Low Budget Sci-Fi DV Film

Does anyone know the legality of the construction of his background images?

Lacking a large bankroll, Robertson hung out at the downtown branch of the Los Angeles County library, sorting through walls of architecture books for images he could scan and manipulate in Photoshop.

“Twenty-three dollars in late fees and a month later,” Robertson says, “we had our sets.”

Once he had scanned images from different books, Robertson used Photoshop to create original images for the film’s retro-futuristic environment.

“We shot the film in a little tiny room, but I wanted it to have a great, grand feeling and I knew we could fake a lot of that with virtual sets.”

First, he converted the scanned images to black and white — not only to establish the retro sci-fi atmosphere, but also to eliminate potential problems of color consistency and spill from the green screen.

Then he assembled bits and pieces of the scanned images — in one case, a jungle, ancient ruins, a restroom sign and a vintage windup toy rocket — to create a series of digital sets.
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Wouldn't these images still be copywrited even though they are manipulated?
 
How long does copyright extend now? Last I recall it was 73 years, but Disney (and other publishers) had a few words with Congress a few years back.. something changed, but I don't recall what.)

Going for that 40's look could be just as simple as finding photographs and examples of architecture that date to 1931. Now while history buffs and arch/eng students could point out the differences in what the styles were in pretty specific time periods (even with common-era designs that were radically different, depending on which side of the coast one lived on)... I don't think the average schmoe could tell apart a house built in 1930 and one built in 1940. I certainly couldn't.

It would just have to look... "old-style".

Uncle Sam has a tonne of material recording the past 200 years, as well. Lots of books, pamphlets, audio, photo-material, film, fiche. That's mostly public domain, with a few exceptions... such as department logos and third-party material that they have permission to use but not "own". Most .gov websites with material have a copyright page that is pretty much cookie-cut, with details.
 
copy rights

In Apple vs. Franklin computers, the supreme court upheld that an intellectual property was only 10% original, and therefor you had to change 10% of the original property to not infringe on someone's copyrights. In this case, specifically, Franklin had copied the memory chips of an Apple computer to make an Apple compatable. The courts ruled Franklin could copy the code as long as they changed 10% of it.

As far as I know, no one in the art community has used or challenged this, but I am also certain at least in the music community, that no DJ who has "masked" or manipulated a sample has been sued yet. Only the people who make straight samples that are recognizeable as part of the original song.

There is also a question of whether you are trying to benifit financially by being identified with someone's work. If it is questionable whether a reasonable person could make the connection? Like, if you used likenesses of Andy Warhol's paintings to create the impression that Andy was somehow involved in your film. Then they can rule you are seeking to benifit from it.

I took a class on this 2 years ago and unless something has changed since then, it is still 73 years as a rule of thumb. The laws changed in the 70's but only affects works less than 73 years old, which is why they use this as a rule of thumb. The date is not from the time it was published, but from the time of the last publishing after the author's/artists' death. That depending, there are works less than 73 years that are no longer protected.

So technically, if you can prove there is a 10% difference between the image you used and the image you "sampled" you are technically ok. And if no one except an art expert can recognize it, and you make no effort to associate your film with the artist, they are going to have a hard time going after you. And if you form an LLC or Subchapter S for your film company to protect you, and you don't really make any money as most films don't, they can't really sue you for anything, can they?

Max Krueger
http://freakoutfilms.com
 
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