented communities".

James includes quotes and perspectives from filmmakers, Jen Brea, Jason DaSilva, Victor Pineda, and Day Al-Mohamed.

June 15, 2020
Medium

A Reckoning

Sonya Childress

Accountability, Systemic Issues

Article

An essay by Childress covering the need for power shifts, accountability and a reimagined ethical and practical framework for documentary funding, production and distribution.

Pub. Date Unavailable
FWD-Doc

A Toolkit for Inclusion & Accessibility: Changing the Narrative of Disability in Documentary Film

FWD-Doc

Accessibility, Diversity / Inclusion, Representation

Toolkit

We find ourselves in an unprecedented moment of creative and financial opportunity for the documentary film industry, if we engage with authentic disabled storytelling and talent, make our media genuinely accessible, and better understand and cater to the world’s 1 billion D/deaf and disabled people — currently a seriously underserved audience for film.

This Toolkit for Inclusion & Accessibility has been created by FWD-Doc with Little by Little Films, in association with Doc Society and supported by Netflix, featuring a case study about Oscar-nominated Crip Camp (2020) and with a view to best practice, not just compliance.

Pub. Date Unavailable
Accessible Filmmaking

Accessible Filmmaking Guide

Accessible Filmmaking

Accessibility, International, Post Production, Production, Pre-Production, Diversity / Inclusion

Guidelines / Framework, Toolkit

Vastly supported in the EU and UN, this Guide encourages close collaboration between filmmakers and translators/ media access experts to create more accessible films that do not compromise any artistic/ aesthetic vision. The Guide includes information on:
- Dubbing
- Subtitling
- Sign language interpretation
- Audio descriptions
- Translation

The Guide also includes a comprehensive list of efforts broken into different production phases as well as budgetary implications for a standard accessible filmmaking package (amounts are in Euros).

October 17, 2016
WITNESS

Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video

Care & Safety, Production, Post Production, War, Journalism

Video

Activists often risk their lives to record human rights abuse on video in order to expose injustice and create change. Because campaigns can take time to achieve results, WITNESS works with activists to ensure that their video is properly collected, documented, managed, and preserved to serve as an effective bulwark against powerful lies and denial. The Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video is a unique resource that offers reliable video archiving information to activists. The guide provides practical information on how to maintain video so that it remains safe and intact over time, and how to manage metadata so that videos can be identified, found and authenticated.

March 3, 2022
IndieWire

After ‘Jihad Rehab’: Muslim American Filmmakers Tell Sundance How to Do Better in Open Letter

Muslim and Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian (MENASA) filmmakers

Accountability, Authorship, Film Festivals, Race, Religion, Representation, Systemic Issues

Open Letter

This letter by Muslim, and Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian (MENASA) filmmakers has been written in response to the Sundance Film Festival’s decision to program the film “Jihad Rehab” at the 2022 festival. The film, which is focused on former Guantanamo Bay prisoners detained by a Saudi Arabian rehab facility, instigated a divisive response in the weeks leading up to its premiere and in the aftermath.