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).