skills/ai-film-pipeline-master/references/phase-01-story-generation/rights-and-permissions.md

# Rights and permissions — optional craft for when a brief raises rights

6 cards, all `rights.*`.

**Optional craft, never a step.** Root [`../../SKILL.md`](../../SKILL.md) §0 governs this file: the skill has no
rights, permission, licence, clearance or antiquities-law step, and nothing here blocks, gates, or
waits for anyone to confirm anything. Open these cards only when the brief itself raises rights — a
client who says the archive must be licensed, a broadcaster's delivery list — and use them as craft
for that. The one wait that touches this subject is a real person's consent before their voice or
likeness is cloned (for a real child, the parent's), and it is recorded where root `SKILL.md` §0 says.

**Why these live in Phase 1.** When a brief does raise rights, what it says shapes the design, so it
is cheapest to read here rather than at delivery.

**The one marker here** is `pending_archive_source`: where a found item came from, when a search has
not found it. It is a note for the caption and the credit, defined in
[`../ENGINE-CHECK.md`](../ENGINE-CHECK.md) §3, and it stops nothing.

---

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## Contents

- [Permission to shoot, and what the shooting produces](#permission-to-shoot-and-what-the-shooting-produces)
- [Material somebody else made](#material-somebody-else-made)
- [The ordering rule](#the-ordering-rule)
- [Coverage](#coverage)

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## Permission to shoot, and what the shooting produces

### Permission at a Protected Site

**Also called:** filming permit, site access, heritage permission, antiquities approval
**What it is:** The separate permission needed to film or photograph a protected archaeological or heritage site **for media or commercial use** — separate from physical access, and separate from a general filming permit. Many states reserve the media and commercial exploitation of images of their antiquity sites to the national authority, and attach a penalty to going without it. The requirement attaches to the **use**, not to the visit, which is why it cannot be resolved after the fact.
**Effect on the audience:** None, and that is the trap. An unlicensed frame looks exactly like a licensed one, so nothing downstream catches it and nothing in the finished piece tells you.
**Used for and where it works best:** Only when the brief itself says the piece films or photographs a protected site for publication and raises the permit. Note what the brief says about who holds the right to publish a picture of the site, and design the shot as the brief wants it: the permit is the deliverer's matter, not a step in this pipeline, and nothing waits for it. Two facts worth knowing when a brief does raise it: the material produced *by* an excavation — its photographs, plans, drawings and survey — is frequently the property of the state rather than of the photographer or the expedition; and a permission for research or personal use is routinely not a permission for broadcast or for a commercial release.
**Best in:** formats: Heritage / Historical Documentary, Documentary Feature, Documentary Series, Reportage, Museum Installation, Video Essay, Travel | genres: Heritage (civilisation-focused), Documentary, Educational, Historical
**Avoid when:** Nothing real is being filmed. A wholly generated or wholly invented piece has no site to enter and no image to license, and carrying this card there adds a marker that can never close. It also does not govern a place with no protected status, where the ordinary rules of the jurisdiction apply and are somebody else's question.
**Shelf life:** dated — review 2027-03. Which sites are protected, which authority holds the right and what a permission costs are all jurisdictional and all move. The rule that the permission attaches to the use is the durable part.
**Example:**
> *In the brief:* "Sequence 4 is at the mound. The client's brief says the antiquities authority's media approval is theirs to obtain — noted for the handoff; the sequence is designed and shot as briefed."
**Yields to:** `rights.object_image` — The piece shows an object in a collection rather than filming a site.  
`rights.site_permission`

---

## Material somebody else made

### Found Material and Its Provenance

**Also called:** archive clearance, footage rights, stills licensing, chain of title
**What it is:** The question of who holds the right to a piece of material the production did not make — archive footage, a photograph, a recording, a map, a piece of music — and on what terms it may be used. The answer is rarely "it is old, so it is free": ownership, the terms of the licence, the territory and duration it covers, and the credit it requires are four separate facts, and a piece can be cleared on one and not the others.
**Effect on the audience:** None directly. The cost lands on the production: an uncleared element is discovered at delivery, and the repair is a re-cut of whatever it was carrying.
**Used for and where it works best:** On a piece that uses material it did not originate, when the brief raises rights. **Four facts are worth writing beside each element when they are known**: who owns it, what the licence permits, for where and for how long, and what credit is required. Two distinctions do most of the work. **A document that claims provenance is not provenance** — a letter, a catalogue entry or a seller's account is an assertion, and it is caption-able as one: *"a dealer's catalogue described this as coming from X"* is defensible where *"from X"* is not. And **editorial use is not commercial use**: a licence written for one routinely excludes the other, and a piece's own promotion — a trailer, a poster, a social cut — commonly falls on the commercial side of a line the main film sits safely inside. Where they are not known after a search, write what is known, use the material, and carry on; nothing waits on them.
**Best in:** formats: Documentary Feature, Documentary Series, Heritage / Historical Documentary, Reportage, Essay Film, Video Essay, Museum Installation, Vertical Short-Form (Reels, Shorts, TikTok) | genres: Documentary, Heritage (civilisation-focused), Historical, Educational, Journalism
**Avoid when:** Every frame is originated by the production. Do not attach it to generated material either — a generated image of a thing is not the thing, and the questions it raises are different ones.
**Shelf life:** dated — review 2027-09. Terms, durations and what platforms require of a credit all move; the four facts to settle do not.
`rights.found_material_provenance`

