[KineJapan] permission to reproduce movie stills

[Markus Nornes]

I thought I'd follow up on Erik's useful post.

If you want more nuance than that, search the KineJapan archives for some
involved explanations of this issue.

In short, for materials still under copyright period, you need
permission—except for frame grabs, which are treated like "quotations" of a
larger work.

As Erik notes, there is wiggle room. But it's room publishers need to take.
Some editors are gun-shy and want to play by the book. Others see how there
has not been litigation, so are willing to look the other way to varying
degrees.

I've been publishing with University of Michigan Press—and am director of
the CJS pubs program—and they are forward leaning on this issue. Frame
grabs are fine. Publicity stills and posters should be cleared. However,
sometimes the copyright owner is hard to determine, or simply unresponsive
after multiple attempts. If the author/editor can provide a clutch of
correspondence showing due diligence to clear copyright, we'll usually go
forward and use the images.

Personally, I think that's a sweet spot and respect the press for taking
this position. Other presses will be more careful. It's something to ask
about when approaching a press in the first place.

I'll end this with a plug for Center for Japanese Studies Publication
Program at Michigan. We like images and well-designed books, have good
copy-editing, release in hard and soft cover versions, and at prices you
can actually afford. *We are always looking for good books from any field
in Japan Studies. Contact me, please!  *

Markus




---

*Markus Nornes*
*Professor of Asian Cinema*
*Interim Chair, Dept. of Asian Languages and Culture*

Department of Film, Television and Media, Department of Asian Languages and
Cultures, Penny Stamps School of Art & Design




*Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nornes/
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nornes/>*
*Department of Film, Television and Media*
*6348 North Quad*
*105 S. State Street**Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285*




On Sun, Jul 3, 2022 at 1:23 AM Erik R. Lofgren via KineJapan <
kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:

> Dear Nina,
>
> If it is a published still, the following will be little to no help, I
> suspect.  If it is a screen capture, then it may be, although you may
> already be aware of it, in that case.
>
> I wished to include a couple of screen captures for a recent article and
> the journal, as we might expect, asked whether I had permission.  I
> referred them to the Society for Cinema and Media Studies guide from 1992
> <https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.cmstudies.org/resource/resmgr/docs/fairusefilmstills.pdf>
> (which, as the colleague in film studies who alerted me to this document
> noted, has not been updated since then as there's not been a single case of
> litigation over film stills since this guide was issued) and said that I
> was following this reasoning.  Therefore, I did not have formal
> permission (because I thought my use fell under the "fair use" guidelines
> outlined in the guide).  I said that if the journal was comfortable with
> accepting the rationale I shared with them, great, and if not, I would
> withdraw the images.  They decided to accept the rationale and published
> the article with the images.
>
> Best,
>
> Erik
>
> On Sat, Jul 2, 2022 at 11:23 AM Nina Cornyetz via KineJapan <
> kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:
>
>> Good morning,
>> I'm looking for where to turn to get permission to use a film still for
>> an article in a volume about Japanese arts; Also, where to turn for photos
>> of writers and staged dramas?
>> thanks for any help on this. I'm clueless.
>> Nina Cornyetz
>> _______________________________________________
>> KineJapan mailing list
>> KineJapan at mailman.yale.edu
>> https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan
>>
>
>
> --
>
> Erik R. Lofgren
> Associate Professor and Chair
> East Asian Studies Department
>
> ---------- * ---------- * ---------- * ---------- * ----------
> Bucknell University
> Lewisburg, PA  17837       Tel: 570-577-1765
> ---------- * ---------- * ---------- * ---------- * ----------
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