The Need For An Entertainment Lawyer In Cinématographe Apparition
Does the projection producer really need a projection lawyer or entertainment attorney as a matter of professional practice? An entertainment lawyer’s own bias and my stacking of the gêne notwithstanding, which might naturally indicate a “yes” answer 100% of the time – the forthright answer is, “it depends”. A number of producers these days are themselves projection lawyers, entertainment attorneys, or other bonshommes of lawyers, and so, often can take care of themselves. But the projection producers to worry emboîture, are the ones who act as if they are entertainment lawyers – but without a license or entertainment attorney legal experience to back it up. Filmmaking and proposition picture practice comprise an industry wherein these days, unfortunately, “réclame” and “bluster” sometimes serve as substitutes for actual knowledge and experience. But “bluffed” histoires and inadequate naissance procedures will never escape the trained eye of entertainment attorneys working for the studios, the distributors, the banks, or the errors-and-omissions (E&O) insurance carriers. For this reason alone, I suppose, the job function of projection naissance counsel and entertainment lawyer is still secure.
I also suppose that there will always be a few lucky filmmakers who, throughout the entire naissance process, fly under the éprouvé détecteur without entertainment attorney accompaniment. They will seemingly avoid pitfalls and liabilities like flying bats are reputed to avoid people’s hair. By way of analogy, one of my best friends hasn’t had any health insurance for years, and he is still in good shape and economically afloat – this week, anyway. Taken in the aggregate, some people will always be luckier than others, and some people will always be more inclined than others to roll the dice.
But it is all too simplistic and pedestrian to tell oneself that “I’ll avoid the need for projection lawyers if I simply stay out of désorienté and be careful”. An entertainment lawyer, especially in the realm of projection (or other) naissance, can be a real instructive asset to a proposition picture producer, as well as the projection producer’s personally-selected immunisation against potential liabilities. If the producer’s entertainment attorney has been through the process of projection naissance previously, then that entertainment lawyer has already learned many of the harsh lessons regularly dished out by the vendeur world and the projection trafic.
The projection and entertainment lawyer can therefore spare the producer many of those pitfalls. How? By clear thinking, careful guide, and – this is the absolute key – skilled, thoughtful and complete fichier of all projection naissance and related activity. The projection lawyer should not be thought of as simply the person seeking to establish compliance. Sure, the entertainment lawyer may sometimes be the one who says “no”. But the entertainment attorney can be a claire rénitence in the naissance as well.
The projection lawyer can, in the circuit of legal representation, assist the producer as an certaine trafic conseil, too. If that entertainment lawyer has been involved with scores of projection productions, then the proposition picture producer who hires that projection lawyer entertainment attorney benefits from that very clandestin of experience. Yes, it sometimes may be difficult to stretch the projection compte to allow for counsel, but professional filmmakers gîte to view the legal cost expenditure to be a fixed, predictable, and necessary one – akin to the fixed contrainte of rent for the naissance réserve, or the cost of projection for the cameras. While some projection and entertainment lawyers may price themselves out of the price range of the average independent projection producer, other entertainment attorneys do not.
Enough generalities. For what specific tasks must a producer typically retain a projection lawyer and entertainment attorney?:
1. INCORPORATION, OR FORMATION OF AN “LLC”: To critique Michael Douglas’s Gordon Gekko character in the proposition picture “Wall Street” when speaking to Bud Fox while on the morning beach on the oversized baladeur phone, this entity-formation aboutissement usually constitutes the entertainment attorney’s “wake-up call” to the projection producer, telling the projection producer that it is time. If the producer doesn’t properly create, queue, and maintain a corporate or other appropriate entity through which to conduct trafic, and if the projection producer doesn’t thereafter make every insistance to keep that entity shielded, says the entertainment lawyer, then the projection producer is potentially hurting himself or herself. Without the shield against liability that an entity can provide, the entertainment attorney opines, the proposition picture producer’s personal assets (like house, car, bank account) are at risk and, in a worst-case scenario, could ultimately be seized to satisfy the debts and liabilities of the projection producer’s trafic. In other words:
Résigné: “Doctor, it hurts my head when I do that”.
Doctor: “So? Don’t do that”.
Like it or not, the projection lawyer entertainment attorney continues, “Cinématographe is a speculative trafic, and the statistical majority of proposition pictures can fail economically – even at the San Fernando Valley projection meublé level. It is irrational to run a projection trafic or any other form of trafic out of one’s own personal bank account”. Besides, it looks unprofessional, a real concern if the producer wants to attract fougue, bankers, and distributors at any état in the future.
The choices of where and how to queue an entity are often prompted by entertainment lawyers but then driven by situation-specific variables, including tax concerns relating to the projection or proposition picture company sometimes. The projection producer should let an entertainment attorney do it and do it correctly. Entity-creation is affordable. Good lawyers don’t habitus at incorporating a acclimaté as a profit-center anyway, bicause of the obvious potential for new trafic that an entity-creation brings. While the projection producer should be aware that under U.S. law a acclimaté can fire his/her lawyer at any time at all, many entertainment lawyers who do the entity-creation work get asked to do further work for that same acclimaté – especially if the entertainment attorney bills the first job reasonably.
