02 – Participant safety
As a filmmaker, you’ll have a range of relationships with the participants in your film. They could be people you’re investigating and whose actions you’re exposing. They could be people who’ve chosen to participate and with whom you may have grown close over time. They could be someone you interviewed once or who were simply caught on camera.
At a minimum, you have a legal obligation to ensure that these people are appropriately and fairly represented. But when someone is vulnerable due to their participation in your film, you have an ethical responsibility to do more.
Assess
In the development and pre-production phases and as new participants get involved during production, think through and discuss with them what the consequences of their involvement could ultimately be. Are they at risk of physical harm or prosecution? Could they lose their job? Will their participation lead to ruptures in their personal relationships? As new participants are identified, continue to have these conversations to surface potential risks for which you need to plan. If participants already have a personal online presence, they should consider making their accounts private to avoid scrutiny of past posts and online harassment.
Avoid the temptation to play down the risk in order to ensure their participation or to ease your own mind; surface the possibilities so you can plan for them.
Mitigate
Participants may decide that they want to remain anonymous. You’re responsible for ensuring that they are AND for working with them to make contingency plans if their anonymity is compromised. During post-production, you’ll need to work with your editor, animator, and special effects coordinator to obscure their identities and identifiable locations.
To maintain their anonymity throughout all phases of filmmaking, you'll need to establish clear digital security protocols to be followed by all team members regarding all communication with and about them, their personal data, and their locations and travel.
Decisions should be made in advance about whether and when participants should travel with the film to festivals and other screenings, taking into consideration participants' willingness to be public, as well as safety concerns in specific countries, including those related to gender identity, sexuality, and religion. While participants may want to travel, considerations should be made about whether adequate security can be provided.
While keeping participants safe is the priority, you'll need to ask them to sign release forms to signify their legal consent to participate — after you've explained to them what their participation means. (Errors & Omissions insurers will require that you do.) While not as legally watertight as a signed release form, on-camera consents can serve as a back-up. If you’re working with participants whose age, intellectual abilities, or mental health make it difficult for them to provide informed consent, include their advocates, friends, or family in this conversation so they can act on their behalf.
Take contemporaneous notes of your conversations with participants to be prepared if questions or objections arise in the future.