Music Video Terms of Service for DC Film & Animation Ltd

Please note my legal name is Duncan Catterall-Mason as of getting married in 2020, but I still use Duncan Catterall professionally as I’m credited as such in so many places.

By engaging in a music video production with me (Via my company DC Film & Animation Ltd) your production will be subject to the below terms:

Quotes will give the specific amount of time you are paying for, related to a day rate. Additional time is chargeable including overtime on set and edit. We cannot guarantee overtime or additional time for extra edits will be available outside of what is planned. We will make sure you know how many rounds of changes you get in the quote and will give you the opportunity to prebook extra time. If we say you are about to run out of time on your edit, please be aware we mean it.

If a video isn’t paid for in full you do not get to release it or any related content. We will pursue any unauthorised uploads, and this includes screen recordings. These mechanisms for this are well established, fast and easy for us to use. If you want to release material whilst your video is in progress please pay in full and we can give you the highest quality versions for a range of social media platforms.

Expenses and travel are not covered in packaged quotes, we will send you the costs for the crew and filming. If we have to travel a long way that will obviously cost more than a shoot near the crew. This is to avoid escalating costs and to encourage a healthier work-life balance for the team, allowing them to see their families after shoots rather than just being on the road.

I've already priced my work to balance what I need to earn to pay my bills, cover the huge cost of the kit I use and try and still make videos that serious musicians can afford. I can offer more affordable options from my range of packages, but if you have big ideas then the time to make those still needs to be covered or you need to scale back your ideas.

If you’ve organised a location or any other aspect of the production, please make sure you have written confirmation of the venue, we cannot shoot at locations you’re not meant to be at.

My pre-designed production packages (so not custom projects) are based on tracks under 5 minutes. The work to do a video twice as long is obviously twice the cost due to the increased producion time needed to make it properly. I don't think there's a great benefit for having videos that are 10-15 minutes long for a typical music video without loss of audience retention, but I can quote specificly for that type video if you really must have a video that long. I'd encourage a "radio edit" if you can.

Don’t be late. If you show up late to your own production you're wasting time you’ve paid for, this won’t be pushing the clock around for any crew on set.

Be respectful. The world of music and creativity is full of interesting and diverse people, we’d like to keep it that way. If I or my crew see hate speech on set my crew will leave and you won’t get a refund. We don’t want to be associated with that.

Toxic behaviour is grounds for termination without refund. Bullying behaviour or sexual harassment has no place on my sets or in correspondence. Let’s keep it light and enjoy the process.

No drink and drugs on set (which is to mean on location, at a venue, in a studio or wherever filming is taking place). No one is under the influence of drink and drugs on set. The use of drink or drugs on set will not only make for a terrible video, but can make working dangerous for crew, cast and others involved in the production, as well as invalidating insurance.

We don’t make videos promoting violence or criminal activity - videos where this is a theme shown as bad things are fine. On a similar basis we do not make videos that are used as a threat to a person or persons.

I don’t hand over unedited footage unless I’m working with a professional production company, at which point I charge a higher rate to accommodate this loss of editing revenue. Unedited footage can look very different to the untrained eye, there’s moments where a camera op my be refocusing which they would be mortified to see in a final edit, and a myriad of other quality control decisions that take time and experience to learn. For this direct music video production service I will not be handing over the unedited footage and you engage with me on this basis.

We don’t use generative AI at any point in our production process, not least because this will invalidate insurance policies and cause clients' videos to be less successful and be demonetised on some platforms. We would prefer to work with real artists and writers and can put you in touch with plenty of talented people if you need them.

With respect to more creative videos - your initial ideas are not what we quote for. We will take any of your initial ideas and create a “Reply Brief” which outlines the aspects of the project that are reasonable for us to make. This will need to be accepted (electronically signed) before moving forwards. This helps us ensure we stay on the same page and you are aware of any limitations - both practically and financially - that mean not all the ideas you have originally suggested will move forwards.

Footage takes up a huge amount of space, especially at the quality level I like to shoot at. For this reason I will send you copies of your video to download in both a web ready and a very high quality format for storage (this file can be big but please store it even if you can't view it). I’ll give you a month to download your files this as I can’t keep all your files in online storage long term without increasing my costs. If you need me to make a plan for long term storage this can be arranged separately. A month after your final files are sent to you for download these will be deleted. Please note that after the delivery of a project it will be normal for me to move these off of my working storage, so delivered projects may take a few days or weeks to have space to bring back online, especially if I’ve moved on to other clients.

I generally work by day. I don’t schedule evening calls as I’ve young children that need me for their bedtimes. I have a link for easily booking video calls that I will share with you. I prefer not to use Whatsapp as I avoid my phone when I’m filming or focused on work but you’ll have my full attention for any planned check-ins. The only exception to this will be on the day of a shoot where you may need to contact me for logistics, but please don’t add me to groups etc.

I'd really like to be able to include clips (not full videos) on social media and in my showreel to help promote my work, but will only do so once you have release your video, unless you specifically want me to help promote your video pre-launch (subject to other plans and posts I may also be sharing at the time). I'm not a marketing expert but I will try and be supportive when I can and share when I can on socials. If I'm really proud of your video don't be suprised if your video still appears on my showreel for years to come. If you don't want to be included on any of my social media, please let me know otherwise I will take your engagement on the basis of these terms as acknowledgement that I can share clips after release.

Please credit me and any of my freelance team  where you can when practical. You don’t have to but I’m proud of the work I make and it makes a real difference for a freelancer.