Thread: Ethics question

Hi there,

I'm typing under an assumed name, as I wouldn't want to offend anyone. I have a question related to video-graphy and copyright.

Here's the situation:

Fund raising event for charity. All involved have donated their time and effort to make it work and to raise $$$$.

great dancing, sold out show, people involved advertised as well as they could, to great effect.

Dancers who were involved were told that their would be video taping, if they wanted it.

Great.

So releases were signed at the door.

Taping happened, etc.

Email comes in, if you'd like a copy of the dvd you may purchase for $25 each. This is being marketed to the dancers.

Copyright is being claimed by the videographer who wants it noted wherever you display the video that it belongs to that person.

20% of the price is being donated to the original charity if purchased by a certain date.

Is this ethical?

And fair to the dancers who performed?

It is pretty typical arrangement. I have only been involved in one show where the performers received free dvds. And that was when the videographer was also the event organizer. The rest of the time, even for charity events, the videographer expects to be paid for his or her time, expertise, and equipment.

Souzan

If you signed the release at the door, then it sounds they have the rights to do it. Do you have a copy of what you signed?
I hope they will at least name the dancers in the credits!

That's pretty much the standard arrangement in my experience. The dancers in the event are usually the only ones who buy videos or benefit from them, so they bear the cost for a videographer.

Video or photo copyrights belong to the videographer/photographer in nearly all situation, by the way, even if no release is signed.

I agree that this is a justifiable and pretty typical arrangement for recouping the videography costs, since it's mainly the dancers who benefit from having the footage. It tends to go over better when they know in advance that they're going to be charged, even if the price isn't set at the time of the show.

I agree that it would have been nice to know the costs up front, but I figured it would be something in that ballpark as that seems to be about the going rate (and a fair one, too, IMO, having a little insight into the process from my events). The copyright thing is the same as it would be for photos--the person who created the footage holds the copyright to that particular footage, but we dancers are granted use rights in perpetuity as long as credit is given to the videographer. If we wanted to sell copies of the footage shot by that videographer, we'd have to talk to that person about it and work out some kind of licensing, but publicity use is free. That's the same kind of arrangement that I've had with photographers in the past, so it seems pretty normal and straightforward to me.

Like Badriya said, it seems a standard price to pay (in fact, I'm paying that much for the video from Amira Jamal's upcoming recital!), and honestly I'm happy to pay for a video so that I don't have to spend the time dealing with editing and whatnot. I have videos from YEARS ago that I still haven't edited (Though the whirlygig hands of doom will have to make it up on youtube at some point).

Having coordinated the video for an event, it actually costs quite a bit to do the videography, the hours put into editing, putting it onto DVD. It's not easy and at least when I did it, I didn't make much of a profit if any, especially considering how much time I ended up sinking into duplication and mailing.

It sounds pretty ethical to me. If you sign a release, then you agreed to be videotaped, right?

If there's an event that offers free copies of the dvd for the dancers, I'd appreciate it but it never happened to me. Paying for the dvd is reasonable to me: if I want a free taped copy, I ask a friend to tape me during my performance.

I also know shows where every dancer pays a certain fee upfront that includes receiving the dvd along with some other goodies. These are highly appreciated events where people line up to be on stage, this way the organiser makes sure that the videogrpaher gets paid and that everyone receives an original copy. In this case, copying a dvd can be harmful towards the event: if they're notselling enough dvd's, they lose money.

For myself, I think that advance notice of terms of the dvd sale would be the deciding factor.

I don't mind being in other peoples dvd's, I just want notice that it's going to happen. I also understand that the videographer's time = $$$, but after taht at a charity event, the proceeds should be donated towards that charity.

After all, the dancers donated their time and energy. I think donating your time and energy for someone else's profit is very like the discussion that we often have about dancing for less than we're worth, for someone else's profit.

But Kina, I'm not sure that dancers are paying for the videographer's profit in this case. My understanding is that the videographer isn't making much beyond fair reimbursement for the hours of work she put into editing and copying the video.

I guess I feel that given what I've been charged for video editing services before and given what I charge for a bellygram then the videographer is getting shafted if she doesn't get paid a little. I think if we converted the time the videographer spent editing etc into dollars, I'd have to dance for an a few hours to make a monetarily equivalent contribution to the charity.

It's late and I'm tired, but I'm trying to say that as dancers our contribution to a show takes a couple hours of our time. The work of a videographer takes a heck of a lot longer and involves far more hassles. I think compensation is only fair, though I agree that it would have been nice (but probably impractical for the videographer) to know prices up front.

Going to bed.

I sent a PM to dis_connected, but didn't get a reply. My sentbox lists it as unread, so I'm assuming that he or she hasn't gotten it.

I think I'm the videographer in question. If not, I've served as videographer in an extremely similar situation, so maybe I can answer some of these concerns anyway.

