Unfortunately, Skyler, Disney is pretty legal and protective of its media properties. If you're planning on making something that you won't distribute, I wouldn't worry about it (like a class project, for instance), but if the rest of the world will see it, it's a safe bet that they'll be unamused at its use should they find it. However, the policy of "Fair Use" (small description here – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use) does give you some latitude to use all of those things in the context of a work of "scholarship" which often includes documentary. If an interview you conduct with someone talks about one of those programs, you could probably get away with a very, very short clip of it (or stills). Depending on what your point of view is of these items, the companies behind the creation of the media may even be willing to give you limited use (if it serves their PR or goals). Fair Use is your best bet for using any of it, but as a rule you probably won't be able to use a lot. (Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, so for any fair use claims, it's always best to check with someone who knows legal matters a little bit better...)
The Mentoring Room - Ask the Working Pros
This is a Public Topic geared towards first-time filmmakers. Professional members of The D-Word will come by and answer your questions about documentary filmmaking.
Carlos – thanks for helping me make that connection between the two films and the possibility of their becoming one. And I've just put Gleaners and I in my Netflix queue.
Jason – Thanks for those sites and the offer of help. I've heard of the Suburbia movies you mentioned and I'm ordering them. Oakland county is one of the richest in the nation and it borders Detroit!
I wasn't exactly thinking they would become one but hey... glad it made any sense.
I will soon be editing in FCP for the first time. I will be using shared macs at the local arts center so I will be trundling along every week with my external hard drive. I understand it needs to be FAT32 formatted. My interviews are all 40 – 60 mins and therefore each is larger than 4GB in its entirety. Do i have to digitise them in stages then? Any good tutorials about on this sort of thing?
Evan, actually it is recommended that you use “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for the drive formatting. There should be no problem with file size. Organization is the other big challenge. There has been a lot posted here on that lately. Plenty of good advice, including that each project is different. You may want to apply for full membership to the D-Word so that you can access the FCP topic.
As Jason said, organization is important! Be sure you understand your scratch disks, and how to point the material you capture to your external hard drive and save it there.
hi, i'm ready to buy the panasonic p200a,I am going to be using it for educational and travel films.I have been going back and forth between the sony ex1 and the panasonic. I understand the p2 doesn't produce hd in full 1080 like the ex1, is this that important of a difference? I would like to have equipment i can grow into but is the hd that much of a selling feature when it comes to selling a film or for getting a broadcaster on side for funding? I will be working with premier pro cs3 as i have a pc.Will any of this set up hold me back once i get a project completed? It's such a hard decision! thanks for any help...
This may be a silly question, but I have a 10 minute trailer for Knowing Evil and would like to post it here for anyone to rip apart. I don't have all the rights to the archival images used so if I post it, will I get into legal trouble, would it be too public?
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