Shooting in Europe_Questions

Jason_Boone

Jason_Boone

Active member
I am going to Europe this April with my HVX200a. Thought I might ask if I am going to run into any problems with permission to shoot in certain locations. I am going to most of the touristy cities, such as Rome, Venice, Florence, Paris, Vienna, and Munich. And my footage will be used for an indie documentary that could possibly end up in festivals.

Has anyone encountered any problems shooting out on the streets? The HVX is such a professional looking camera, and I have a big ole shotgun mic on top of mine, and a tripod. Also, can I go hand-held and shoot in any of the big museums?

Any other travel tips would be great. I have also read about the issues with customs which I already have most of the paperwork for (I think). But if anyone has something else I should know, please fill me in.

Thanks!
 
I can speak directly to the museum issue. You will need to get permission, preferably in writing, from the museum's administrator. Than there is the issue of who has the rights to the art work/exhibit you are filming. You will likely need permission from them to use the images in your documentary. This may seem like over-kill but it's a way of protecting you and possibly keeping you out of court down the line.

Jim
 
Jason:

Jim is right on the money here.

I am in the same position as you, filming for two weeks all over France for a documentary in progress. I shot in Scotland and England in 2007 with the HVX and was not hassled at all, although at all of the national monuments, castles and palaces, they would ask me if the video was for professional usage. You had to get permission from the national counsel to shoot at any of the landmarks and museums for commercial usage. Any entertainment attorney would tell you the same thing. It's not really how you obtain the footage that matters, what matters is if you are using the images of certain landmarks and or artworks for your project, you will need location releases. And its not just artwork, it can be landmarks as well. Ask me about my experience with the Hollywood sign and Global Icons, LLC sometime. It is ridiculous that I could not even pay a graphic artist to design some white letters, in a completely different font and style than the Hollywood sign, without paying Global Icons, LLC some $7,500.00 for the DVD release of The Wizard of Oz. I could have understood if it was a shot, painting or graphic OF the Hollywood sign, but it was a not, it was a graphic of the Wicked Witch flying over a generic white font that said "Hollywood". Pure extortion from Global Icon, LLC's lawyers to my lawyers. That is how the media world works.

My shoot does not really focus on the specific locations, it is more about the subject who will be walking around various locations so I am not too worried about location releases as I can frame or obscure them for my doc, if necessary, the story isn't about the places, it's about a person. In order to stay low key, I would highly suggest NOT using your HVX and not using a tripod. Here is the deal, if you want to look like a tourist, you must act like a tourist. Tourists don't ask to shoot things, they just shoot away. Tourists rarely use tripods. I am purchasing a Canon Vixia HD camcorder for this France shoot, the rest of the project is being shot on the HPX170. Will the Canon footage match the HPX? No way. In a documentary, does that really matter? Not in the least, many of my favorite docs have been shot on 10 or 15 different formats.

But the bottom line is, if you are planning on showing copyrighted works or art, advertising, any privately owned buildings in detail, you need location releases for commercial distribution, so it doesn't matter if you sneak the shots or have the management/owner permission, all that will matter to that lawyer at the studio, cable net, etc. will be, "show me signed location releases". I do this for a living and trust me, our society is so litigious, nobody is going to commercially release anything unless they have covered their rears legally and in most cases, have covered their rears to the point of ridiculousness.

#1. Home video - this is what I produce mostly, DVD bonus material for DVD and Blu Ray. This venue has the most stringent legal requirements of any form of mass media. Largely because the studios are not only showing this programming, they are charging the consumer directly for a piece of plastic. This makes home video a target. Any intellectual property attorney knows this and knows that large sums of money are made in DVD. When I clear rights, I have to always use the dreaded phrase, "all rights for all forms of media in perpituity, throughout the Universe" (yes, it's true, licensing it on Earth is not enough, they require "The Universe") This is all the studios will usually accept, with a few deviations and it is the most expensive to license. Not that you are licensing your locations but you do need the location releases and they will need to be very detailed and specific. I would use approved releases from whomever you might sell your project to, not a generic. Sometimes generic releases do not contain key wording and phrases that certain attorneys will want so if you use them, you will have to track down everyone who signed them and have them re-sign a newer one with more verbiage. I have done this and it is NOT easy or fun and sometimes they will refuse to sign another release.

2. TV - You can get away with a lot of clearance issues on broadcast that you cannot get away with in home entertainment. I have had attorneys pull supposedly controversial material that I had put into my projects for the DVD release. The same material was then used by different producer of an "American Masters" on the same subject. It was produced and broadcast by the same studio that I was doing the DVD material for. The attorneys had a big problem in including it in my show, yet totally signed off on using the same material for broadcast. Then, to add insult to injury, they licensed the "American Masters" show and INCLUDED it on the same DVD that my doc was on! Go figure, but I was told by the studios attorneys, "oh, there are different considerations and once its been broadcast, all of the liability went to PBS, not us." Bastards.

