ASK & DISCUSS
INDEXI made a feature.
3 years, 6 months ago - Jay y
probably everything that could have gone wrong along the way did
in ways I could never have imagined but i did end up finishing it.
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3 years, 6 months ago - kieran Reed
That's brilliant Jason. Well done.
I'd love to hear more, both about the actual project and your experiences making it.
Response from 3 years, 6 months ago - kieran Reed SHOW
3 years, 6 months ago - Jay y
I began as a producer/ director with no schedule, I just began by casting and beginning to shoot on the streets ; we spent 3+ years shooting the project and probably 2-3 years editing.
Response from 3 years, 6 months ago - Jay y SHOW
3 years, 1 month ago - Tristram Anyiam
sorry to hear this, why did it take so long? and why so long to edit it? Glad you pulled through
Response from 3 years, 1 month ago - Tristram Anyiam SHOW
3 years, 6 months ago - Jay y
Midway through the production I began working with my partner as a co-producer and now in the unfortunate position of having the film taken away from me by her and a financier who both refuse to answer e mails or supply copy of a contract.
Response from 3 years, 6 months ago - Jay y SHOW
Response from 3 years, 6 months ago - Alwyne Kennedy SHOW
3 years, 6 months ago - Jay y
please forgive the non-linear nature of some of this thread; after i locked and finished the film, she was intent on finding a distributor then she eventually found a guy D. Months went by and she told me to be patient, I didn't like his website wrong kind of content, cheesy bad action movies then I asked to see a contract or agreement and my e-mails fell on deaf ears. D would not speak or discuss details with me, I called Pinewood where he'd put his address, they had no record of D. My ex partner kept avoiding the subject of a contract, highly suspicious.
Response from 3 years, 6 months ago - Jay y SHOW
3 years, 6 months ago - Alwyne Kennedy
But why are you telling us this? Merely venting? A cautionary tale? Or are you asking for advice? If so, maybe furnish some details. Maybe the name of the distributor and film? I have no experience in such matters myself, but there are people here who may be able to offer wise advice.
Response from 3 years, 6 months ago - Alwyne Kennedy SHOW
3 years, 6 months ago - Jay y
Im not sure venting a little a precautionary tale perhaps the story behind the making became some might say more interesting than the film itself
Response from 3 years, 6 months ago - Jay y SHOW
3 years, 6 months ago - John Lubran
It seems to be fundamentally a legal issue. Astonishingly for some, a contract is not necessarily a sacred tablet from Heaven, especially if an impropriety has been entrenched in it. Such improprieties might arise from a number of causes, including Procedural Impropriety. Where an otherwise proper claim flows from and therefore relies on an impropriety then that subsequent claim is Ultra Vires (null and void)
Think 'House of Cards', pull the bottom card out and the whole house collapses. A claim of Procedural Impropriety might arise from a failure of law, either Statute, Common or other circumstances having force of Law. It can arise from a Circumstance of Legitimate Expectation. It's my experience that even contracts drawn up by qualified lawyers are too often improper on one or more points.
The devil is in the detail. Did you willingly and without knowing obfuscational impediment agree to relinquishing any natural rights and benefits of your work?
Hope you find a good attorney, whether qualified or not, but beware bad ones hiding behind their qualifications, those ones are a menace to society.
It's often lost on the unlearned, including lawyers, that an impropriety under Common Law can have greater force than a propriety under Statute. Otherwise fraudsters and cheats would have a hay day.
Response from 3 years, 6 months ago - John Lubran SHOW
Response from 3 years, 6 months ago - Jay y SHOW
3 years, 6 months ago - John Lubran
@jason y
It's an issue that isn't solved or remedied by thin sound bites or uncritical cap doffing to the sort of expedient administrative lawlessness that's still too often upheld by Diceyest lawyers and even senior judges. Nevertheless the difficulties with the over reaching assertions of A.V.Dicey are unravelling exponentially on all fronts. Notions that these observations are non sequitur to the case at issue are deeply unlearned. It is in fact of the essence, not just in these matters but across pretty much every facet of Law and governance.
Without prejudice to the above.
Did you sign or are you otherwise constructively and or evidently party to any kind of agreements?
With or without signed bits of paper a Court may find, should other evidence provide, that an agreement of some sort exists by construction.
Whilst it's possible that nothing exists that defeats your natural rights, it may still obstruct any business enterprise, ironically, because nothing otherwise effectual exists. The consequential ambiguity of such would still need judicial determination before any party to the dispute is likely to appeal to any main stream distributor. They like their t's crossed, their i's dotted and clarity of rights to be emphatic.
An interesting consequence of such an ambiguity is that anyone wishing to obstruct others from acting as unobstructed owners of rights would have to bring an action to the courts first. The onus of proving such a claim beyond all probable doubt lies with the Claimant. The Respondent has significant advantage where full legal clarity hasn't been established.
