Copyrighting work

[Ollie]

Just done a gig that was being filmed for a documentary, and the producers asked me to provide some of the mix to them on dvd, i'm up for it but wanted to claify the copyright issues. How do i protect my work, does mailing it to myself validate a copyright? do i then have to realease this via a contract to the production for use? how concerned should i even be?

thanks for any advice

[holly]

Is the documentary about you?;)

I guess I'm of two minds here. One: what can it hurt to give them a few minutes (less than 10, maybe less than 5) if they want to do a creative cut-away to the vid screens. Just make sure you're listed in the credits.... Two: why do they need vj footage in a documentary? I assume it's about clublife, some scene, or a dj. In that case why bother. Are you making a documentary look cool? Isn't documentary filmmaking the antithesis of VJ? What's in it for you?

[littlecatalyst]

Originally posted by holly
Is the documentary about you?;) Isn't documentary filmmaking the antithesis of VJ?

no waaaay!! my last film school course was called anti-documentary! it's definitley what pushed me over the edge. killer screenings, though the antithesis would be more like tv. passive viewers (unlike ours) top-down "programming" as opposed to our bottom-up... content, um... theyre close

but as for your stuff, hollys right only send him 10-15 minutes, registered mail will work for copyright (if its 100% original material, otherwise forget it). I'd try to get a little cash as well as credits.

[Ollie]

i hear ya holly, but at the end of the day this is mostly about publicity more than anything else.

the documntary is being done on the night as a whole (not just me thank god). down in Plymouth the scene suxs, execpt this one little underground party, where it rocks, (suppose it won't be considered underground soon)

they did a section on us the Vj's what we're doing, how etc.. and i think they want like you said just some stuff to do cuttaways with. As for getting paid, and being in the credits thats already covered :) i just wanna protect myself so i don't see that they've used my sequences in the whole rest of the series, (without consulting me first), and if push comes to shove i have aboslute proof that i own th orginal copyright. the last bit is very unlikly, but would be good to know for sure the score, for future reference too.

cool so sounds like i registered mail them a copy, and myself? or don;t i have ot bother with the last bit?

[holly]

I wouldn't really bother with the last bit.... Maybe just as an experiment, but if you are featured in the docu then I'd take it on good faith that even if they used your stuff as transitions or something from segment to segment you are still in the film and people will make the connection that all this stuff is yours....

I did a live band a few weeks back and they asked me to play these movies that were edited of them running around the city in their costumes being weird and etc. Very boring videos (straight edits, very docu and traditional) but they used them to take breaks in the show, while I had been doing live fx on cam footage of the singer, flames, their logo, etc during the show. There was an innitial assumption that I did ALL the video (in other words, that the crappy videos were mine ? the opposite of what is concerning you) but once I told a few people they all knew the difference. VJ and Docu are different worlds.

disclaimer: the other guy's videos weren't that bad, and I'm acknowledging that a docu could be interesting, blah blah blah

[Rovastar]

If you can prove the footage is your than there is no problem from what I can see. Copyright is more a state of play than a written peice of paper.