Following-up on Joel's remarks and Richard's correct response, for the record, shopping malls are most definitely -not- public places in the same sense as, say, a municipal park. Shopping malls are all privately owned and managed private property If most mall guards had a dollar for every kid they're chased out for unauthorized "filmmaking" they'd be much wealthier people.

That reminds me, we haven't heard anything from Alex in a while. How about it Alex, can we get a testimony?


Berry, these are the kinds of things I'm talking about. And, I guess the best way to explain it, I'm not looking for the "Sunday School" answers, I'm looking for the real life answers. [I will probably have to come back later and explain that phrase.]

I don't want to be so concerned about not getting people in the peripheral shot that the talent feels more like walking off than walking down the sidewalk.

A real world answer.

People do not have an expectation of privacy in a public place.

Another real world answer.

People own their own right to publicity. (That is, it can be illegal for you to make money from someone else's image without their permission)

A final real world answer.

Lawyers like Paul (and my wife) spend a great deal of time reconciling the issues that arise from conflicting rights. It's called job security.

This is one of those issues I think amateur filmmakers worry too much about, like taping over trademarks on products. Assuming you're not shooting porn or something, it's pretty hard to believe anybody would make a fuss about being seen in your film. They're unlikely to see or even hear about the film, and if they do, they're unlikely to get mad. Even if they get mad, they're unlikely to get mad enough to spend tons of money on lawyers. If it came to that, you could always fuzz out their face or something. The only way I can think that this would ever come up, is if you embarrassed them in some way, or they're just plain greedy. Since (I'm assuming) this isn't a film that is likely to see nationwide release and there are no deep pockets for them to chase, why worry about it? I say shoot whatever you want whereever you can get away with it and worry about the consequences later.