Q&A Session

Know your copyright and clearances!

Our panel of distinguished experts discussed the hottest issues surrounding sourcing, licensing and using images and footage.

Our panellists

Willa Marcus is a Canadian entertainment lawyer focused on film, television and books. Before training as a lawyer, she worked as a television producer at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She was part of the teams which started The Journal with Barbara Frum and the business show Venture. Today, her practice includes advising English and French-language independent producers across Canada in all aspects of production projects, from the initial corporate structure to a final review of content and distribution strategies.

Mary Rose MacLachlan began her career in-house at Prentice-Hall Canada, Penguin Books, and Harcourt before taking the freelance plunge. She founded MRM Associates in 1999, working primarily on K-12 projects. Since then she has worked as a freelance picture researcher and permissions consultant on many diverse projects from K-12 and higher education textbooks to online educational resources, posters, and museum exhibits. Her clients include EDM Studio, Emond Montgomery Publications, Gale / Cengage Learning, International Monetary Fund (IMF), John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Nelson, Oxford University Press, Pearson, Royal Conservatory of Music, Scribblermania, and Turner Consulting Group.

Jessica Berman-Bogdan is an internationally recognized film researcher and stock footage professional. She is the President and founder of Global ImageWorks (GIW). Jessica is a founding member and serves on the Executive Board of the footage trade organization ACSIL (The Association of Commercial Stock Footage Licensors). She’s an active member of FOCAL (The Federation of Commercial Stock Footage Licensors), the IDA (International Documentary Association), AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists) and PACA (Picture Archive Council of America).

Mark Antman spent the 70s living and working as a freelance documentary photojournalist in Europe and Africa. He returned to the United States and, in 1983, co-founded The Image Works. The agency has grown from modest beginnings to being one of the most important independent photo agencies specializing in editorial and informational imagery in the United States. In 2001 Mark became sole owner and President of The Image Works when his partner Alan Carey retired. After a lifetime in the field he remains passionate about all aspects of photography, particularly as a means of communicating feelings, information and ideas.

Moderator

Elizabeth Klinck has worked as producer, researcher and clearance specialist on numerous award-winning Canadian, American and British documentary films that have garnered Emmy, Gemini, Peabody and Academy awards.

A graduate of Queen’s University she has taught documentary research and development at Ryerson University in Toronto and has led research and rights clearance workshops at numerous international conferences and festivals.

Elizabeth has been nominated twice for a Canadian Gemini Award and won the inaugural Gemini for Best Visual Research in 2010. In 2005 and 2011 she was nominated for the FOCAL International Researcher of the Year Award and the following year she received an Emmy nomination in the category Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft – Research. In 2008 she won the Yorkton Golden Sheaf for Best Research, and she was awarded the FOCAL International Lifetime Achievement Award.

Elizabeth serves as a member of the FOCAL International Executive and on the board of Impact Media Summit. She is a founding chairperson of the Visual Researchers’ Society of Canada and is a member of DOC and WIFT Toronto.