Question about Film Ownership

M

morisato

Active member
Hey. I have a question about film ownership. I directed, shot, and editing a 5 minute piece that someone else wrote and acted in. Who owns the film?

The 2 writers wrote the script and came to me to help make it into a film. I supplied all the equipment, brought the crew, shot it, directed it, and edited it. They wrote it, acted in it, set up locations, and brought in the cast. Am I entitled to the rights of the created product and not the written material? The reason I ask is because they plan on submitting it into a contest and I am unsure if they are planning on adding my name as one of the creators of the product. So I am wondering if I apply as one of the creators of the product, if not THE creator of the product. There was never a formal contract because it was a no budget thing. I have all the footage and they have nothing. The contest requires that the submitter (individual or group) of the film must be the owner(s) of the material submitted, or be disqualified. Any information would be helpful.

EDIT: Also, who applies for ownership of any given film? I would assume that ownership goes to all positions that are given "above-the-line" pay, but that's just my assumption.

EDIT#2: Also, I am aware that by having all the footage, they are at my mercy to perform any request I may have, but I would rather convince them into realizing that I am obligated to a piece of the action, if I actually am obligated to a piece of the action. I basically want what I deserve. No more and no less.
 
Last edited:
generally, whoever pays for it, owns it. why don't you say that before anything is done to promote the film, you need to write-up a contract detailing exactly who owns what percentage of the film? 50/50 seems right to me -- meaning your party owns half an their party owns half. 33/33/33 could leave you in a situation where they are constantly using their majority to override you unless you agree that decisions need to be unanimous. also determine who gets credited as what, who is financially responsible for festival entry fees, whether decisions to exhibit the film or enter into a specific fest need to be unanimous or a 2/3 majority among the "partners", how money is dispursed if you sell it, etc, etc.

right now, it sounds like no one owns the film. having it in your possesion keeps them from moving forward without you. so its time to negotiate. don't be afraid to ask for what's yours. the worst that can happen is they say no. then archive the entire project, lock it up in a vault somewhere and talk to a lawyer.
 
Despite no money being involved, it sounds like they "hired" you to make the film, which puts ownership in their hands.

But why worry about it? Your name will be in the credits as director/cinematographer/editor? Should be.

They might get any prize money, but you'll be getting phone calls.
 
cygnet74 said:
generally, whoever pays for it, owns it. why don't you say that before anything is done to promote the film, you need to write-up a contract detailing exactly who owns what percentage of the film? 50/50 seems right to me -- meaning your party owns half an their party owns half. 33/33/33 could leave you in a situation where they are constantly using their majority to override you unless you agree that decisions need to be unanimous. also determine who gets credited as what, who is financially responsible for festival entry fees, whether decisions to exhibit the film or enter into a specific fest need to be unanimous or a 2/3 majority among the "partners", how money is dispursed if you sell it, etc, etc.

right now, it sounds like no one owns the film. having it in your possesion keeps them from moving forward without you. so its time to negotiate. don't be afraid to ask for what's yours. the worst that can happen is they say no. then archive the entire project, lock it up in a vault somewhere and talk to a lawyer.
Click to expand...

In this case, who paid for it? No actual money was exchanged in this project, but I paid for all the equipment I used in this project, though, I didn't buy the equipment for the sole purpose of this project. The only money they spent was for food.

GenJerDan said:
Despite no money being involved, it sounds like they "hired" you to make the film, which puts ownership in their hands.

But why worry about it? Your name will be in the credits as director/cinematographer/editor? Should be.

They might get any prize money, but you'll be getting phone calls.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. I wasn't really happy that I had to take on multiple positions as it lowers my ability to focus on the important matters of each individual position. Also, this was a rush thing without preproduction and so I wouldn't say this is my best work.

EDIT: If no one owns the film, are they allowed to submit it to the contest? Any contest or festival will require the submitter to be the owner of all materials submitted, and so if no one is the owner of the material, would submitting it be a form of claiming ownership? Also, if I am in possession of the full res raw footage, does that grant me some ownership? If I never send them a full res copy, would the possession of the only full res copy be enough to claim ownership? If not, would they be able to charge me with stealing their material? That scares me if they have the ability to sue me for "stealing" their footage.
 
Last edited:
just because no one spent money on it, doesn't negate the rest of my post -- to which i'll refer you to read again. what you need to do is establish the parameters of joint ownership in a legal document.
 
