Filming legal issue

Rax

Rax

Member
I recently filmed a Belly Dancer and her students doing a public demonstration at an art show. I did not get a release from them. Is it legal for me to use some of this footage in a video. I am in a band that uses video syn'd to our live musical performance and projected on a screen behind us. (All original music... no issues there.) Can we incorporate some of the dance footage into our live show? (We contacted the dance group but have not heard back. )
Thanks.
 
Probably not as they likely have a performance copyright. But I don't think you really want to make decision like this based on what someone says on a web site, even one as informative as DVXUser. I would check with a copyright lawyer or a local arts organization. They should be able to give you an answer in no time at all.
 
And one other thing, always make sure you have a few copies of a release whenever you shoot. I actually had to have a close friend sign one last night. You need to present a clean chain of title to a disty.

BTW, there are a few releases floating around on this site and most (not all) are disasters. Don't use them, but that doesn't mean you couldn't put one together from quite a few good books on the subject and then have an attorney review it. It will be cheaper that way.
 
and i think there should be extra concern on using the clips - you stated "students " - how old ? if 5 - 16yrs =watch out for parents ....

off hand ( guessing) - you could probably use clips of persons shoot in any country the US doesn't reconize or a country that doesn't reconize international copyright ???
 
Diito to Arson:

If you're just using it for behind-band projection, consider treating it creatively to keep the material without all the headache of litigation down the road.
 
Releases are really important. I made every single person who stepped on set for the last music video sign a photo / video / audio release form, all cast, crew, extras, friends of the band, etc. We had behind-the-scenes videography that I intend to use for commercial purposes later and those releases are going to be necessary for any type of distribution deal because any legitimate company wants to cover themselves in case someone tries to claim we didn't have a right to film them or include their image / likeness in a commercial product. They signed away their rights to protest with that document and agreed to our conditions, so that's the type of thing you really have to plan ahead of time and be careful about doing right.
 
When it comes to releases and contracts, I've found The Independent Film Producers' Survival Guide to be invaluable. Lots of release and contract templates.

But yeah, definitely CYA. You'll be glad you did!
 
bosindy said:
And one other thing, always make sure you have a few copies of a release whenever you shoot. I actually had to have a close friend sign one last night. You need to present a clean chain of title to a disty.
Click to expand...


of course one way around this is to Distribute your own material....
 
I brought 35 releases to my last shoot just to be safe, I only had 20 cast and crew at most but a few extras and the band, I thought honestly we'd only use 28. Somehow we used all 35 and there was one guy who didn't sign a release, but it was a weird situation. Basically for some unknown reason he was in my location doing his own thing, friend of the band situation, long story short he was never in any BTS footage anyway. He was only there a few hours and intentionally stayed away from our shooting. I was glad I printed what I thought was too many waivers because I needed them. There were 3 people who signed who were also never in any BTS footage, who were shooting photos with that guy, but for safety they signed too just in case they walked through anything. I know they didn't now, I've seen all of the footage, but better safe than sorry.
 
sure, but at least you can distribute it, and if it's a small production that won't be seen in the media in any great form then it's no worries, sue a production company that's operating at a loss.....good luck getting money out of that. people worry too much....if you get sued and you have releases you still need to fork out legal fees anyways..

i'm not advocating this at all, but it does happen and sometimes you can't get clearance due to your subjects being in a third world country far away....but then again how will they be able to afford to take legal action?
 
Yeah screw foreigners in poor countries, they have no rights anyway. ;) haha, just kidding. Well you never know whether what they sign will be binding anyway, I suppose, but it's good enough for a distribution company I imagine.

People are very worried about getting sued. Actually, your odds of being sued for anything are very low. People just don't seem to understand the process. There's no point in suing you for something of this nature, you will instead just be sent a cease-and-desist letter. I've gotten a few of those in my day, and as long as you work with the person you can usually bring everything to a satisfying conclusion. In one case, I told the person to screw off actually because they didn't understand the law, or maybe they did understand the law and were hoping I didn't. I was running a site that I bought from someone else, like a total goldmine site that people will of course say, "You're evil!" but whatever. Anyway it was just really well ranked on search engines and had no useful content, just random pages with celebrities and porn stars (no nudity whatsoever), plus a bunch of advertising, so I could make seriously about $800 to $1,000 per month on that site. It was awesome. Anyway this guy calls me and tells me that Jenna Jameson or something is a trademarked name and I can't have the name on the site or the picture of her, which she was fully clothed. Fact is, I'm sure that picture didn't belong to them so they had no jurisdiction anyway, but I said, "Ok I'll take the picture down, not a problem. It'll be down within the hour." Then the guy starts becoming irate that I won't take the whole page down. I said, "There's nothing else on it but text, I'm not taking text down." It was a biography page that had all of her information, how she got started, etc. So it was of some value, it just was heavily loaded with ads and well ranked on search engines because of the bio I suppose.

He starts giving me this crap about how you can't use her name because it's trademarked, I laughed at him, told him he has no idea what he's talking about whatsoever, then that got him angrier so he starts yelling and I just keep laughing. I asked him, "So you mean when the Wall Street Journal writes about Coca Cola they have to clear permission first? Are you insane?" He gave me this whole thing about how he's been doing this for 10 years, blah blah, etc. I said I'm sorry for you not to know something of such a basic nature after 10 years, wow, and I'm further sorry you're so unprofessional that here you are representing someone else supposedly and you are yelling and screaming about it.

