I often get asked to shoot time-lapse sequences for various producers. I have my way of charging for my services whether they are NGOs, corporate promos, or documentary, but I was wondering what the licensing parameters are. If someone hires me (no contract) and I delver clips to them for a specific project. Do they have the right to use the footage for other projects… maybe even sell the footage as stock at a later date?

I understand contracts are solid and mostly black and white, but is there an edict amongst you time-lapse jedi that you follow?

If you crunch the numbers and time for time-lapse it costs a lot. A lot of producers not familiar with TL skip a heartbeat when I give them a quote. They don’t think about the scouting the setting up, the weather not cooperating, so you need to shoot again. Not to mention the assembly.

I’m thinking it may be best to give them a licence option where I own the footage and they buy the rights to use it? Thoughts on this? I’d love to hear the model some of you others have come up with on this front and if anyone has a resource for contract templates you would like to share. I’d be eternally grateful.

Thanks,
~Scott

As a "nobody" who has only licensed a few clips - I just put it in the contract that it is licensed for the project and that I own all the rights to the footage.
A perpetual license would be a totally different cost.

"Usually" most people just need the clip for one project and not for forever so it's not really an issue.
In my limited experience, the ones that want "forever" licenses usually have staff that shoot for them so they don't really need you...

Yeah I think I have a bit more research to do. Not sure if stock will be my thing or not, but I thought I would start organizing myself for these occasional gigs that come my way. Mostly what I do is grant funded art projects, but would love to get into selling stock as my timelapse HDs begin to fill. Still trawling the internet for a "stock time-lapsers'" guide. I imagine all the same rules apply as they do for stock photography. If anyone knows of an online resource or contract templates for this sort of thing it would make it a whole lot easier.