Get Past Legal

Since getting rich off a lawsuit seems to be the American way, film and TV sets have always had teams of lawyers reviewing every possible detail to make sure no legal liabilities are present. These could come in the version of lawsuits over copyright, trademark, rights of privacy, rights of publicity, and a whole host more. This is why so many movies have brandless appliances, non-real phone numbers, generic family pictures, and so on. Backdrops do not avoid this either and could get slowed down going through legal as well. This was the case with one of our recent backdrops on 42nd street at Times Square.

When we first arrived, we planned on capturing the view above (captured with my cell phone). As you can see, there is a giant Target dog directly in view, which was not going to get past legal. So we opted to move about 30 yards to our left, across from the Yankees shop. This solved the dog problem, but brought with it issues concerning the Regal.

Here we have both a screen showing previews of the films currently being run and a large 3-story ad for Regal’s 4DX “viewing experience.” Both of these brought with them a host of copyright, trademark and licensing issues.

Foreseeing this, I captured several variations of the screen to ensure we would have enough of a selection to choose from to drop in place. The fast moving action in most previews did make it challenging to get a scene without any branding or too much blur, but I did manage to capture a nondescript military vehicle driving who knows where. This worked perfectly.

For the 4DX ad it was suggested that we blur the image so much so it would no longer be recognizable. Although this would have worked, the amount of blur would have been so much that the image would become unsightly, not to mention the mullions would bleed into the image to the point of being distracting. I insteed opted to just replace the image all together.

In my other business I work as an architectural photographer and one of my best clients is JKRP, the go to theater designer in the country. I photographed the Regal at Houston and Essex for them a few years ago and thought the dusk exterior I captured would work well as a replacement. Since I fully own the copyright to my work and this was an exterior shot, no licensing or location issues would come into play, and I made sure to place the image so no signage was present, avoiding any trademark issues as well. Choosing one of my images also allowed us to quickly find a solution and maintain our deadline. After dropping it in, I gave it a slight blur, added some digital noise and a gradient for realism.

The art director loved it and was able to get past legal for a print approval 5 days after the photography.