Joint Venture Agreement: Preparing the Pre-Production Prenup

I often meet with two (or more) clients who wish to work together to produce a film, a video or some other audio-visual project. Sometimes one person will be designated a project’s producer while the other person may serve as the director. One of the parties often has written or …

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act: Keeping Distributors on the Residuals Hook

Independent producers usually utilize the services of members of various guilds and unions in the entertainment industry such as the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Directors Guild of America (DGA) by becoming signatories to a union’s collective bargaining agreement.

Under the guild agreements, the …

The Top Ten Reasons for When You, As a Writer, Need a Lawyer

As an entertainment attorney, I have presented numerous talks concerning the legal and business issues concerning screenwriting for such venues as universities, film schools, the Independent Feature Project, New York Women in Film & Television, and New York University. These lectures cover the basics such as rights definitions and protection, …

Sundance 2011: Deals, Deals, Everywhere, But Is There Money to Make?

With the conclusion of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, many sales agents, distributors and mediamakers breathed a collective sigh of relief that more than twenty six deals were negotiated prior to and during the ten day event with some deals about to close in the festival’s aftermath. However, one can …

This Is Your Life: Negotiating Life Story Agreements

With the critical and commercial success of such documentaries as Mad Hot Ballroom and the Academy Award-winning short documentary Freeheld, both documentarians and audiences are acknowledging the compelling power of the non-fiction biographical narrative form of storytelling. However, the mediamaker must grapple with a myriad of legal, business, aesthetic and …

The Battle over Streaming and Other “Television” Rights

In the ever-increasing multi-“window” and multiple revenue stream universe brought about by digital technology, mediamakers are being forced to make a decision concerning how and when they license their media projects. Many mediamakers have entered into licensing agreements with such streaming services as Netflix (and Hulu to some extent), so …

The Pros and Cons of Crowdfunding Media Projects

In their quest to secure funding for their projects, independent mediamakers are more and more using a financing option called “crowdfunding” in which mediamakers place their projects on such websites as Indie GoGo and Kickstarter and request that people donate usually small sums of money towards such projects.

Usually a project …