Posting video reel online

[lessis more]

What is the name of your state? CA

Hello all,

My brother and I own a video production company. We just launched our website wich plays our reel on it. The reel contains footage which we edited and manipulted on it. The raw footage is from video games(provided by the client for projects), content we shot and graphics we created for the client. We did all the editing and manipulation to the footage footage with the permission from the client. All we want to do is show off our work. All video production companies have video on there site, some even have footage they worked on for major networks. One of our clients, which we are not interested in keeping, asked us if we had permision to use the footage from her company. Legaly what is the situation here?

 

[The Occultist]

What do your contracts with your clients say?

By the way, do you have permission from the copyright holders of the video games to be using their copyright images?

 

[lessis more]

No contracts for the work done.

the short answer is no I do not have any documentation from the copywrite holders.

the long answer is, the copywrite holders sought me out because of the past work i had done and asked me to use my own artistic influence to change there images and video and now i would like to show my work to other people.

This is a common practice in video production, to show off work done. I can point out thousands of instances of editors and production companies showing work they did on the net.

Not trying to be difficult here, but this can really effect my lively hood and I would like to show the work done.

 

[lessis more]

Hi all,

We have taken our site down for the time being, but I have attached a link to another video companies website. This website is a good example of what I am dealing with. please go to the "projects" page and watch videos there.

http://www.baysideentertainment.com/main.htm

thanks.

 

[quincy]

Copyrights are generally owned by the people who create the works, however, if this company hired you to do the video for them, using their copyrighted games, and you sold the resulting video to them, they probably own and control all rights to the video. They would own the copyright.

The difficulty with saying this for sure, however, is the absense of a contract.

"Work-for-hires" generally require a written agreement saying that you have been commissioned to create a work and, once completed, the commissioning party would own the copyright. Likewise, an assignment to another of all rights in a work created would need to be in writing and signed by the work's creator. Only if you were an employee of this company, and the work was created as part of your employment, would the employer own the copyright with no contract necessary.

Even without a valid contract, you would still need to obtain a license from this company prior to running the video on your website, to avoid a possible copyright infringement suit based on the fact that the video shows their copyrighted game. The copyright of the game would not be in question.

Without a valid contract, however, ownership of the copyright in the video itself (whether it be an exclusive ownership by this company or a joint ownership between you and the company) may have to be determined by a court.

 

[lessis more]

That is a great answer. It sounds like if i want to use the images on my site i will have to get permission from the company. I will start talking with there legal department.

This sounds juvenile but what about all those thousands of other production companies that play videos on there site? The example i submitted above has video from the same company that asked us to pull there clips. I know they do not have copywrite permission. My guess is, the wrong person saw our site at the wrong time, and now we just happen to be paying for it, correct?

thanks again for the great answer.

 

[The Occultist]

OP, I hate to do this, but I feel I must: copyRIGHT copyRIGHT copyRIGHT. It is the RIGHT to copy.

 

[The Occultist]

That is a great answer. It sounds like if i want to use the images on my site i will have to get permission from the company. I will start talking with there legal department.

This sounds juvenile but what about all those thousands of other production companies that play videos on there site? The example i submitted above has video from the same company that asked us to pull there clips. I know they do not have copywrite permission. My guess is, the wrong person saw our site at the wrong time, and now we just happen to be paying for it, correct?

thanks again for the great answer.

You're right, there are far too many such sites out there, and that's what makes it all so hard to enforce. There's no way they can go to a court and ask the judge to tell everybody in the world to stop. No, they have to attack each individual on an individual basis. Makes things rather tedious, n'est-ce pas?

 

[quincy]

It is possible that the other site obtained a license from the company to use their video, but it is also quite possible that the company has just not contacted that site yet.

What your clients may be more readily inclined to do, when you approach them for a license to use the video, is to license the use of only a small portion of the video - just enough so that you can demonstrate your video production company's work on your website. If your clients are using this "game" video you created for them for advertising purposes, they may have a strong desire to control who sees it, where it is seen, and how often it is seen.

If they seem reluctant to license the whole video, then, suggest to them the licensing of a clip.