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Directors’ rights – what’s next for the ADG?
Entertainment lawyer Greg Duffy visited Perth on June 19, 2009 to discuss directors' rights, remuneration and agreements. Greg is working closely with the Australian Directors Guild (ADG) head office in Sydney to draft a Director's Feature Film Services Agreement and a Feature Film Rate-card. The agreement will cover all creative and economic rights due to directors. Read on for more information.
Report from the Greg Duffy seminar: Some details to come out of the discussion on the draft form of the Director's Services Agreement include:
- Moral Rights - it is in the Screen Australia Terms of Trade that moral rights should not be waived; and
- Retransmission Rights - the right to payment for work screening on pay TV should also not be waived.
The ADG plans to:
1) Get the feature film agreement and rate-card to be accepted as an industry standard;
2) Move to a collective bargaining stage where the agreement can be amended as required to reflect more directors' rights as they emerge; and then
3) Get legislative change to ensure the Australian Copyright Act recognises directors as the ‘author', or at least one of the 'authors' of a film, and therefore someone who should receive ongoing royalties from the work.
This will be followed by the same process in the much more challenging area of television. Greg received much feedback from WA practitioners on both these draft documents and for the future TV agreement.