Watch an episode of "Mythbusters" or "Dirty Jobs" and see how many blurred logos you see. On some episodes, a ton of them. That's because it is such a major hassle to track down rights holders and to get permission without the rights holder extorting ridiculous amounts of money to show their logo/building/person/whatever. Everything thinks because we make television, we are rich so we can afford it.

I would take a smaller, less professional looking camera if you don't want to be constantly hassled but regardless of how you get the footage, if you show it, (people, places or things), you need a release for it unless you are news or can show fair use.

Oh, almost forgot, I just did a piece about Rome for the recent release of "Roman Holiday". I looked into permissions to shoot famous landmarks in Rome. Hah! Good luck with that one. Once again, if you look like a tourist, no problem, but to try to get permission and a signed location release, be ready to cough up some big money. I needed shots of eight different Rome landmarks featured on the film (Trevi Fountain, Via Condotti, etc.) and the permits and permissions alone were going to cost me around $12,000.00 plus an HD crew in Rome and that didn't include individual bribes to specific property owners/managers. Guess who went to Getty and Corbis and licensed everything? If you need footage of famous Euro landmarks, it is much cheaper and easier to just license them, there are literally thousands of clips of each to choose from and it would cost you so much more to shoot it yourself. You can get some decent shots with a small camcorder but if you show up in Rome, in particular, at famous landmarks with an HVX200 and a tripod, they will shut you down. Without permission, in particular in Rome, you will not be able to shoot with a pro looking setup. Handicam, yes, but what are going to do for signed location releases if you are trying to distribute your project?

Dan
 
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Thanks for the info Dan! Wow those situations are so frustrating.

I just don't understand. Do you recommend I get a lawyer if I want to go the film festival route with a project like this? I highly doubt that a studio would pick up an indie documentary like the one I am making, but I would like to be able to sell it on my website. This all just sounds so ridiculous to me.

Question - I recently bought an indie film about a round-the-world traveler. The guy who shot it was a 25 year old kid, and I guarantee you he didn't get releases from all of the locations he included in the doc; Rome's Colosseum, Sydney Opera House, Eiffel Tower, etc. MTV bought the doc from him and turned it into a MTV "True Life" piece. And he sells his original cut on his production company's website. Is he just flying under the radar? Because a lot of that seems illegal.
 
Hi Jason:

Not to say that some people don't break the rules and are lucky enough to get away with it. They do. MTV is notoriously cheap and perhaps they just don't care as much. It totally varies from outfit to outfit. Paramount and Warner are the most conservative by far. Fox is the easiest to deal with and Disney isn't too bad.

I wouldn't say that it is necessarily illegal to shoot and show landmarks, I am just telling you what my experience has been with the media outlets I deal with which are Disney, Fox, Warner Home Video, Paramount, used to deal with New Line but now they are gone and I have had broadcast on TCM and A&E. Keep in mind that we are talking about two or three layers of clearance and possible hitches.

1. The location itself. I was told by my producer in Rome that if we wanted to shoot landmarks around Rome, we would need clearances for each location. Some were private and some were public, we would need to pay off each manager/owner for access to their location. We would also need a shooting permit from the city of Rome and the usual pay for police/security/huge insurance coverage, yada, yada. Keep in mind, this would have been with a Panasonic Varicam shooting, small crew, etc. You can probably walk around Rome with a Canon Vixia and shoot anything you want sans all of this red tape. But then comes point 2.

2. Then you have dealing with the intellectual property/image of the landmark, piece of art, building, whatever it is. Some would not care, some will care. If you recall my story of the Hollywood sign above, they are like sharks and the Hollywood sign is chum. Shoot it all you want but if they see it in any broadcast, DVD, commercial web, you are going to receive a call from Global Icons, LLC, asking for a lot of money. Not sure about the European landmarks but I would check into it if shooting said landmarks, art works, buildings are important to your project. Heck, look at the name, look up Global Icons, perhaps they administer the image rights for the Eiffel tower and the Colisseum in Rome?

3. Then you have to deal with the lawyers at whatever media outlet is going to distribute/air or sell your finished work. Perhaps some are easier (MTV?), I can only tell you about the studios and cable nets that I deal with and overall, none of them are easy. I learned about this the hard way when a car racing documentary I shot years ago was bought by Image Entertainment. As we were finalizing the deal, their lawyer requested the location releases from the race tracks we shot at, which were many.

Keep in mind, we were trying our best to do everything correct, we had releases from every person who ever appeared on camera. We had releases from the teams that owned the race cars. What we neglected to get were the location releases from all of the race tracks. We went back to each with a release and guess what? Each of them wanted a lot of money ($15,000.00 from California Speedway), even though we never identified or saw that the shots on the track or in the pits were at California Speedway. It was a nightmare and we had to lose a lot of good footage because we couldn't afford it. The takeaway is NEVER leave location releases until you are done shooting, get permission and a signed location release BEFORE you complete shooting. Other problem is, most places will MAKE you supply them with an insurance binder for $1,000,000.00 comp liability with their name or LLC named as additional insured. That kind of production insurace requires either about $10,000.00 to $20,000.00 per year for a "producer's policy" or a daily insurance binder which runs about $700.00 per day.

