Round One (nine ten) : Ownership across the value chain
Round One (nine ten) : Ownership across the value chain
Line to land: Ownership is a chain, not a moment. Every link where money enters is a link where someone asks for a piece of it.
What to say
What to say
· Separate three things that people blur: legal title (who owns the copyright and rights), creative control (who approves script, cast, final cut), and economic participation (who gets paid, when, and from what). They do not move together. You can keep credit and lose the money, or keep copyright and lose control through a long exclusive licence.
· Walk the chain in one sentence each:
· Development: the writer's strongest position. You hold the script unless commissioned. What matters is chain of title, the documented record of who wrote what and who assigned what to whom.
· Financing and pre-production: money buys rights. Broadcasters, funders and co-producers ask for a share of copyright, territories, approvals and priority in getting repaid.
· Production: most people on set are work-for-hire. The footage belongs to the producer or the production company.
· Post-production: final cut, credits, music and archive clearances. Uncleared rights here can sink a film's sales later.
· Sales and distribution: rights are licensed by territory, window, term and exclusivity. Agents take commission and expenses before the filmmaker sees money.
· Exhibition and afterlife: library value, sequels, remakes, formats, and increasingly data.
· Land the point that work-for-hire is not the villain. It can be fair when it is clear. The villain is not knowing which rights you have given away.