---

### The Object in the Picture

**Also called:** object image rights, collection permissions, category lists
**What it is:** The separate question raised by a picture **of an object** — held in a museum, in a private collection, or of unknown whereabouts. Two rights sit on top of each other and are commonly confused: the institution's or photographer's rights in the *photograph*, which are usually real and current whatever the object's age; and whatever is or is not settled about the *object itself*.
**Effect on the audience:** The audience reads a picture of an object as a statement about that object. That is the whole of the risk, and it is an editorial risk before it is a legal one.
**Used for and where it works best:** **The commonest and least-known trap: a category list is not a list of stolen things.** Bodies that publish "at risk" lists of cultural objects are illustrating the *categories* traffickers move, and the objects pictured are typically lawfully held, inventoried museum pieces photographed with permission. Placing one of those images under commentary about looting tells the audience that a legally held object was stolen — a false claim about a named institution, made entirely by juxtaposition, with nothing in the script to catch it. **Caption the source of the claim, never the claim.** And on any piece about the trade in objects, the one line the field actually polices is **market value on screen**: stating or implying what a piece is worth is what moves the market, and it is the thing professional bodies have successfully objected to. Take the value out.
**Best in:** formats: Heritage / Historical Documentary, Documentary Feature, Documentary Series, Reportage, Museum Installation, Video Essay, Explainer | genres: Heritage (civilisation-focused), Documentary, Historical, Journalism, Educational
**Avoid when:** No real object appears. A generated image of an invented object raises none of this, and a piece whose objects are all its own props raises none of it either.
**Outranks:** `doc.text_on_archive` — where a caption would state a findspot or an ownership history the material does not support. The caption craft still applies; what it may assert is decided here.
`rights.object_image`

### The Reference Image and Its Licence

**Also called:** reference provenance, reference licence, the reference folder rule, image source log
**What it is:** The note kept beside every image the production feeds a generator or pins beside a prompt as a reference — a relief, a museum object, a site photograph, a flag, a map: where it came from, one line each.
**Effect on the audience:** None directly. The reference never reaches the screen, and that is why it is the image nobody checks: the piece ships, and the question of whose photograph it was arrives afterwards, addressed to the production.
**Used for and where it works best:** Every piece that works reference-first, which on a heritage subject the user wants realistic is every piece (`ai.reference_first_heritage`, and the canon's `heritage-rules.md` §1). **Write one line per reference, beside the image:** where it came from (the page, not the search), who made it, and the licence its page states, if it states one. **The reference is used either way** — the heritage rule to build from a real reference is met by finding it, and nothing here keeps a found image out of the folder. Where the brief itself raises licences — a client whose delivery needs licensed references only — the licence line is the craft for that, and two facts help: a file on a free-image site carries its own licence on its own page, and an old object does not make its photograph old.
**Best in:** formats: Heritage / Historical Documentary, AI-Generated Clip, Generated Keyframe Feeding Video, Documentary Feature, Documentary Series, Vertical Short-Form (Reels, Shorts, TikTok), Museum Installation, Explainer | genres: Heritage (civilisation-focused), Historical / Biopic, Mythology / Ancient Epic, Documentary, Educational
**Avoid when:** The reference is the production's own drawing or photograph and nothing else went into it; the source line still says so, and that is all it needs.
**Example:**
> **Reference log, one line per image:** `ref_07_lamassu_gate.jpg — museum collection page for the object (URL) — photograph by the museum — licence as stated on that page: CC BY 4.0, credit required — kind: licensed`
>
> `ref_08_relief_detail.jpg — found in a search, source page not found — used as the closest reference — pending_archive_source, a note`
**Shelf life:** dated — review 2027-09. Licences and what platforms require of a credit move; the three kinds and the source line beside each image do not.
**Yields to:** `rights.found_material_provenance` — the reference itself appears on screen, where it is material the production did not make and the four facts are settled; and `rights.object_image` — the picture shows a real object and says something about it.
`rights.reference_image_licence`

