Letting Other People Use Your Footage?

[Brock Burwell]

I recently did a short highlight for my university of our city. It highlights different parts of the town and it has some really nice footage in it. I've been asked multiple times by people if they would be allowed to use some of that footage in different videos of theirs if they gave me credit. I'm not sure what the protocol is on something like that.

One woman asked to use it in her wedding video she's putting together, another asked to put it in a story he's doing on a football player, I was even asked by someone at the city to use our footage in one of their promotional pieces.

Is this something you've come across before? What do you normally say?

[Mark Williams]

I have had that come up a lot. I tell folks to go to my pond5.com page to purchase or I give them a price and if they are good with it I Paypal invoice them which includes a credit card payment link. I always require payment before I provide the clip for them to download from my dropbox account.

Your work is obviously worth something or else they would not be asking you for it.

[Chris Medico]

My response is dependant on who is asking and for what purpose the use is. For personal stuff I am quite generous with sharing footage. For any commercial interest in my work I am much less generous. It is bad business to give away your work to someone that is going to use it for their own profit. Providing work "for credit" means free. I has little to no real value.

I use the payment requirement to weed out all the BS. Even a modest fee can work well for that. If a few bucks turns them off then you have likely just saved yourself some aggervation.

This is not the same thing as donating your work for a cause you support. That is a great thing to do when you can.

[Seth Bloombaum]

Is it your footage? If you were a full-time employee of the U, and shot as part of your duties, wouldn't it be the university's footage?

If so, but you control the footage, perhaps you would think about what benefits the university.

On the other hand, if you were a freelancer / contractor when you shot, and the agreement doesn't directly address copyright, then you do own it... and there are some good suggestions above.

I too would charge for use intended to promote for-profit, and, depending, maybe non-profit too, or maybe not. For personal use by others I'd ask myself if it was worth the headache, and, also, whether they might distribute it further.