At this point everyone who acted, wrote, directed or edited the film all "own" it. With no agreements in place, the copyright in the creative contribution of each artist stays with that artist until it is assigned. So you could all make each other's life hell and prevent the film from ever being copied, submitted, screened or anything else. Best to all agree that you all own it, put it in writing, agree that if it sells then you split the profits appropriately (if you provided equipment, you should get a share plus get the cost of equipment rental refunded) and just go from there.
 
If this is not your best work then why worry about it? Is it sooo kick a$$ of a story that you think it will go anywhere? If so, I guess I would negotiate whatever you are looking for. I think with a 5 minute short you might get some exposure and maaaaybe someone might ask you to do another but I dont think its enough material for someone to jump on and say make my feature. Unless of course you pimp the crap out of it like Broken's creators did and have cool behind the scenes that help boost sales of the DVD.
I would think the writers have ownership of the story at this point, you have ownership of the footage. Checkmate. If you were to try to submit to film fests you would have a problem with the releases of the talent.
 
morisato said:
EDIT: If no one owns the film, are they allowed to submit it to the contest? Any contest or festival will require the submitter to be the owner of all materials submitted, and so if no one is the owner of the material, would submitting it be a form of claiming ownership?
Click to expand...

Doesn't matter, major festivals, much less any distributors they would meet at those festivals would not touch it with a ten foot pole if there's even a whif of something not right about the ownership.

Cygnet's advice is the best in this case. Approach them in an open and honest way and get the details of this ironed out. If you don't, the movie will not go anywhere for any of you.
 
Copyright vests with who created the work, unless the work was specifically made as a work for hire. And the copyright to a derivative work vests with the creator of the original work, unless a specific agreement to assign the rights is made.

So -- while I'm not a lawyer, it seems to me like it'd go like this:

The writers wrote a script. They own the copyright to that script (unless someone hired them to do it, and the contract specifies that it was created as a work-for-hire). And it sounds like you guys didn't do that. So the script copyright belongs to the writers.

Then a film was made from it. Doesn't matter who paid for it or who worked on it, that film is a derivative work from the screenplay. So the scriptwriters still hold copyright, unless a film rights licensing agreement is in place.

So -- check your paperwork. Near as I can tell from briefly looking at your situation, the writer/writers of the project are sitting completely in the catbird seat, because without an agreement buying the rights from them, everything you guys have done is a derivative work from their original copyrighted work.

I'm not a lawyer and I'm not pretending to be one, so if you want a complete and thorough answer you should check with an entertainment lawyer.
 
What would they sue for if they didnt' pay him anything.
Personally I think this is being blown way out of proportion for a 5 min short film. If this was a feature that had alot of money put into it, I can see a problem, but for a 3 person project? Just tell them you want your due credit and make out some sort of contract for festivals.
 
scharky said:
What would they sue for if they didnt' pay him anything.
Personally I think this is being blown way out of proportion for a 5 min short film. If this was a feature that had alot of money put into it, I can see a problem, but for a 3 person project? Just tell them you want your due credit and make out some sort of contract for festivals.
Click to expand...

They could sue me for damage because this was not SAG, and they're SAG actors.
 
That's their problem not yours. Did they pay you? Did they have you sign a contract? they are the ones working outside of SAG, this just gives them distrobution issues.
 
Never EVER start a project without contracts, even with friends. They're going to be required anyway if you plan on doing anything with the project.

There needs to be ownership agreements as well as releases from everyone involved including location releases.

I know it's a little late now, but this serves as a good example to others of what can happen without proper foresight.
 
hey just listening in and what everyone is saying about contracts got me thinking about my own upcoming projects. So is there somewhere I could go to get the format or a printable contract, release forms, etc etc?
 
googalizer said:
hey just listening in and what everyone is saying about contracts got me thinking about my own upcoming projects. So is there somewhere I could go to get the format or a printable contract, release forms, etc etc?
Click to expand...
an entertainment lawyer.
 
ask around. lots of folks have standard, short-form agreements. lots of digital filmmaking books have them too. check the bookstore for sure before paying big bucks for a lawyer. This is a lot of standard form stuff.
 
You could take a look at this. It contains a lot of canned contracts. I have used it along with some simpler releases. The boiler plate in these contracts seem to cover an awful lot. It leads you through a fill-in-the-blanks page which then gives you a "completed" contract which you then copy/paste into MS Word (or other word processor) and tweak it to your specific needs.

http://www.writersstore.com/product.php?products_id=688
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top