Esq. Productions to Help Filmmakers with Legal Education | IFP ...

Chain of title, private placement memoranda, completion agreements, and the nuances of back-end contingent compensation ? not exactly the forte of most independent filmmakers. ?Nor should they be. ?Nevertheless, one non-profit is working to change that by providing creative artists of all varieties with a foundational business and legal education, hoping to empower them to tackle these aspects of their careers at the front end.

Esq. Productions, a 501(c)(3) public charity, on March 3 produced a business- and legal-focused symposium hosted and sponsored by the USC School of Cinematic Arts. ?Latha Duncan, the co-founder and current president of Esq. Productions, led the discussion which featured attorneys David Wienir (Business Affairs Executive, United Talent Agency), Matthew N. Sugarman (Weissmann Wolff Bergman Coleman & Evall LLP), and Neil Ollivierra (Vice President, Business & Legal Affairs, Lions Gate Entertainment). ?Over 100 people showed up on the Saturday morning to learn about how to deal with the multitude of business and legal issues raised over the course of any particular entertainment endeavor. ?A steady flow of audience questions made the three-hour event feel far too short and helped to tailor the discussion to the specific interests and concerns of attendees.?

For creative artists, a great benefit of surrounding oneself with a professional team ? personal and business managers, agent, and attorney ? is the freedom to hone one?s craft and to not undertake primary responsibility for business and legal matters. ?The unfortunate reality, though, is that entertainment is a cutthroat business in which a relatively small percentage of creative artists are afforded the luxury of such a team. ?Left to fend for themselves, when navigating the business and legal minefields that invariably obstruct the path to success, independent filmmakers often employ a machete where a scalpel is required ? the thought often being, ?Let?s hope for the best, and if something goes wrong, we?ll clean it up on the back-end.? ?It is almost always more difficult to go back and fix something than to do it properly from the beginning, and this is no less true in the entertainment realm. ?Where an attorney?s services may have been foregone initially because of, for example, a perceived inability to negotiate an economically feasible fee structure, should something go wrong the opportunity cost will be realized when more time and money are required to fix the mistakes.

A central tenet of Esq. Productions is that there is much the creative artist can do themselves to proactively tackle the business and legal facets of their careers. ?As important to many creative artists as realizing maximum economic value from their work is protecting its integrity, and critical to the accomplishment of either are the abilities to recognize and avoid improvident deals and to leverage their relative positions at the bargaining table. ?Esq. Productions hopes to bolster the artists? ability to do this by providing them with the broadest perspective possible on the business and legal sides of the various entertainment industries, bringing together law professors, practicing entertainment attorneys, experienced creative artists, and other entertainment industry executives to speak in various formats. ?Panels comprised of diverse groups of entertainment professionals emphasize the competing interests inherent to any deal, and illustrate the importance of a holistic approach. ?To date, Esq. Productions has worked with a variety of film festivals, film foundations, and undergraduate- and graduate-level university film programs.

Latha Duncan, a graduating third year law student at Southwestern University School of Law, runs Esq. Productions with William Barrett, a graduating third year law student at New York Law School. ?Latha and Will hope to see Esq. Productions through law school graduation and into the future, with plans for a greater number of educational partners and to begin expansion into music- and sports-centric programming as well. ?For more information, please visit http://www.esqproductions.com and look for them on Facebook and Twitter @esqproductions.

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