Filming Children

Filming children can be fun and can result in some heartwarming footage that anyone with an ounce of humanity will find endearing. Filming children can also be a nightmare, that can result in endless lawsuits. Ok, you probably won’t get sued if you film a child, but there are huge legal ramifications when it comes to filming children. While anyone can film a child in public if he so chooses, it’s mainly the public display and/or distribution of such footage that causes the legal problems.

Tourists around the world film children, adults, babies, and elderly people on a daily basis, and no one bats an eye. As soon as you whip out a big fancy looking XH A1, people start to get suspicious and some might even yell at you for filming them without their permission (hey, that creep with the tiny camcorder hiding behind the tree is just as likely to do something strange with your image as I am!) Luckily we haven’t had any issues with people becoming upset when we film them yet, but getting permission to film people, especially children, is a top priority for us, but it’s also a major hassle.

Releases

In the filmmaking and photography worlds, model release forms are standard issue. Before we started filming Barberin’ however, we didn’t really have any idea what a release form was. By chance, after searching through the dvinfo forums, we found some posts about model releases. A few minutes of quick research later, we had 20 model release forms printed up and ready to go for our first shoot.

A release form basically states that the filmmaker has the right to film the model (any person you film), and that the model has no editorial control over the way their likeness is used, and that the filmmaker can edit and use their likeness in any way they see fit and display it any way and anywhere they want to. The exact terms of the release can differ, but the idea is that the person to agrees to be filmed and not have any say in what you do with the footage. Also, for the release to be legally sound (because it’s technically a contract) the model must receive some form of “consideration.” Consideration can be anything the model agrees to receive in return for granting the filmmaker the use of their image — money, food, credit in the film, a high five, or in our case a free copy of the final DVD of the film. So for Barberin’ we had all of our main characters sign simple release forms, and then gave them all free copies of the DVD when it was finished. It worked out great for both parties, and it was pretty easy to get people to sign the form.

Here in the kibbutz we have a little more trouble getting people to sign the release. One reason is that we are filming so many more people than we did for Barberin’. Filming people as they go through their day to day lives results in a certain level of chaos when it comes to getting releases signed. For example, one day Frankie walked from his “shop” (junk pile) to Uzi’s workshop, then to Etsion’s workshop, then he jumped in a car and drove to Qiryat Shemona to drop off the bottles he collected. All along the way we filmed various people and didn’t really have time to grab each person and get them to sign a release — otherwise we would have lost Frankie. Luckily most of those people are kibbutz regulars so it was easy to go back and get releases from them, but it’s still a hassle.

Another reason we have difficulty with releases is that all of our forms are written in English. While most people here can speak English, not everyone can speak it well, let alone read it. Out of the 40 or so releases we’ve had signed so far, maybe two or three people have actually asked what was written on it, or made an attempt to read it. We’ve tried our best to encourage them to read the form, and have explained the terms to the best of our ability.

Kids

When it comes to kids, the release form must be signed by their parent. This presented a unique challenge for us when we went to film the children playing at the kid’s house summer camp. There are about 60 kids that go to the summer camp, and about 20 are from outside the kibbutz. We knew that it would be impossible to get release forms signed for all 60 kids. So we decided to film a small group of children, ask them for their names, and obtain releases after filming. We first filmed a group of 8 year old boys as they played basketball and then later as they played in their “tree house,” an arrangement of cushions, ropes and ladders under a large tree in the corner of the playground.

The boys first made silly faces in front of the camera, or simply stood and smiled. But after a few minutes, they became disinterested with our presence, and continued their play. Ben used his limited Hebrew to ask them open-ended questions about summer camp in the kibbutz, but they gave one word answers. We asked Leah to question the boys using her fluent Hebrew, but their responses were not any more expansive. They are clearly too young to fully reflect on their childhood. But their largely unsupervised, free, creative play spoke volumes of their childhood.

We’ve filmed a total of ten children. On Thursday, we went back to the children’s house in the afternoon to distribute the releases to parents picking up their children. Some of the children didn’t attend camp that day. Other kibbutz children rode their bikes home from school. Luckily, the community is small enough that we will be able to find their parents at another time. We will go back one afternoon next week to obtain the rest of the releases.

It is important that we cover all of our legal bases while we are here. Otherwise, it will be difficult for us to obtain Errors and Omissions Insurance, a crucial requirement for most distributors or broadcasters before they acquire your film. During editing, we will more than likely realize that we have missed a release form somewhere during filming, but for now we can only try our best!