Entertainment law

This weeks post is about an attorney Jonathan Benezette. I decided to ask him a few questions about his practice, personal life, and some tips producing a film, commercial, music videos, etc.

I first asked Jon where he went to school and what types of law does he practice. He told me that he does all types of law from Personal injury, workers compensation, to social security. He has also worked with Entertainment attorneys and was very knowledgeable on the subject. I then asked him about his personal life. I was curious to see if his busy work life interfered with his personal life. He told me that you must be able to balance work with your personal life. John has been at the beach with his family and been called by one of his clients. He understands his responsibilities and knows that as a Lawyer he is always on call even at the most inconvenient times… (3am in the morning). Even though he has a very busy workload, he is happily married and has two awesome kids.

I then asked him some questions that I thought would help me with my future in film productions. My first question was how would I go about getting the rights to use public locations. Jon told me that every state had a film commission that I could visit and talk to. They would be able to give me contacts to receive permits. He told me to be very specific with what I was asking for in regards to the locations. Also ask for more then I need. It’s better to have more then less. He also recommended talking to the cities police station to hire off duty cops to monitor the shoot. With the police on your side you would not have any problems getting your production shut down.

Thank you for reading my latest blog post. If you would like to visits Jon Benezette’s website to use his services you can find him at the URL below

http://www.jonbenezettelaw.com/

Film Law

Greetings Bloggers,

For this post I will be talking about legal problems that can occur in the film and entertainment industries. There are several things that can go wrong on your side as the filmmaker or the opposing side being the client. Having a well thought out and written contract will lessen the chances of legal troubles with your business deals…

Steven Spielberg has a pretty famous case that is still yet to be settled. DreamWorks pictures decided to break off their distribution contract with Paramount. Spielberg is one of the owners of DreamWorks and Universal is tied to Paramount. This created an issue between Spielberg and Universal. There was a Noncompete agreement as well as a lifetime of royalties promised to Spielberg in his contract with Universal. This split will be negotiated until 2017!

A film production company “After Dark Films” has filed a lawsuit with the Iowa Film commission. The Reason behind this was that the state did not provide the amount of tax credits to the filmmakers as promised. Iowa’s taxpayers were not happy about spending their tax money on shooting movies.

Now I was checking out the video copilot blog and found some people talking about Noncompete agreements. Something I did not know was that they are illegal in California; where the majority of the film industry is located. That’s good to know if that is where I plan on working before I start my own business. The bloggers on this message board all were very against signing a Noncompete agreement. This contract can break you if you ever decide to leave a business. It creates commitment with the company but then you have nothing to fall back on if your relationship with your current job goes south.

Thanks for reading everyone! I hope you learned something about law and the film industry. If your interested in Music and Film follow me on twitter!

http://twitter.com/#!/GetRyanSheehy


Spielberg Consulting issues

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/spielberg-to-continue-consulting-with-universal-about-its-theme-parks/

DES MOINES, USA – Film Production

http://www.filmindustrynetwork.biz/state-forced-to-pay-434000-to-film-production-company-for-fraud/6540


Noncompete agreement
http://www.videocopilot.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=57167