Modelling appropriate behaviours

Having established our pitch idea - we went through a series of ways in which to reinforce the analogy - we really wanted to use pictures of the characters from the film backed with pictures of our real life ESCAPE team. We also wanted to rouse the listeners with a background play of ‘the great escape’ theme tune. We were on a roll.

It then dawned on us - copyright :-( neither of us are copyright experts - but we are sensitive to the issue and wanted to be sure we did not infringe copyright law. We sought no personal gain or profit from the use but were simply unsure of the rules of use. In the Learning and Teaching Institute/Blended Learning Unit at the University Hertfordshire - one of our values is modelling appropriate behaviours - clearly we could not knowingly ‘sneak-in’ copyright photo’s or music and at the same time believe we were modelling. We took advice from within UH and it seems as though we could not use the pictures.

Naturally in no way did we wish to gain profit from the use of others work but we felt really deflated at how the law impacted on what we wanted to do. Although our limited creativity was stifled, the sock-idea remained in the laptop case.

Oh, the music - that’s another story - Helen’s magical brass ensemble (‘shakin’ that brass) played the theme tune to purchased music. Go Brass Shakers! A dodgy recording later and we’re back on track. I think they will be able to tell that it is not the original sound track!