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Cease and desist..from a competitor
lol
Seriously. Been at this for many years and have nevr heard of such a thing.
I recently went with a group of paranormal inverstigators and spent the night in a building well known for paranormal activity. I was doing it as a thrill-seeking vidiot at the time but it was cool enough I now am gonna start a new tv series called Disbeliever. The pilot, if you will, turned out awesome and I sent it to the owner of the hotel via email as a thank you for being so cool to us.
Well yesterday I get this email in legal jargain babbling about ceasing and desisting production and distribution. I called my boy the hotel owner who said he got the same email from “legal” and just wanted to make sure I’m doing nothing with my footage.
I researched the sender of the email, only to find she is a phycic who charges for her services, has a production team that follows her around, is starting a new show, stayed at his haunted hotel last November and was simply claiming, or attempting to claim exlusivity.
whaaaaaat? lol
I think I’ve seen it all now.
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20 Replies
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If you want to move forward with your version of this project, it’s time to “lawyer up”.
Mark
ps… if she’s so “psychic”, she should have known you were coming!
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lol
I know, right.
Man my lawering up daze are way over with.
Editing episode 2 today…;) -
sounds exactly like the plot to an episode of the show Supernatural – a cool show if you have never seen it.
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Grinner, to make your circle complete, you have to figure out a pitch meeting where the suits look at your hotel footage and decide, yes, they need to make a show about… haunted hot rods.
NAL, but, in IP feuds, everything comes down to “who’s on first” and can PROVE it. If she shot first, but hasn’t edited and shown it anywhere public and “official” yet, you may have an edge there. In any case, unless she has some kind of contract that shows she had an exclusive deal with the hotel, I don’t think you’re in too much trouble yet.
I hate these kinds of fake-spooky shows, myself, but if you did yours as a comedy, like a Reno 911 of haunted house and unexplained phenomena, heck yes I would watch it. That would need some cast members who are really excellent at improv and staying in character. The conceit could be that you as the cameraman/producer are in on it from the beginning and setting up fake scary things on these locations, and the cast observe a few props and hear some “testimony”, create elaborate but logically flawed “experiments” or tests and make up a whole elaborate “explanation” for it. The “investigators” are mostly wannabees who have little actual background or education in these sorts of investigations, they’re mostly riffing off old movies they’ve seen.
Episode two: they do their whole paranormal investigation on the wrong house, across the street. But still come up with “sightings”. Every so often in POV and OTS shots, “real” paranormal stuff is happening in the place across the street, completely missed by the self-absorbed “investigators”. Everything is played completely straight and serious, too much so. That’s the fun of it.
Episode three: the haunted hot rod. It mysteriously breaks down whenever it gets near a Lovers’ Lane.
Episode four: haunted office meeting room. It’s said that nobody survived that 4-hour powerpoint presentation, and you can still feel the desperate souls shrieking behind the dry erase board. Who keeps turning the AC down in here?!?!?
Episode five: Haunted ex-disco.
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well, I figure if she had an exclusive under contract. the owner would not have had an ad on cragslist welcinging visitors who pay him a niminal fee to bring their cameras. He surely would not have invited us back out that second night to shoot again.
He sent it to her, she was threatened then he saw dollar signs.
Funny thing is…daddy is editing episode two tonight and that dude already miffed me. Never make the editor mad.
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Does the Cease and Desist apply just to that location or the show concept in general? If it’s in general, then you might need a lawyer. She can very easily issue a cease and desist directly to the station / network that plans to air your show at any point right up until the day it airs.
Trust me, I have learned about how useful cease and desists are and how powerful they can be. Fortunately I’m on the right side of it in my current situation and will use it to do what is right.
But if she wants to, she can make your life difficult even after you sell the show to someone. They will most likely back away if they receive a threatening letter notifying the station / network that this woman had the show / concept first and the station / network must cease and desist. At the very least, they’ll pull the show while the lawyers figure everything out.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Been down this road…
What’s she claiming exclusivity on ? The location ? If she doesn’t have paper with the hotel owner, then she’s got nothing. If she’s claiming exclusivity on the concept she is WAY SOL… Only thing people really have grounds on is trademarks, or prior relationship/agreement crap with distributors…
Our standard response to C&D’s is a letter from our lawyers saying “bring it”… we never hear from 9 out of 10 (and we get it ALOT… Everybody likes to try to pry revenue out of anything music related, which 90% of our thing is)…
For the one in ten that has a legit beef we have our people talk to their people and in only one case have we actually had to change course.
Having your attorney send a ltter costs almost nothing, but it will reveal tons about the will and way of this adversary.
I guess I gotta say it (as if you don’t know exactly how I am Grin ! LOL!)… But… I’M NOT A LAWYER.
Have your friendly attorney tell her to buzz off…
Bob Bonniol
MODE Studios
http://www.modestudios.com
Contributing Editor, Entertainment Design Magazine
Contributing Editor, Creative COW Magazine
Art of the Edit Forum Leader
Live & Stage Event Forum Leader
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naa it was just a shake down from that location. She and the hotel owner are buds and they simply saw dolalr signs after I have him the pilot episode. In a nutshell, she’s just bent because my company turns around a show in 4 days where hers can’t in 4 months. They wanted my footage for her project.
No thanks to that.
I am finishing up episode 2 today and have had nibbles from TruTV with a treatment heading to A&E.
The project will certainly continue. We just won’t go back to the hotel that haunts weeks after the fact. -
She’s been told. 😉
I won’t hear from here again but I could see that hotel owner calling me again one drunken night.
I imagine she now has a written contract with him on excuisive rights but I dare say that has been drawn up since this. Dudes initial ad on craigslist welcomed video cameras in writing, he let us in night one with at least 7 different cameras, carrying some of them in the hotel for us, and a week later when we had something on tape, he met us up there again and let us in for free to further investigate and document. That was the night i gave him a DVD of episode 1 and it was the next morning this all began. He simply watched it and saw it huge.
I take it as a compliment. -
You’re fine. Don’t lawyer up. Don’t worry about it. People are morons. I had a lady threaten me with legal action if I continued with the production of a documentary on the history of King Philip’s War (an event that took place over 300 years ago). She said she was “writing a script” for a feature film and “owned the rights” to the story of King Philip’s War. Obviously, you can’t own the rights to an historical event.
There are 100 ways to skin a cat. There are dozens of shows out there on paranormal activity. You have every right in the world to produce your show. As long as you employ your own formula for the show, you’re all set. Don’t listen to anyone telling you to “lawyer up”, and save your hard-earned money.
Ken Burns can’t sue every other person from now on that wants to make a WWII documentary.
-Aaron
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