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A Practitioner's Guide to Key Provisions In Film Director Agreements
Film remains a director's medium, considering that the director will always give shape and vision to the writer's words. Further, the director is frequently involved in the creation of the script, so that his or her vision may be more readily realized. The cost of first-time independent films is going down, as smartphones may be used to create all the footage. As the ability to tell a story in short form becomes more readily accepted, the director's influence may be more important than the financier's or the other talent.
This article discusses many of the principal terms of an agreement between an independent film production company and a film director.
Loan-Out Corporations
As in any agreement, an understanding of who the parties are to the agreement is essential. While many films are financed through a variety of sources, and with funding from multiple companies, it is unlikely that the party engaging the director to perform services would be any company other than the one that is actually, physically producing the picture. Equity investors or lenders are not typically engaging the director. In turn, the production company must also own the rights to the script, engage the line producer, other producers, the actors, the unit production manager and other personnel, all of whom will provide services to the production company to create the single motion-picture copyright. A theatrical motion picture contains contributions from possibly hundreds of people and companies, each of whom must sign an agreement granting rights in their contributions as a "work made for hire" to the production company under the U.S. Copyright Act.
On the other hand, many directors work through a loan-out corporation (although some do not). The loan-out corporation ("lender") will have an agreement with the director, by which the lender is entitled to the director's exclusive services. The lender in turn contracts with the production company to provide the services of the director. The agreement is often drafted such that the "employee" of the production company is "Loan-Out Corporation f/s/o Jane Director."
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