Sunday, September 16, 2012

Must Needs Be Done

It's funny, completing a feature film is a monumental effort -- thousands of man hours of work and the willingness to see the movie through the end of its process no matter how you're feeling about the movie on a given day. 
But the actual delivery requirements can be... daunting. You think you're all done with color-correcting, with eliminating matte lines and cleaning up dialog tracks and then --
-- And then you have to deal with a LOT of paperwork.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. In fact there's a Federal injunction against me complaining about anything because, after all, I'm allowed to direct feature films for (a poor) living.
But I thought it would be amusing to post the sorts of delivery items one must produce in order to get North American distribution.
Note that all deals are unique and different. And this one particular distributor is more picky. Ironically the requirements for North America have become more legally detailed for low-budget indy pictures in the last few years due to the heady deep-pockets liability inherent in the big VOD services -- they're sticklers for every "i" being crossed and "t" being dotted.

Documentation
  1. Screenplay
  2. Composers Agreement
  3. Sync & Master Use License agreement
  4. Paid Ads statement  ( On your letter head, detailing which actors/above the line crew get what credit, in what order, etc )
  5. Dubbing Restriction ( On your letterhead, detailing if there are any dubbing restrictions.)
  6. Director & Producer agreements  ( - similar to the writer's agreement)
  7. Title Search report .  ( You can use someone like  http://www.suzyvaughan.com/  who is half price of Thomson Compumark )
  8. Copyright report (it's possible this may not be required)
  9. Stock Footage statement ( On you letter head, detailing if there is any stock footage in the movie and if so, where it comes from and legal rights to use it. )
  10. Chain of title document
  11. Trailer Usage.  ( A statement on your letter head that says there are no restrictions with actor usage in the trailer )
  12. Copyright FORM PA  Script and Movie

1 comment:

Kangas said...

Ha--that's who my people use for their copyright reports too. And yeah, that looks like pretty much the same deliverables as I've had.

Here's what my list looked like in 2005: http://foc-log.blogspot.com/2009/11/may-26th-2005.html

Makes me laugh now. Man, technology changes fast...