In order to produce our historical trolley DVDs, we depend on the generosity of photographers who filmed these systems while they were still running. This is not a field that is highly lucrative nor widely noticed, but we do our best to share in a fair fashion both the proceeds of and the credit for our endeavors. The following paragraphs spell out the terms under which we usually borrow and use films from other photographers. Although these terms suit most photographers, individual circumstances vary, and we are more than willing to negotiate terms which are more appropriate for specific situations.
Our first concern is the safety and preservation of your films. We pay to have them shipped to us for transfer to video by the carrier of your choice - we recommend Federal Express, not for their speed, but because in our experience they track shipments better than other carriers. We inspect and clean the films before transfer to reduce the possibility that weak splices or torn sproket holes will cause the film to hang up in the transfer machine. We transfer the films to video, at our expense, in complete rolls - we never cut into a roll of original film. 8mm film is transferred on our own equipment. 16mm film is transferred by a service in California (to which we ship both ways by Federal Express) which gives us a special rate in return for letting them make the transfer when time becomes available between more pressing jobs (it may take a couple of weeks), and for splicing shorter rolls together into one-hour-long rolls for transfer. Thus we may splice a whole roll of your film temporarily with one or more whole rolls of yours or another photographer's films, and then separate them after transfer to return them to you on your original reel(s), but that is the maximum extent of editing we do with original film.
After transfer, we return your films to you at our expense by the carrier of your choice. We also send you a VHS copy of your unedited footage made from our master transfer, so that for most purposes you do not need to project your original films to show them to others. In return, you grant us the non-exclusive right to use the video transfer we have made from your films in any of our productions. For any production in which we use your footage, you will receive a credit, on screen or on the packaging, wherever any other photographer receives a credit. We reserve the right to use the names only of photographers whose work constitutes a major contribution to the production in our advertising.
For all footage incorporated into a finished production, we pay a royalty of 10% of our receipts from all sales of that production, pro-rata according to the portion of the length of the finished program that each photographer's work makes up. By way of example, if your films made up 12 minutes in a one-hour DVD (20% of the running time), your royalty would be 2% of our receipts for that DVD (20% of 10%).
We make no deductions from the amount on which we calculate royalties, but we pay royalties only on the money we actually receive for a production, so, for example, it is based on the wholesale price for DVDs sold through dealers, and no royalty is paid for free copies we distribute for review or other promotional purposes. For example, short segments from various DVDs added at the end of a different production (under the title "Previews of our Other Productions" or words to that effect) are considered to be promotional, and are not added to royalty calculations.
Our royalties are fairly standard in the industry, and for productions such as ours, royalties seldom represent significant sources of income for the photographer. Most photographers are primarily interested in having their work widely seen, and receiving appropriate credit for it. What Transit Gloria Mundi offers photographers is a showcase for their work in productions which are widely recognized as the best in their field, and therefore widely seen (sometimes very widely seen - TROLLEY: The Cars That Built Our Cities has been seen by millions of viewers). Good work takes time; sometimes several years elapse between the time that we transfer footage and it first appears in a finished production. We must sometimes apologize to a photographer for the delay, but we have yet to hear one complain that they are displeased with the quality of the production when it is finally released.