The conversation ended when he kept ranting and yelling and finally hung up. Of course I never removed that page, since he was insane, and nothing else ever became of it. My guess is he just was supposed to harass and intimidate me into submission, but I know copyright law very well in fact, it's something I read several books about before I wrote my first book, to make sure that I wasn't doing anything wrong. My first book was about Star Wars, a non-fiction book, and any editorial use of a trademarked name is not a violation of copyright law. The publisher was so stupid they even had to delay my book by about 5 days in the process while they looked into it and we were laughing at them. By we I mean myself and a few professors who knew they were being stupid. Then the second book, same thing, Star Wars non-fiction, they spent another week looking into it despite me telling them we did this last time. Really idiots. That's most people when it comes to the law, there's just this big fear of the big, bad lawyers.

Oh interestingly enough I later met Steve Sansweet, Head of Fan Relations for Lucasfilm, Ltd., and talked with him about my book, he off-hand mentioned that something like that is not anything Lucasfilm cares about and they are a pretty litigious company (rightfully so, people keep trying to make money off the Star Wars name and its related properties), so obviously they know they have no case against a non-fiction book because that's completely absurd. If that were the case knowledge and information in this country would cease to progress.
 
that is too funny man. Nobody has a problem with it until it makes money, and then everybody wants a piece of the action.

I'm in the business of trying to get a clearance from Quiksilver since their logo appears in my surf video, and it's mentioned a couple of times. Generally with surf videos they are pretty cool as long as you don't show the brand in a negative manner but I still got to try to get permission.....of course they don't respond to emails at all, i'm sure you know how it goes.
 
Ugg, yeah I've heard it's a huge pain in the butt to clear product placements, rights, etc.

I think it's amazing you even have to do that, I mean in the real world if you record things there are bound to be brand names everywhere. I think a lot of people ignore that type of stuff for all but the highest budget work because it's worth the "risk." I mean, at some point it just becomes absurd, where I don't even know what the law says exactly but I know they'd never sue you and they'd never win if they did. Like imagine, you have closeups of the drummer and the guitarist in a music video, and you can see the brand (of course). So what? I mean, my UPM never mentioned that as being any sort of big deal, he was concerned only about recognizable clothing brands. But the law should be much more straight-forward -- anything you own, you should be able to film it without any possible copyright infringement lawsuits. Even if you're filming close-up of a Nike logo. Who cares? You paid for the product, that's their problem they put their logo all over it. It's yours now. There are a lot of things that to me don't make any logical sense, because we live in a society with so much red tape and lawyers.

I was told, for instance, that the scene I have in the bar in my last music video would be acceptable only if I had at least 6 bottles of alcohol there of varying brands, because there's a certain number I guess that makes it a collection where nothing is being singled out. So there are all of these little nit-picky guidelines. I'd like to learn them all frankly, but I don't know where to start, every time I search for info like that it seems that there's no clear place for it. People in the industry just know, and even then it's only the UPMs and producers, nobody else really knows seemingly.

I think as long as you are being logical and reasonable you shouldn't have to worry. I mean if someone is an extra and walks through the scene wearing a Nike hat, is that a big deal? I don't think so. Nike isn't going to sue you, seriously, they have a LOT better things to do than sue people for FREE advertising. It would be different if you had someone wearing all Nike clothes who was the villain of the story, and someone wearing all Adidas who was the hero, ok, then we're talking about something to be worried about. But if it's just some sort of random appearance of a logo, I don't think it matters.

There is also a lot of confusion in some areas, like I've read in the copyright books that as long as you are standing on public ground taking pictures, you can take pictures of anything you want and there are no possible violations there. So I could be rolling camera down the street and catch a McDonalds in the background, etc., and they can't sue for that because I'm on public property. As long as something is recorded from a public place where everyone can view it, it's not a problem. That's the law says, at least. But I've heard from one person anyway that the big companies are so paranoid they won't even do that. They try to clear permissions for any copyrighted logo that might appear in the final product. I just think that's absurd. To me it's like buying $10,000 of insurance on something that's only worth $5,000. The odds of getting sued don't outweigh the time and expense to protect yourself against something that won't happen, or that you can be sure 99.999% won't happen.
 
you know what, Quiksilver doesn't want to get back to me and I'm not really going to worry about it.

I also have a song in my film that isn't 100% cleared but i'm really not too worried. I contacted the artist who owns the Master Recording, and have developed a good repoire with him. He told me that the label (publisher) under which they released the record are flakes and basically take months to get back to potential customers in the film industry (if they respond at all)...ultimately costing the artist any chance of getting additional exposure through the film medium. I'll take my chance, I've written the publisher numerous times and haven't gotten a response but the artist is cool with it so I'll go ahead as planned. If my film does end up making a ton of money then I'll have something to pay off any potential lawsuits from this Music Publisher.

All in all the red tape in this biz is ridiculous and if I were to follow the rules 100% i'd never get my film made, nor would I be able to afford it. I think it's something the big wigs in the industry (studios and networks) have set up in order to prevent independent artists from succeeding, those greedy bastards don't like any competition at all. $25 paid for my film is $25 out of their greedy little hands....i wouldn't doubt if they were the ones pushing to have these laws created in the first place.....
 
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Im sure someone already posted this in the thread, but if you dont have a paper release you can get an oral release on video thats just as binding.
 
Oral release, I like that :-) How about if the dancer winks at you and you keep it in the shot? LOL

Can that be considered a release?
 
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