I am not (yet) a professional illustrator, but I do a lot of doodling and some fairly serious line drawings. A filmmaker recently contacted me about one of my better drawings and has asked whether he can license it for use in a documentary he’s making. I’d love to give the filmmaker permission to use my image, and I don’t really feel a burning need to collect any cash at all. I have a few concerns:
(1) The drawing is a freehand sketch from several reference photographs, but the primary reference photograph is likely copyrighted by some third party. Do I truly possess the copyright to my drawing free and clear?
(2) The drawing was done for a friend who has used it in several other derivative works – he got it etched into some wooden plaques that he gives away as retirement gifts. I don’t want to license it to the filmmaker and then discover that my friend is now prohibited from using it. I am the copyright holder, so it should be fairly easy to specify that I retain the rights to license it or give it away for non-commercial use.
(3) I’d love to use a Creative Commons license or similar, but I’d also like to ask them to mail me a copy of the documentary on DVD when it’s finished. Is there a Creative Commons license that still permits me to ask them to send me a courtesy copy of the documentary?
and last but not least,
(4) I am purposefully ignoring the licensing fee because I imagine that the cost to the filmmakers (as a percentage of their budget, and in time spent doing legal necessities) is likely to be far greater than the benefit I receive from an additional $50 or $100. Am I imagining the correct order of magnitude for a licensing fee, or are they sitting there with a blank check hoping I don’t ask for more than $10,000? Because if that’s the case, I’d be happy to cut them a bargain and only ask for $5,000.
I’m not qualified or knowledgable enough to answer most of your questions definitively, so this is probably not a true A to your GQ. But anecdotally I am the rightsholder for a small academic publisher and grant permission for others to use our material all the time. (I’m in the US, too, which might restrict the utility of my answer.) Regarding your second question, I don’t think that giving someone permission to use your work will prevent you from granting others the right to use it, unless you enter into some kind of agreement with the filmmakers for their exclusive use.
As for the most important question, your #1, I think the rightsholders to the reference photographs come into play (read: must be asked for permission to use) if your work is “substantially similar” to the originals. Here’s something on the topic by an illustrator. There is more info out there via Google (I searched on the terms copyright drawing of a photograph).
Regarding the fee, my expertise is in books, not drawings, although I do recall a time when I used someone’s photograph on a book jacket and paid him a fee of $150. (He charged me a discounted rate because I’m a nonprofit enterprise.) It’s certainly not unheard of to request a courtesy copy of the finished product IME, either. I often request one when I grant nonprofits the right to reprint something (which we do sans fee, as a standard practice).
That’s excellent news! The drawing in question is a Soviet SS-20 IRBM, but my reference photographs showed the missile from many angles and in many poses – no single reference photo looks “substantially similar” as far as I can tell. I could not have included all the details I did without using at least two different pictures, so the work is mine.
The note about fees is also good news. Since the numbers are (relatively) small, I’ll probably ask for a token amount as well as a courtesy copy.