Nevertheless, it's a cautionary fact that hundreds of products and productions remain in limbo, often for ever, because of such ambiguous ownership of rights. Where such an impasse is entrenched, a mutual remedy is the best option. It's only the lawyers who benefit from insoluble cases.
Where chaotic contractual arrangements are manifest, it's often associated with a Pandora's Box of other dysfunctional arrangements such as affecting actors, crew, property rights holders
etc.,etc.
Fiction films are particularly vulnerable to legal dysfunction. Factual news and documentary are much less vulnerable, even to the point of near total invulnerablity. In the USA it's upheld by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Lible and Slander however is always vulnerable under any circumstances. Manifest Truth isn't.
In the UK where our Constitution is uncodified, the same rights are constructively protected, not least because the US Constitution is wholly founded on English Common Law (issues of noncodification ought not be confused with the long held and erronious assertions that our Constitution is unwritten. See the Declaration of Rights 1688 amongst many other written Constitutional Instruments upholding the supremacy of Common Law and other fundamentally entrenched rights and obligations that are beyond the reach of Statute Legislation. Those written Instruments are lodged at of all places, the Constitutional Library in the Palace of Westminster). One could hardly make it up.
Do you possess a Master Copy of the film at issue and other recorded assets of the production? Whilst only a metaphor, often of only pyric moral value, the notion that "possession is nine tenths of the law", is not entirely without substance.
As I always repeat, because it's always of the essence; The devil is in the detail.
Response from 3 years, 6 months ago - John Lubran SHOW
3 years, 6 months ago - Vasco de Sousa
Interesting story. I don't think I would have ever been involved in a feature fiction film with no production schedule, it sounds like all three of you (the producer, you, the financier) are beginners here.
Perhaps I am at the other extreme, and I may have lost the chance to participate in some interesting projects there, but I like to have at least some kind of end date to shoot for.
Anyway, you now have something to put on your cv. Make sure your name is on the work, and don't worry about the tacky website it is on. Share the link to show people what you have done, so that you can make a better film (with better contracts) next time.
Response from 3 years, 6 months ago - Vasco de Sousa SHOW
3 years, 6 months ago - Jay y
the financier was not involved at the beginning he was a contact of the person much further down the line, yes best not to start work without an end date, but on ones first film it was my only recourse, the answer to the question how do i raise this film up on its feet.
Response from 3 years, 6 months ago - Jay y SHOW
3 years, 6 months ago - Jay y
Since last June after getting fed up of never seeing the contract or getting replies I severed ties with them, cleared the remaining music rights issue & found an indie distributor myself in LA. Over the years yes I got into a little debt making this but I can't say it wasn't a pretty good film school.
Response from 3 years, 6 months ago - Jay y SHOW
3 years, 5 months ago - Jay y
but it's not over is it : the next thing that happens is that the co-producer (I'll call her DS), contacts Mbur the distrib. co. in LA and says they have no rights to the film whereby Mbur drop the film from their roster.
Response from 3 years, 5 months ago - Jay y SHOW
3 years, 5 months ago - Jay y
so the film was finished in 2015 , seven years ago and still hasn't seen the light of day. The contract that DS refused to show me all these years i finally see basically says i was hired by the production and relinquish all rights for £300. Yeah it kinda vaguely looks like my signature but I have no recollection of signing it why would I have?
Response from 3 years, 5 months ago - Jay y SHOW
3 years, 5 months ago - John Lubran
I would refer to my unremarked upon even though magisterial offering above; now brought into sharp relief by this latest revelation?
Wanting something badly enough isn't enough. Feeling that one is in the right isn't enough. Presumption of mere supposition isn't enough. It's a factuality over presumed entitlement thing. And boy hasn't the culture of entitlement distorted our society to the degree of preposterousness these days?
There may or may not be a route out of the dilemma, but whatever that route is has to be navigated accurately according to the actual terrain rather than the hypothetically preferred terrain, which only leads into the mire of nonsense. It's how mediocre lawyers make a living and good lawyers overturn the entrenched presumptions of mediocre lawyers. Spotting the difference is a thing
The contract asserted to have been signed by you is either a fact or a forgery, but if a fact it may or may not have force (see my narrative above concerning Procedural Propriety). Someone, who knows their arse from their elbow will need to see every devilish detail if the reality is to be sepatared from the waffle.
Response from 3 years, 5 months ago - John Lubran SHOW
3 years, 2 months ago - Jay y
The producer in question who forged this 'contract' which makes out that she hired me rather than the other way around is Deborah Stone of Bristol, avoid working with this person at all costs if you value a positive outcome with your creative projects and indeed your sanity.
Response from 3 years, 2 months ago - Jay y SHOW