Video Production Companies near you

Section 182 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 provides that a performer's rights are infringed by a person who, without their consent, makes a recording of the whole or any substantial part of a qualifying performance, broadcasts it live, or records it from a broadcast. That is a statutory right independent of any contract, which is why a signed release is standard practice rather than bureaucracy.

Releases should cover more than permission to film. They need to say where the footage may be used, on which channels, for how long, and in which territories, and they should be signed before the camera rolls rather than chased afterwards. Members of the public captured incidentally, children, patients and anyone filmed in a workplace all need particular care, and filming staff raises questions that belong with your HR policy as well as your production contract.

Locations need their own permissions. Private premises require the owner's agreement, many public spaces and transport networks have filming rules, and some venues restrict commercial use of footage shot inside them. Drone work has its own regulatory requirements. Ask the production company who obtains these and what happens to the schedule if a permission is refused.

The default is the same as for other commissioned creative work: the IPO states that the first legal owner of copyright is the person or organisation that created the work and not the commissioner, unless otherwise agreed in writing. For film that is compounded by the number of separate rights involved - the footage, the music, the performances, the graphics - each with its own owner and its own terms.

Most production contracts therefore grant a licence rather than transferring ownership. That is workable, but the licence has to match your plans. Check the permitted channels, whether paid media is included, the territories, the duration, and whether you may re-edit the film or make cut-downs without going back to the producer.

Rushes are a separate question again. The raw footage, project files and graphic assets are usually retained by the production company unless the contract says otherwise, which means a small edit in two years is a new job rather than a favour. Ask what you receive on delivery, how long the material is archived, and what it costs to get the source files if you want them later.

A film that promotes a product is a marketing communication. Online video ads, video on a company's own website and video on its social channels have been within the CAP Code's remit since the Code was extended in 2011 to a company's own website and other non-paid-for space online under its control, and paid video placements are covered as paid-for advertising.

Section 3 of the Code applies exactly as it does to text. Rule 3.1 prohibits materially misleading communications and rule 3.7 requires documentary evidence to be held before publication for claims consumers are likely to regard as objective. Demonstrations that exaggerate performance, and editing that implies a result the product does not deliver, are the classic problems in this format.

Recognition rules apply too. Where a creator is paid or incentivised to feature a brand, the video has to be obviously identifiable as advertising immediately, without the viewer having to click or interact with it, which for video usually means a label on screen as well as in the caption. Accessibility is worth designing in for the same reason: captions and a spoken description of on-screen text make the film usable and are far cheaper to plan than to retrofit.