DungeonQ
07-16-2009, 09:14 PM
Can I use images I've taken from movies on a film site?
I'm pretty familiar with video game sites - in that industry they're pretty much happy to see sites with images of their games being freely advertised. I've never heard of any outrageous demands to pull images used within fair reason.
Along with a friend I'm exploring starting a film site, just for fun, but the plan would be to include a bunch of images from each movie we end up featuring - screen-capped from the DVD.
I seem to recall movie companies don't really like it and have asked numerous sites over the years to pull all images. A similar example, The Simpsons Archive used to have a small picture from each episode but was asked to remove them all.
Obviously the intention of the images is for illustrative purposes and there wouldn't be an excessive amount. I mean I can argue all the reasons why it makes sense, I don't think I have to, but it all comes back to the film company having the right to ask me to remove it. I know they have that right - my question is do they typically enforce that right?
I'm not trying to get around any rules here - I believe using images of movies on a movie site would be of mutual gain (probably more for them, if anything) but before I invest time in the site I wanted to see if the vision I have for the site is possible. I think it'd be kind of boring without at least one picture. And a lot of the movies will be older - so getting official "press images" would be harder - forcing me to use a still from the DVD.
Does the size of the image count? Resolution? Number of images used? Watermarks used (e.g. placing (c) Universal Studios 2009 at bottom of pic) I see small images used on Wikipedia a lot, although I was hoping for images a little larger and certainly of crisper resolution.
Thanks for any help on this matter.
I'm pretty familiar with video game sites - in that industry they're pretty much happy to see sites with images of their games being freely advertised. I've never heard of any outrageous demands to pull images used within fair reason.
Along with a friend I'm exploring starting a film site, just for fun, but the plan would be to include a bunch of images from each movie we end up featuring - screen-capped from the DVD.
I seem to recall movie companies don't really like it and have asked numerous sites over the years to pull all images. A similar example, The Simpsons Archive used to have a small picture from each episode but was asked to remove them all.
Obviously the intention of the images is for illustrative purposes and there wouldn't be an excessive amount. I mean I can argue all the reasons why it makes sense, I don't think I have to, but it all comes back to the film company having the right to ask me to remove it. I know they have that right - my question is do they typically enforce that right?
I'm not trying to get around any rules here - I believe using images of movies on a movie site would be of mutual gain (probably more for them, if anything) but before I invest time in the site I wanted to see if the vision I have for the site is possible. I think it'd be kind of boring without at least one picture. And a lot of the movies will be older - so getting official "press images" would be harder - forcing me to use a still from the DVD.
Does the size of the image count? Resolution? Number of images used? Watermarks used (e.g. placing (c) Universal Studios 2009 at bottom of pic) I see small images used on Wikipedia a lot, although I was hoping for images a little larger and certainly of crisper resolution.
Thanks for any help on this matter.