Where things have gotten more sticky is in our discussion of ultimate ownership and future rights to future projects. My teammates, who shall go unnamed ;) believe in an egalitarian approach.
"Each member on the team has equal rights to the film and footage. The film may be edited and re-released by any member of the team with permission from the other members. If team members would like to be involved in creating future versions of the film, then they are allowed to give input to future edits and screenings, but they do not have to be a part of the process. Before a new version of the film is shown, the team should be allowed, if they desire, to view the new version and give input or suggest changes. In every releasing and screening of the film, credit should be given to each of the original team members as laid out in this contract."
I, on the other hand, am not as excited or sympathetic to this. I believe that ultimately the original footage as well as the original final cut should belong to someone (or even split with one person keeping all the original footage, while the other person has ownership of the original final cut). Someone should have ownership and the ultimate authority to move ahead with future projects or veto others. It doesn't make sense to me otherwise, but perhaps I can be convinced with some discussion.
I am envisioning us in a worst case scenario splitting apart with the directions that we want the footage to go. Shouldn't someone have the ultimate authority/ownership in case of a three way split? Should that be the Director, Cinematographer or the Editor? I think a case could be made for any of them. But I've also heard that editors should never give away their original copy of the finished product because it is their production. Though it is a group effort, so it can be a hard argument to follow.
My conclusion: I think their needs to be an ultimate "shareholder" for split decision making.
2 comments:
As one of the aforementioned 'unnamed' members of the Nature and Constructed Space film crew, I find myself oddly neutral or rather, on the fence about "Egalitarian Filmmaking" (even though I was the one to label it as such) or what Jsteaffens is suggesting. I'm not even convinced that there is such a large division between the two opinions. Here is part of my email contribution to our 'film rights' discussion:
"The film should be as egalitarian as possible. For any future projects that might be done or continued based on the premise of our film, give credit where credit is due. My initial reaction is for the director to be the one to have the final film cut but I don't know if that's because I don't know anything about film roles".
Two more points: I agree that one person should hold the actual footage of the film - to give it to everyone, would just be excessive and I don't like being wasteful (wink). Secondly, by giving credit where credit is due, that would mean that anyone in our group who is interested in moving forward with a portion or the completed film would acknowledge the work that was done by each group member whether that be in the credits at the end of the film or some way else I can't think of at the moment.
As I'm writing this out, my use of the word "egalitarian" might better serve this conversation by being changed to "complimentarian". As time will prove, though this is a group effort, each of our defined roles will naturally dictate a particular type of strength and amount of work predominately contributed by that crew member. Such strength and work is necessary to the successful production of the film, and thus, each role compliments the other by offering something different to the makeup of the whole film. This doesn't help me figure out how to write out a contract that would allow for such fluidity, but it more closely pinpoints my thoughts on ownership and legality.
I will end with a literary example from the Harry Potter series written by J.K. Rowling. Lord Voldemort (the most evil wizard of all time) tore his soul into seven different parts and look what happened to him: he died. Would we be doing the same thing to our film if we were to divide the "soul" of our completed film by allowing work to continue on the film by separate members of our group? This is a terrible argument and terrible attempt at being funny but I'm leaving it in because it makes me laugh and I need that right now at work :).
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