Business, Legal & Insurance

This page is general information, not legal advice. Anything with money or liability attached should be reviewed by an Ohio-licensed attorney before you sign it.

Set up the entity before you need it

Most filmmakers do this backwards — they shoot first and discover at distribution that nobody can be paid, insured, or credited cleanly.

Form an entity. An LLC separates your personal assets from the production's liabilities and gives you something that can hold rights, sign contracts, and receive grant money. File with the Ohio Secretary of State at ohiosos.gov — see the business filing forms and the step-by-step guide to starting an Ohio business.

Get an EIN from the IRS, free and immediate online: Apply for an EIN. You need it to open a bank account and to pay anyone.

Open a separate bank account. Running a production through a personal account destroys the liability protection you just paid to create, and makes the accounting for a grant report nearly impossible.

Ohio taxes — tax.ohio.gov. Sales and use tax applies to some production purchases and rentals; ask an accountant rather than guessing.

Workers' compensation

If you have employees, Ohio requires workers' compensation coverage through the state fund. This is not optional and it is not waived because the shoot is small or the crew is enthusiastic.

Calling someone an independent contractor does not make them one. If you control how, when, and where the work happens, expect the state to treat them as an employee. See Crew, Cast & Unions.

Minors have separate protections under Ohio law, including limits on working hours — see ORC 4109.06. Get counsel before putting a child on a set.

Wage and hour questions go to the Ohio Department of Commerce: com.ohio.gov.

Insurance

You will need it whether or not you want it. Three separate things:

  • General liability — required by essentially every location, stage, and city permit. The City of Columbus requires a certificate naming it as an additional insured; see the certificate of insurance sample.
  • Equipment / inland marine — required by rental houses before gear leaves the building, and the reason a dropped lens does not end your production.
  • Errors and omissions (E&O) — required by distributors and broadcasters. It insures against rights claims, and an insurer will only issue it if your clearances are clean. This is why the paperwork below matters.

Short-term production policies exist and are affordable for a weekend shoot. Get quotes at least two weeks out; certificates take days to issue and every location will want one before your shoot date.

Paperwork that has to exist

Chain of title is the record proving you own what you are selling. Gaps in it kill distribution deals years after the shoot.

  • Script rights — copyright registration, and a written assignment if anyone else wrote any of it
  • Performer agreements — for every person on camera, including background
  • Crew agreements / deal memos — including a work-made-for-hire recital where appropriate
  • Location releases — signed by someone with authority to sign
  • Appearance releases for documentary subjects
  • Music licences — composition and master, for every cue, with a cue sheet
  • Clearances for logos, artwork, and any third-party material in frame

Templates for several of these live in this repository under productionLegal/contracts/, organised by subject — labor, location, nudity, and talent. They are drafting starting points for attorney review, not signable documents as-is.

Copyright

Register the finished film and the script with the U.S. Copyright Office. Registration is what makes statutory damages and attorney's fees available, and it is inexpensive.

WGA registration at wga.org creates a dated record and is available to non-members. It complements copyright registration; it does not replace it.

Getting real legal help

For anything involving money, distribution, an investor, or a minor on set, hire an entertainment attorney. The cost of an hour of review is trivially small compared to a rights problem discovered after a festival premiere.

For MOFA's own production legal work, this repository contains a production-legal agent and a productionLegal/ document set with Ohio-first citation standards.

Related

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