twodoebs

So recently, Sweet Kati and I were in negotiations with Brent M. Nelsen, the CEO/President of Coastal Video Productions, Inc in Bluffton, South Carolina. We were hoping to hire Costal Video Productions to videotape our wedding.

Knowing what I know, however, both about video production AND about entertainment law, I asked Mr. Nelsen if he would be willing to agree that Kati and I would have the rights to use the raw wedding footage as we saw fit in the future. My fear, I explained, was that sometime in the very near future we might want to use the raw footage of the ceremony or the reception for a new purpose, such as--perhaps--a web site or a 20th Anniversary family-movie compilation. It's an unfortunate residual effect of copyright laws from a bygone era that it would be illegal for us to do anything along these lines without having prior permission from the videographer.

I tried to explain to Mr. Nelsen what was happening. He, however, struck me as being a very unsophisticated business man, not to mention not understanding ANYTHING about rights. At my suggestion that we deviate from his boilerplate contract, which seemed to be something he had put together based on about ten minutes worth of web research, he immediately retracted from the conversation. The next time we spoke, Mr. Nelsen indicated that not only was he not willing to work with us on the rights issue, but that he wasn't willing to be the videographer for our wedding. According to him, he was just "way too busy" to work with us.

To be sure, it's 100% his right to not work with us. He's ALSO entirely within his rights to refuse to pass along copyrights to the footage to us.

My problem is that people such as Mr. Nelsen, who I view as little more than a glorified guy-with-a-camera, hold themselves out as professional videographers and then are not willing to discuss contractual issues that surround their trade. To illustrate, Mr. Nelsen has two video clips on the demo portion of his website. One of these clips strikes me as relatively clean with decent editing and the other clip strikes me as pretty bad. Now I may just be a guy who majored in Video Production in college (although the "Bio" section of the website for Coastal Video Productions doesn't indicate that Mr. Nelsen even has THAT level of academic training in the craft) and an young attorney who has had minor experience in the structure of video production deals. But when I pointed out what I interpreted as a disparity in these two clips and suggested that Kati and I might be permitted to view a rough-cut of OUR project to be sure that it was more in keeping with the BETTER of his two demo clips, and less similar to the other clip, Mr. Nelsen again balked. "Nobody does that," he said.

That's just not true. And the fact that I could very well have been someone who didn't know better than to have called him to the carpet on all this stuff makes me angry. The fact that other would-be clients will hear what he's sellin' them and just go ahead and buy it 'cause they don't know how wrong he is is aggravating.

To be sure, my opinion of Mr. Nelsen and his operation at Coastal Video Productions is VERY low. I'm VERY happy that Kati and I decided that Coastal Video Productions isn't the right outfit to pay a VERY large amount of money to for a videographer and my impression is that anybody who DOES engage these folks will be VERY sorry down the line. Either that or they just don't know the correct questions to be asking.

And if all that's not enough, it turns out that the videos Coastal Video Productions deliver are apparently illegal in and of themselves. For example, one of the clips on their website is set to the Collective Soul song "Heaven Let Your Light Shine Down." When I asked Mr. Nelsen, however, if he had purchased a license to this song, he explained--apparently under the mistaken impression that he wasn't required to do so--that a client has chosen the song. I wonder if one of the Business and Legal Affairs attorneys from Atlantic records will agree with that proposition . . .