---

## The ordering rule

### Cleared Before It Is Locked

**Also called:** the rights list, rights noted early
**What it is:** The habit of writing a brief's rights facts down early, where they are cheap to read, rather than discovering them at delivery. It orders nothing: the design never waits for an answer.
**Effect on the audience:** None. This card exists to stop a specific production failure, not to change a frame.
**Used for and where it works best:** When the brief raises rights, list once, beside the brief, every element it says somebody else owns, controls or must permit — a location, archive, an object, music, a likeness, a trademark in frame — and what the brief says about each. **This is never a blocker and never a stop:** each shot is designed as the brief wants it, the list travels with the handoff for whoever delivers, and nothing waits on it. The one exception is not a rights question at all: a real person's voice or likeness is not cloned until that person's consent is recorded (for a real child, the parent's), per root `SKILL.md` §0.
**Best in:** formats: Documentary Feature, Documentary Series, Heritage / Historical Documentary, Reportage, Commercial / TVC, Brand Film, Museum Installation, Corporate / Training | genres: Documentary, Heritage (civilisation-focused), Historical, Journalism, Educational
**Avoid when:** Nothing in the piece is owned or controlled by anyone else — a wholly generated, wholly invented piece with no real place, person, object or music in it. Running the pass there produces an empty form, and an empty form is the correct outcome rather than a sign it was done wrong.
`rights.cleared_before_locked`

---

### A Child in the Frame

**Also called:** minors on screen, safeguarding, filming a child
**What it is:** The separate set of requirements that attaches the moment a real child appears in, is recorded for, or is identifiable from a piece. It is not a stricter version of adult consent — it is a different regime, and the differences are the point: who may give permission for a child, whether and how the child's own assent is sought, and how either can be withdrawn are set by the governing law, the broadcaster's policy and the safeguarding authority, not by this package, which states no universal consent procedure; and the permission covers a person who will grow up and may feel very differently about the material at twenty than their guardian did on their behalf at six.
**Effect on the audience:** Nothing visible. As with every card in this file, the failure is invisible in the finished piece and expensive everywhere else.
**Used for and where it works best:** In this pipeline a real child appears only through material somebody supplies, or through a clone of a real child's voice or likeness. **The clone is the one step that waits**: it waits for the parent's or guardian's consent, recorded in `child_voice_clone_consent` in `project.yaml` (root `SKILL.md` §0), and everything else carries on. Supplied footage of a real child is used as the brief supplies it, with a note in the handoff that a minor is identifiable. This package writes the piece and does not write safeguarding procedure, for the same reason it does not write concealment. Two things worth knowing, because they change the shot list rather than the paperwork: **age-appropriateness of the content is a different question from safeguarding of the participant**, and the craft cards for the first do not touch the second; and **a piece can be about children without recording any**, which is frequently the better film and always the simpler one.
**Best in:** formats: Kids Content, Documentary Feature, Documentary Series, Reportage, Commercial / TVC, Corporate / Training, Vertical Short-Form (Reels, Shorts, TikTok) | genres: Documentary, Educational, Children's, Journalism
**Avoid when:** No real minor appears. An animated, generated or invented child raises none of this — there is no participant to safeguard — and attaching the card there produces a marker that can never close. It also does not govern an adult performer playing young, or a real child's voice used without the child in the picture: that voice is cast like any other, under `voice.cast_designed_child`; a clone of a real, named child waits only at the cloning step, for the parent's or guardian's consent recorded in `child_voice_clone_consent` in `project.yaml`, and the rest of the work carries on, under `elevenlabs.voice_cloning_hygiene` (owner rulings, 2026-09-23 and 2026-09-24).
**Shelf life:** dated — review 2027-03. Who may give permission for a child, and how the child's own assent is sought and recorded, are set by the jurisdiction and by the safeguarding body the piece answers to, and they move; the durable part is that a real child's clone waits for the parent's recorded consent and nothing else does.  
**Yields to:** nothing in this package, on the clone step: a real child's voice or likeness is not cloned without the parent's recorded consent, which is tier 0 in [`../PRECEDENCE.md`](../PRECEDENCE.md) because the harm cannot be withdrawn afterwards. Everything else on this card is craft.
`rights.minor_on_screen`

---

## Coverage

These cards are optional craft for when a brief raises rights. They do not tell anyone how to obtain
a permission, clear a licence or read a contract, and they should not be extended to. Nothing in them
blocks, gates or waits: [`../../SKILL.md`](../../SKILL.md) §0 governs, and the work carries on.