Stephanie is an Entertainment Lawyer with the American Broadcasting Companies in New York, NY. Having worked in entertainment law for live events, television and film, and theatrical productions, Stephanie gives us an insider’s look at the inner working of a legal department of an entertainment venture. Whether reviewing contracts for on-site vending machines or intellectual property disputes of international music stars, Stephanie tells us that interested students need to have the grit and determination to keep pushing forward on every project.
Transcript
My name's Stephanie Jacqueney, and I am an entertainment lawyer. I have worked at one company where I was the lead production lawyer. That involved doing contracts for set designers, lighting designers, costume designers. It also involved intellectual property, music rights, rights of privacy, rights of publicity. You have an idea for a show and maybe you wanna use something that's in everyday life. Well do you have the rights to use that or is that in the public domain? Those are just some of the areas that this touches upon. But you know what? If you're doing a major production, you might need cars. You might need hotels to get your personnel there. You probably need a lot of computer-related systems. More and more, I find myself doing contracts with a lot of IT or information technologies, or computer and cloud consulting, and software as a service, and other elements that maybe 10, 15 years ago were not necessarily part of the entertainment law practice. I wanna dovetail into something else that you do when you're a production lawyer, and that is the marketing of it. There's sponsorships. There's contracts for ad placement. There's a lot of marketing. There's reviewing of ad copy. So there's a lot of different aspects to this. What does it all involve? It involves a lot of analysis. You have to sit down with the client and know what they're doing. Are we selling ad space? Do we have a sponsor for this? So maybe there's a sponsorship agreement. It really runs the gamut You're running a business, and your business happens to be the product that people want to come down and see if they're in a theater or view, if it's television, whether it's linear or some other medium these days.
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