Copyright Permission and Releases

Indie Filmmaker’s journal: Part Two.  

“I look like a raccoon.” He said. “A bald raccoon.  And the music is not me.  Not me, doesn’t fit with my work. Change it.” He was not happy with our little masterpiece.

“Music, good music, free music is kind of hard to find.”  I said. “We can leave the music out, no problem.  But the raccoon thing is about the lighting at your house.  Not much we can do about that, now.”  I didn’t tell him it was also a function of our ignorance of proper lighting.  I felt bad.  He was a professional artist, we were amateur videographers.

We were learning, still finding out about how to do interviews of artists for informational features for our local community access cable TV station, which covers a small rural county.  I see it as a kind of journalism.  The Stanford University website mentions that many journalists do not obtain a signed interview release on the assumption that giving the interview was consent.  The US Copyright Office and the University of California  site are helpful in understanding permissions and releases.  Releases can help avoid legal actions for libel, invasion of privacy or copyright infringement (interviewee’s words can be copyrightable). 


An interview release is a hybrid, part release and part license.  That is what we needed.  We are not interested in making money, but we did not want to get clobbered financially as we learned our hobby.  There was an example form, which we adjusted.

We video interviews with artists and we video their art work. The images of those works are under the scope of copyright ownership.  We adjusted the release/license form to cover our video use of the copyright images we might use in the production.

Then there was “property releases”.  It is okay to video a building or property visible from a public place, but if a building is protected by copyright and not visible from a public place a release is needed.  Entering private property and being in private space it may be good to have a release.  We were usually in people’s homes.  We adjusted our release/license form accordingly.  We also created a more specific “location release” to cover a particular place.  That was “just in case” we needed it.

It was easy.  The release form was simple.  We were interviewing folks who we knew and giving them a copy of our production.  We extended a release/permission to them to use the video for non-commercial self promotion.

As we began to do productions in varied locations, we wondered, do we have to get releases and permissions for everything.  What is “Fair Use”?