The team surrounding the creative individual can include your agent, your
manager, your accountant, your publicist, your fan club head and your
attorney!
I’ve bashed a lot of professions, but never my attorney.
Entertainment law is a specific niche, and very few universities outside of
California and New York teach it.
As contracts grow in length and complexity (due, no doubt, to the growth of
numbers of media), the language itself expands. There are so many technical
words that few can comprehend them all. Your attorney could be the
exception.
My own, Don Moss, has worked with me for nearly 30 years. I’ve learned so
much from him that I can’t fathom where I would’ve been without him. He
negotiates, barters, batters, and consistently reports to me to make sure
we’re moving in the right direction.
I’ve met many other attorneys who are excellent. Here are some of them: my
college classmate Peter Dekom, Roger Goff, Steve Lowe, Glen Kulik, Michael
Donaldson, Dean Serwin, Michael Hoisington, Valerie Nemeth and, most
recently, Paul Battista.
Paul has written a book about Independent Producing, and he’s given a number
of successful presentations to my grad and undergrad classes at Art Center
College of Design.
To demonstrate the kinds of excellent and valuable information that can be
provided by an entertainment attorney, Paul has just written a blog about
“crowd funding,” which is a new buzz word on many of my students’ and
clients’ lips. It refers to the types of money apparently available for
films via the web, most particularly IndieGoGo and KickStarter. The big
question is: if you receive funding, do you have to declare it as regular
income?
Visit Paul’s website and see what he has to say:
http://filmcourage.com/content/tax-consequences-successful-crowd-funding-cam
paign
Wnen you find an entertainment attorney who is knowledgeable and informed,
he/she can be a most valuable asset to you and your career.
All best wishes,
Eric Sherman
