Your client decides to write and produce a screenplay with a team of friends. You start talking about contracts and insurance, but your client doesn’t want to hear about it, that would just dampen the creative process. Everyone is so excited to make the next Oscar winning movie they jump right into drafting the screenplay and filming the movie. On the first day of filming, two of the actors don’t show up. You also confirm your client failed to purchase insurance – which means they can’t rent any equipment to produce the film. Oh, and the script is called “Every Day Outside is Sunny” and it’s raining outside every single day. After four days of “filming,” the money dries up and the project is dead. Two years later some of your client’s video footage shows up on America’s Funniest Home and on a television commercial for a soft drink.
When independent filmmaking projects go wrong, many issues could have been prevented by proper planning from a legal standpoint at the outset of the project. As an entertainment attorney, you almost have to act as a production coordinator and account for your client’s risk from concept to distribution. In this course, actor, producer, director, writer and entertainment law attorney Monroe Mann shows you to protect your entertainment clients as they navigate through their feature filmmaking, television and video production projects. Monroe mainly discusses how the feature film is one big contract, the risks associated with the development stage, pre-production & production pitfalls and the legal aspects of distribution. Additional issues discussed: the five phases of production, conflicts of interest, treatments, WGA vs. copyright registration, funding the project, the budget, scheduling, cast & crew, planning the project, shooting the film, replanning, production pitfalls, editing, marketing, distribution and accounting.
Monroe Mann is an actor, producer, director, writer, musician, entertainment law attorney and much, much more. Fluent in French, Italian and Chinese, Monroe graduated from Franklin College, Switzerland, with a degree in International Economics and French. Monroe received his J.D. degree from Pace Law School, his MBA in financial management from Lubin School of Business and a certificate in financial planning from Boston University/Boston Institute of Finance. He wrote, produced and starred in the 2012 film You Can’t Kill Stephen King, and he has authored such books as Time Zen: Aka Winners Do It Now, Guerrilla Networking: A Proven Battle Plan to Attract the Very People You Want to Meet and To Benning & Back – The Making of a Citizen Soldier. Monroe also served as an Intelligence Officer for the United States Army for 8 years in Kuwait and Iraq.