Exposure to the Market - Frame-by-Frame Stop Motion: The Guide to Non-Traditional Animation Techniques - page 156

If you feel that you want “rock solid” protection, then you might think of
registering your images, script, and branding with the U.S. Copyright Office.
This can be done online by visiting the office's site at www.copyright.gov. You
can find out everything you need to know about ownership and protection
of your creative products on this government site. Legislation seems to
hit Congress every so often, called the orphan works , that threatens the
protection of all creative ideas and output in a tangible medium like
photography and other visual mediums. The advantage to this legislation
is that it offers producers access to use artistic tangible mediums that appear
to have no copyright holders, like old photographs, recordings, and images.
The danger is that this legislation can be applied to more contemporary work
that appears to have no copyright owner, mostly because many of these
images and tangible mediums have no author/artist identification associated
with them. With the advent of the web and the proliferation of images and
ideas, this legislation could move down a slippery path to exploitation of
ideas and images by producers that do not make intensive efforts to identify
and notify authors of the use of their creative work by others. The Library
of Congress wants to move the burden of finding authors to private
databases in the area of the artwork, which starts to lose the regulation of a
central authority. It will be interesting to see where this legislation goes, and
it is worth watching. This will affect both national and international use of
images and ideas and is a difficult issue to easily resolve.
A Few Thoughts
This topic is intended for both the novice and more experienced filmmaker,
but I want to address the beginners in these alternative stop-motion
techniques. It is important in the early stages of making these kinds of films
to keep things fresh and not overly controlled. Each film should be treated
like a sketch and not a masterpiece that reflects high craft. Allow yourself to
make mistakes and take risks. Although I have cited some specific approaches
to these techniques, as I have mentioned, there really are no hard and fast
rules. Keep your ideas simple and manageable, so you can accomplish them.
Shoot for small goals within your reach. Do not overcomplicate your idea.
The process automatically gets complicated with all the problem solving you
encounter, so keeping your idea simple works in your favor.
If you are interested in learning more about how stop-motion studios
and artists operate, then consider making some short experiments, put
together a reel of your best work and start researching who is making
these kinds of films and making a living or even just getting publicity
for these kinds of productions. The Internet is a wonderful research tool,
especially if you follow sites like awn.com and cartoonbrew.com to see
what is going on in the industry. Contact these people and ask if you
can show your work and get some feedback from them. The issue of
internships might enter the conversation but just getting a little of these