(part 1 of three or so)

This was the first show I've shot, and I modeled every aspect (pricing, releases, asking to be credited etc.) on my own experience being videotaped as a dancer. In every instance, I have been asked to pay for my copy of the video (even for a shaky recital video, shot on a camcorder, that was missing half my performance and had choppy pause-button editing). Since I've always paid the videographer for my videos, it didn't occur to me that anyone would expect otherwise.

Informing dancers of the price at the event is good advice, and I'll be sure to do that next time. In this case, I wasn't comfortable setting a price in advance, since (it being my first time shooting) I didn't know how well the footage would come out.

I wasn't hired to film the show; I stepped in where I saw a need, because there wouldn't have been a DVD if I hadn't. I was there primarily as a dancer, not as a videographer. The original plan was to shoot interviews and a few performance clips (not the entire three-hour show) to make a program for community access TV. When I discovered, a few days before the event, that there wasn't going to be a video of the hafla (and that some of the performers were disappointed that there wouldn't be), I offered to do it, since I was already planning to bring my equipment to make the TV show.

Please also understand that, from my perspective, I was not taking advantage of a financial opportunity; I was filling a need by giving the other dancers the opportunity to purchase a DVD. And after a long day at the event, it would have been nice to sit back and enjoy the show (and my dinner), rather than standing behind a tripod for three hours. (Not to mention I would have gotten better footage of my own performance, which I had to tape on the widest angle, since I couldn't attend to the camera while I was dancing.)

I am asking for compensation for this service because full-service videography requires considerably more time and money than I could donate. I've spent over 15 hours (the equivalent of two full workdays) on this so far, and that doesn't count burning and packaging each disk. I'm also out of pocket for everything I had to buy to shoot the show and make the DVDs and packaging. I was already contributing to the event in several ways: I gave a workshop at the event, performed in the show (dancing for free like everybody else), and donated four items to the fundraising raffle, and so the additional time and expense was more than I could swing for free.

(more in next post)

(part 2)

The next best thing I could offer was to sell the DVDs and donate $5 for each disk purchased. (The deadline dis_connected mentioned was just to encourage people to order by a certain date so I can do everything in a single batch. It is a lot more work and more expensive to make them as one-offs, and making multiple donations is complicated, so it's not something I want to commit to doing forever. I was going to require that ALL orders be placed by then, but didn't do so in case somebody was on vacation, etc.)

We do talk a lot about valuing your own work, and that's exactly what I'm doing here. What I'm charging is discounted beyond what I would have charged for a non-charity event, and there is not a lot of profit in this. Based on my sales so far, I'm making less than $10/hr *before expenses*.

And not all services at the event were 100% uncompensated. If I had arranged to do this for the same honorarium that was given to the DJ, I would not have made much less money, and for much more time. (Giving suitable credit to the DJ, his honorarium was significantly less than his usual fee, as with all the service providers.) And I'd be surprised if the costume vendor donated all the profits from the sales he made at the event, although I don't know for a fact that he didn't.

I do understand the concern about letting the videographer profit from a donated performance, but most of the people who buy the DVD are performers from the show, and are interested primarily in their own performances. (Not that people aren't interested in seeing the other dancers, but that's usually secondary.) From my perspective, I am not making money by selling your performance to other people as a product; I am asking you to compensate me for the service of taking footage of your performance, editing it, and making a nice DVD for you to play, show to your friends and family, etc.

(more in next post)

(part 3)

I've put a lot of time, effort, and energy into this, and at every step, I tried really hard to do better for the event than the average videographer would:

- most videographers require exclusive filming rights. I didn't prevent anyone else from shooting, and when people asked me if it was okay, I *encouraged* them to take their own footage. (And signing the release was not a requirement for being in the show, just for being in the video, which I believe I made clear.)

- I charged less than I usually pay videographers for DVDs of my own performances, and also offered a lower-cost option in simpler packaging for those who didn't want to pay full price. (And that cheaper option still comes with the same donation, dollar-for-dollar, not as a percentage.)

- Making a donation for each DVD was my own idea - nobody asked me to do it.

- I'm granting the kind of use rights that I, as a dancer, would like. By law, the videographer owns the copyright to footage they take, so a dancer needs the videographer's permission to use the footage legally. Many videographers will give permission if you ask (and most will ask to be credited, as I did), but they are not obligated to do so, and have the legal right to charge for its use, even if you buy a copy on DVD. I tried to be one step better by granting permission to use it in advance, so you don't have to bother asking.


I'm very sorry if charging for my services at a charity event has upset anyone, but it was a significant amount of work, and a task that nobody offered to do for free. I will make a point of publicizing the prices up front in the future, and I'm open to any other suggestions people have for smoother interactions.

dis_connected (or anybody, for that matter): if I haven't addressed any of your concerns, let me know. I don't want anybody feeling badly about this. You're perfectly welcome to stay anonymous, if you'd prefer.


p.s. I have a couple of follow-up comments to a few of the replies, but they are tangential, and it's late, so I'll have to post them later.

(And my apologies for the marathon post!)