Help with the craziest question I've ever heard!

[Roger Gunkel]

I've been shooting weddings for 32 years and have never given anyone the raw footage and never been asked to re-edit a wedding with the exception of the odd person asking if I can take somebody out. I've occasionally been asked if there is any extra footage but always say it is unusable for a number of reasons.

If I did give raw footage, I would consider that it was the couple's wedding, not mine that I had filmed, edited a final version and completed my contract with them and been paid for. If I then gave them the raw footage, it would be for footage of an event that they had paid for and technically owned the copyright to. Providing I had completed my contract with them and been paid, I can't see that it would be of any interest to me what they did with any raw footage unless someone attached my name to it without my permission.

In practice, I don't even archive their raw footage, just keeping it for two weeks for any corrections, although I know many here worry about how best to store footage. I simply keep an exact copy of what the client has as a final product and if they wanted anything else stored, they would have to pay for it. The exception would be for commercial clients that wanted me to edit different versions or add more footage to later, under an agreed arrangement.

Roger

[Pete Cofrancesco]

I like to work subtractively, gradually removing the worst footage. At the beginning thats when you can offer customers packages that include movies of various lengths: Highlight 5-8 min, Medium 10-15, Long 20-60 and a movie of the entire ceremony.

If its filmed in a documentary style there might be great little interviews with guests or b roll that didn't make the cut that would work in a longer movie. I think if you only offer a very short slick music video that only has tiny snippets of the day that's where you get a client wanting the raw.

If you don't set expectations and educate the client you end up with these difficult situations. There are options in between a tightly edited final movie and raw footage.

[Darren Levine]

Ask if they have a smart tv/roku/appletv/etc... if yes, just upload the footage to youtube and give them a private link. you still need to dump all the clips onto a timeline and render, and i would still charge for that since it's still time.

I would still not give raw footage for a pretty understandable reason: if you caught anything on camera that's offensive or defamatory, etc... etc.. such as a guest going off on a racist rant or something, and they publish it, then it could come back to bite you. Now granted, it's pretty unlikely that such a thing will happen, but i still wouldn't want to give out raw footage and that's the reason i would give the couple, regardless of their promise to not do such a thing etc... etc.., just say it's a legal liability and if they really want raw footage they have to pay for you to review it in full to ensure no such material exists.

[Roger Gunkel]

Originally Posted by Darren Levine

Ask if they have a smart tv/roku/appletv/etc... if yes, just upload the footage to youtube and give them a private link. you still need to dump all the clips onto a timeline and render, and i would still charge for that since it's still time.

I would still not give raw footage for a pretty understandable reason: if you caught anything on camera that's offensive or defamatory, etc... etc.. such as a guest going off on a racist rant or something, and they publish it, then it could come back to bite you. Now granted, it's pretty unlikely that such a thing will happen, but i still wouldn't want to give out raw footage and that's the reason i would give the couple, regardless of their promise to not do such a thing etc... etc.., just say it's a legal liability and if they really want raw footage they have to pay for you to review it in full to ensure no such material exists.

I really think you are worrying unecessarily as there is a big difference between filming and publishing. If you give raw footage to a client and give them copyright to it, then they are responsible for any publishing that subsequently takes place. You are not creating any offence in filming something, that can only happen in its published form.

Roger

[Ed Roo]

I do veteran oral history interviews. In the past six months I have started delivering the full, unedited copy to the veteran via USB thumb drive formated to NTSC and the video exported as an MP4 file. You can plug it into a LED television USB port and play directly on the television using the TV remote control.
I have delivered 3.5 hour, 2.5 hour and 1.5 hour interviews to the families of the three veterans. Depending on you compression settings, the exported file sizes will determine the size of USB thumb drive to deliver it on. I have purchased two 128 GB Sandisk USB thumb drive for $25 each in the past six months.
As these interviews are for their families, I include files of photos and articles related to the stories told during the interview.
In two of the three cases, I did follow up audio interviews and included the mp3 files.
The last one I finished up this week included scanning photos from an album and then adding an audio track to each photo image as a narration and combining them into a video.

USS ENTERPRISE CVAN/CVN-65 on Vimeo

[Darren Levine]

Originally Posted by Roger Gunkel

I really think you are worrying unecessarily as there is a big difference between filming and publishing. If you give raw footage to a client and give them copyright to it, then they are responsible for any publishing that subsequently takes place. You are not creating any offence in filming something, that can only happen in its published form.

Roger

like i mentioned, it's all unlikely. The primary thing that most folks seem to not be aware of, is that you can get sued for any reason, reasonable or not, there's nothing stopping anyone suing you for anything they want(in the US, i don't know about UK).

So regardless of who is the responsible party, if you created it, and you handed it over, it leaves the possibility, however remote, that it could come bit you.

Everyone decides how much risk they are willing to burden.

[Roger Gunkel]

Well theoretically I suppose you could sneeze in the street and get sued by someone who considered you were risking their health by spreading germs and you could counter sue them for causing you unnecessary stress and worry. Of course if you go through life worrying about everything that might be remotely possible you would never get out of bed, but then I suppose equally, you might just roll over and suffocate in your sleep. ;-)

Roger