Read an article adapted from the book! "Copyright and Public Domain: An Updated Primer," Documentary magazine, June 2020.
MAY 2020: ARCHIVAL STORYTELLING, SECOND EDITION!
Fully revised and updated, Archival Storytelling: A Filmmaker's Guide to Finding, Using, and Licensing Third-Party Visuals and Music is a timely, pragmatic look at the ever-expanding trove of audiovisual materials available to filmmakers and scholars, from the earliest photographs of the 19th century to the work of media makers today. Whether you’re a top Hollywood filmmaker or a first-time documentarian, at some point you are going to want to find, use, and license third-party materials—images, audio, or music that you yourself did not create—to use them in your work. What’s involved in researching and licensing visuals and music? What do documentary makers need to know when filming in a world filled with rights-protected images and sounds? How can filmmakers, scholars and others seeking evidence of the past understand and contextualize the ways in which this audiovisual record was created? Filled with insight from filmmakers, archivists, researchers, intellectual property experts and others, Archival Storytelling defines key terms such as copyright, fair use, public domain, orphan works and more. It guides readers through the complex archival process and challenges them to become not only archival users but also archival and copyright activists, ensuring their ongoing ability to draw upon the cultural materials that surround us. |
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Image: Women workers employed as wipers in the roundhouse having lunch in their rest room, C. & N.W. R.R., Clinton, Iowa, April 1943. Jack Delano, LC OWI/FSA.
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Reviews:
"...remarkably thorough, profoundly practical, lucidly written, and thought provoking." -- Grace Lile, American Archivist, Spring/Summer 2010 "...effectively conveys what experienced footage researchers and film producers feel everyone working in their field should know about working with archival media. " -- Snowden Becker, The Moving Image, Spring 2010 |
Archival Storytelling: A Filmmaker's Guide to Finding, Using, and Licensing Third-Party Visuals and Music, 1st edition
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Kenn Rabin photo: John Sarran
Kenn Rabin is an internationally recognized expert on the use of archival materials in film storytelling. His credits include the dramatic features Milk, directed by Gus Van Sant; Good Night, and Good Luck, directed by George Clooney; and The Good German, directed by Steven Soderbergh, in addition to a number of acclaimed archival television series, including the 13-hour Vietnam: A Television History and the 14-hour Eyes on the Prize, for which he was nominated for an Emmy. Kenn teaches workshops throughout the country on dramatic storytelling, archival research, and rights negotiation and licensing, and has been an invited speaker at the Miami Film Festival, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution, New York Women in Film and Television, and numerous other scholarly, professional, and public organizations. He has taught at the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies, Sonoma State University. His web address is http://www.fulcrummediaservices.com/.
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FEBRUARY 2015 Read an interview with Kenn Rabin about his work as archive producer on Ava DuVernay's SELMA. In The American Historian, a publication of the Organization of American Historians, here. |
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