we are designing some classroom courses and plan to use some clips from box office films. We will need to source the films in 7 different European languages. Does anyone have any advice on:
- copyright isues in different countries
- the best place to buy movies in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, portuguese?
- the technicalities of editting/selecting the clips we want to use so that trainers don't have to search the whole film
any advice would be much appreciated!
richard rogers
5 Responses
Don’t do it
– copyright isues in different countries
Yep, most films have a worldwide copyright, firstly get hold of the copyright owner. Usually the copyright will prevent you from further copying, transmission (onto an editing machine), distribution (ie. send your clips to other sites), broadcasting, printing or manipulation of images and sound – in all mediums current or yet to be discovered in perpetuity.
But like I said do contact the copyright owners first. Otherwise you might face a very punitive fine.
Editing
Probably the simplest way to do the editing would be to play the film through your PC and then use a screen capture tool, like Wink (free) to record the segments you want.
Then you just have to buy the DVD in the various languages you want (or subtitled – or even add your own subtitles.
As noted previously, getting permission to do this is going to be difficult – in effect you need a license for public display – the kind of permission cinemas have.
Look into whether there are any ‘reasonable use’ clauses that might enable you to use segments if they are only short and not a significant part of the film.
I.E. Can the copyright owner reasonably argue that you are using a training session as a front to collecting money for a public show of their film?
Not entirely
Richard is not entirely correct.
The use you are using it for (training) is not the point. The point is, you are broadcasting it, to be viewed by an audinece (ie. its not private viewing). Usually the only exclusions exist for Gvnt sponsored educational institutions ie. students
Using Films
We wanted to use a scene from a film for a seminar we were running and the process in the end stopped us! In the end we used some video materials from an organisation called 50Lessons which worked perfectly! Although not available in multi-languages, sub-titled versions can be produced.
If you would like to know more then do let me know…. it certainly worked for us!
Regards
Martin
Film Clips
I have used music and clips of movies for the past 10 yrs in allsorts of training interventions. The best way to do this is to join Performing Rights Society at http://www.mcps-prs-alliance.co.uk so your covered for all public broadcasting of music and film. Also for advice on International legalisation you can try; http://www.cisac.org