Not sure if they will require this in Europe, but I know at all of the national monuments in Scotland, if I would have said that I was shooting commerically, they would have required it.

I am not giving you the definitive ruling on your show, I am not an entertainment attorney or studio attorney but I do deal with them on a weekly basis and basically, if there is anything you can think of for your production that will cost huge amounts of money and labor to implement, the lawyers will make you do it, no matter how ridiculous. Lawyers are paid to be obstacles to deals and to kill deals, that is what they dole out billable hours for at studios and networks.

The biggest mistake you can make is to go out and blindly shoot whatever you want with the assumption that you will be able to actually use it in anything but a home video. If you are serious about selling, distributing, exhibiting (no, film festivals aren't immune from legal clearances by any means) or making money from your project, an hour or two with an expensive entertainment attorney would be prudent. Sure it will cost you $500.00 to $1,000.00 for a good one but at least you will have a plan of action.

We, as artists, easily can go out and shoot material and interview people that will work beautifully in our project, but you need to put on your producer hat once in a while and get a clue about what you can and cannot do and each and every situation is different unfortunately.

Good luck,

Dan
 
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Man, Dan that was intense, thanks for sharing. I can see where these legalities can take the fun out of the profession
 
It is something that is near and dear to my heart. Basically, if you are a media creator these days, especially of documentary-type material as I am, everything you do lives or dies by if you can clear it. When I think of the material that I could not clear that just basically will be lost to the sands of time, its very sad.

It does take the fun out of it a lot of the times. But it is also fun when you find something cool and you can clear it. When I produced the Wizard of Oz three disc DVD collection a few years ago, we hunted down some additional 16mm home movies that were shot on the set of Oz that nobody had ever seen outside of the cast and crew. Nothing monumental, just the cast standing outside the main stage they shot at on the MGM lot in Culver City. But those little glimpses behind the scenes as history was being made, they are pretty cool.

I also dug up a two strip Technicolor animated 7 minute version of the Wizard of Oz that was produced by an obscure Canadian animator and was scored by Carl Stalling. Walt Disney had just signed his US deal with Technicolor and this cartoon was never released because Walt essentially buried it because he held the Technicolor exclusive rights for animation. We were able to hunt down a 16mm print from a collector, clear it and it is on the DVD. The finds like those are what make it really fun. Sometimes the attorneys let some cool stuff get cleared. But its rare.

Best,

Dan
 
I see where the positives weigh out the negatives in the long run knowing all the hard work you put in was not in vain, and in the process learning how to swim through all that. Now I'll have to go out and get that Wizard of Oz collection, you're making me spend more money:) on top of what I've already spent in my mind for gear.
 
Make sure you buy the three disc version, that is the last one and has all 12 hours of bonus that I produced on it. We worked on that set fourteen hours a day, six days a week for eight months. Costco had it for the holiday season but I haven't seen it there since.

You can get it here http://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Oz-Three-Disc-Collectors/dp/B000ADS64E
I think Warners is going to re-release it again this year as the 70th Anniversary Edition but they don't have a release date or cost yet or what new bonus they will add. I can't imagine that there is anything more to add to the twelve hours of bonus material that we did but the studios always keep re-releasing evergreen titles like this one.

I am sure that they will release a BluRay version, which is sort of a waste since the film is a 1.33 originated film and they made us produce all of the bonus material in 4:3 SD only, even though I begged them to let us do it all in HD (this was 2005). Beware if you own a Blu Ray player and HD LCD or plasma NOT to waste your money on a Blu Ray of this film.

Dan
 
Just came back from my England vacation.
I shot a ton of material with the HVX on a tripod. Mainly in towns, landmarks, even IN churches without any permission. Nobody asked me questions.

You can do the same here in Germany and get away with it most of the time.
No way to shoot in museums without permission here.
(Cant´t speak of other european countrys).

What will happen if you use that material comercialy - I don´t know.
Probably nothing, but if a greedy lawyer sees it, that might get expensive.
It´s always better to have permission, and if it only makes you a bit more relaxed on the set.

Frank
 
puredrifting said:
Make sure you buy the three disc version, that is the last one and has all 12 hours of bonus that I produced on it. We worked on that set fourteen hours a day, six days a week for eight months. Costco had it for the holiday season but I haven't seen it there since.

You can get it here http://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Oz-Three-Disc-Collectors/dp/B000ADS64E
I think Warners is going to re-release it again this year as the 70th Anniversary Edition but they don't have a release date or cost yet or what new bonus they will add. I can't imagine that there is anything more to add to the twelve hours of bonus material that we did but the studios always keep re-releasing evergreen titles like this one.

I am sure that they will release a BluRay version, which is sort of a waste since the film is a 1.33 originated film and they made us produce all of the bonus material in 4:3 SD only, even though I begged them to let us do it all in HD (this was 2005). Beware if you own a Blu Ray player and HD LCD or plasma NOT to waste your money on a Blu Ray of this film.

Dan
Click to expand...

I deal with Amazon mostly thanks Dan
 
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