Fair Use Insight for Documentary Filmmakers at SXSW Film Festival

There’s a wonderful opportunity next week if you are wondering if footage that you are considering using in your documentary film falls under the Fair Use Doctrine. Pat Aufderheide, who spearheads research on when and how documentary filmmakers can use footage without obtaining copyright license, is going to be speaking at a panel on Fair Use at the South by Southwest Film Festival that runs March 12-20th.

Here’s the deal.  If you would like expert opinion about the legality of the footage you are considering using in your documentary, Pat is inviting filmmakers to share their clips with her so she can present them on the panel. This is an amazing chance to get free advice that could save you a lot of legal headaches down the road.

If you don’t know who Pat Aufderheide is, you should.  I first met her when she presented at the Film Arts Foundation in San Francisco, but I had been hearing about her long before then. A professor at American University, she always seems to be heading up an interesting investigation into whatever trends and issues are pressing in the documentary world. For example, she wrote seminal articles about the personal documentary when it was hot in the 1990’s.

When is it legal to use footage that other people have created? Here is a guide to the fair use of copyrighted material:

whoishostingthis.com/resources/copyright-guide/#page-5

If you are interested in having Pat analyze your footage at SXSW, e-mail her today at paufder@american.edu.

Note:  Pat will also be speaking at an interesting panel with Michael Donaldson and others about monetizing mashups.

I’ll end with a plug for my popular course, which I just taught a few weeks ago at the San Francisco Film Society. It’s now available online. To learn more about innovative documentary storytelling techniques that will attract large audiences, check out “Editing the Character Driven Documentary” at https://newdocediting.com/land/editingdocumentaryecourse/.