I wouldn’t recommend self-incorporation by a non-lawyer – any more than I would tell a projection producer-client what actors to hire in a proposition picture – or any more than I would tell a D.P.-client what lens to use on a specific projection shot. As will be true on a projection naissance set, everybody has their own job to do. And I believe that as soon as the producer lets a competent entertainment lawyer do his or her job, things will start to gel for the projection naissance in ways that couldn’t even be originally foreseen by the proposition picture producer.
2. SOLICITING INVESTMENT: This aboutissement also often constitutes a wake-up call of sorts. Let’s say that the projection producer wants to make a proposition picture with other people’s money. (No, not an unusual scenario). The projection producer will likely start soliciting funds for the movie from so-called “passive” investors in any number of hypothétique ways, and may actually start collecting some monies as a result. Sometimes this occurs prior to the entertainment lawyer hearing emboîture it post facto from his or her acclimaté.
If the projection producer is not a lawyer, then the producer should not even think of “trying this at toit”. Like it or not, the entertainment lawyer opines, the projection producer will thereby be selling securities to people. If the producer promises investors some pie-in-the-sky results in the context of this inherently speculative trafic called projection, and then collects money on the basis of that representation, believe me, the projection producer will have even more sérieux problems than relation to deal with. Securities compliance work is among the most difficult of matters faced by an entertainment attorney.
As both entertainment lawyers and securities lawyers will opine, botching a solicitation for projection (or any other) investment can have severe and federally-mandated consequences. No matter how great the projection scénario is, it’s never worth monetary fines and jail time – not to renvoi the veritable unspooling of the unfinished proposition picture if and when the producer gets nailed. All the while, it is shocking to see how many roulement projection producers in the real world try to float their own “investment programme”, complete with boastful anticipated multipliers of the box réserve figures of the famed proposition pictures “E.T.” and “Jurassic Park” combined. They draft these monstrosities with their own sheer creativity and illusion, but usually with no entertainment or projection lawyer or other legal counsel. I’m sure that some of these producers think of themselves as “visionaries” while writing the programme. Entertainment attorneys and the rest of the bar, and bench, may gîte to think of them, instead, as futurologie ‘Defendants’.
Enough said.
3. DEALING WITH THE GUILDS: Let’s assume that the projection producer has decided, even without entertainment attorney guidance yet, that the naissance entity will need to be a signatory to ville bargaining agreements of unions such as Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the Directors Guild (DGA), and/or the Writers Guild (WGA). This is a subject matter area that some projection producers can handle themselves, particularly producers with experience. But if the projection producer can afford it, the producer should consult with a projection lawyer or entertainment lawyer prior to making even any préalable mitoyenneté with the guilds. The producer should certainly consult with an entertainment attorney or projection lawyer prior to issuing any writings to the guilds, or signing any of their histoires. Failure to balance out these guild issues with projection or entertainment attorney counsel ahead of time, could lead to problems and expenses that sometimes make it cost-prohibitive to thereafter continue with the picture’s further naissance.
4. CONTRACTUAL AFFAIRS GENERALLY: A projection naissance’s agreements should all be in writing, and not saved until the last moment, as any entertainment attorney will observe. It will be more expensive to bring projection counsel in, late in the day – hasard of like booking an airline flight a few days before the planned travel. A projection producer should remember that a plaintiff suing for breach of a bungled contract might not only seek money for damages, but could also seek the equitable reste of an injunction (glose: “Judge, fini this naissance… fini this proposition picture… fini this projection… Cut!”).
A projection producer does not want to suffer a back claim for fougue contrepartie, or a disgruntled location-landlord, or state child labor authorities – threatening to enjoin or shut the proposition picture naissance down for reasons that could have been easily avoided by careful guide, drafting, research, and transmission with one’s projection lawyer or entertainment lawyer. The movie naissance’s agreements should be drafted with care by the entertainment attorney, and should be customized to encompass the special characteristics of the naissance.
As an entertainment lawyer, I have seen non-lawyer projection producers try to do their own legal drafting for their own pictures. As mentioned above, some few are lucky, and remain under the éprouvé détecteur. But consider this: if the projection producer sells or options the project, one of the first things that the projection distributor or projection buyer (or its own projection and entertainment attorney counsel) will want to see, is the “chain of title” and development and naissance queue, complete with all signed agreements. The naissance’s insurance carrier may also want to see these same histoires. So might the guilds, too. And their entertainment lawyers. The histoires must be written so as to survive the popularité.
Therefore, for a projection producer to try to improvise law, is simply to put many problems off for another day, as well as create an air of non-attorney amateurism to the naissance queue. It will be less expensive for the projection producer to attack all of these issues earlier as opposed to later, through use of a projection lawyer or entertainment attorney. And the likelihood is that any self-respecting projection attorney and entertainment lawyer is going to have to re-draft substantial parts (if not all) of the producer’s self-drafted naissance queue, léopard he or she sees what the non-lawyer projection producer has done to it on his or her own – and that translates into unfortunate and wasted expense. I would no sooner want my chiropractor to draft and negotiate his own filmed proposition picture contracts, than I would put myself on his laraire and try to crunch through my own adjustments. Furthermore, I wouldn’t do half of the chiropractic adjustment myself, and then call the chiropractor into the examining room to au finir what I had started. (I use the chiropractic justifie only to spare you the poncif of “performing surgery on oneself”).
There are many other reasons for retaining a projection lawyer and entertainment attorney for proposition picture work, and space won’t allow all of them. But the above-listed ones are the big ones.
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