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Non-disclosure agreements for actors

2/1/2019

3 Comments

 
This is an article published on Talent Managers For Actors, by actor Christopher Nicholson, and shared here with his permission, as I feel it is something of great value to all of our members. 

I have found locally that people who come from an amateur or community background often don't understand the intricacies of NDAs in theatre and film productions - and offence can occur because people dont understand why it is important.

At a practical level, we always supply photos and videos marked for sharing and portfolios, to our cast and crew, but other things; scripts, training videos, internal discussions, are not for public sharing. The "done" thing is to always ask if something can be shared before doing so. However, supplying behind the scenes content for use, is a choice of the production company and not an industry standard.


Mr Nicholsons article:
Writer/Director here: There seems to be some confusion regarding NDAs.
An NDA is a Non Disclosure Agreement and binds the person who signs it to a contract that legally prohibits that person from discussing any details at all about the project, or even their involvement in it, with any third party, be they a spouse, an agent or anyone else. That person also cannot list that project on their resume, post about it on social media or mention it anywhere at all in any medium whatsoever UNTIL THAT NDA EXPIRES.
NDAs usually have an expiration date (traditionally, 5 years for projects and 2 years for meetings). The text in the NDA will outline the actual terms of its expiration. Only after this expiration date are you free to discuss the project, (and that includes mentioning it on your resume/CV, social media etc) even if the on-air or release date of said project is before the expiration date of the NDA.
Also, some NDAs do not have expiration dates and therefore can never be broken. A certain well-known and super-powerful Studio is tending not to have expiration dates listed on their NDAs these days.
Any exceptions to these guidelines will be written in the NDA.
The only third person who can authorise you breaking an NDA is a Judge if that NDA is proved in Court to be worthy of breaking for legal reasons...No one else can legally instruct you to break the NDA, not your agent, your manager or even your pet walker.
Break and NDA against legal advice and at best you’ll get sued and at worst you’ll never work again with a fine imposed on you likely to be so high that your grandchildren will still be paying it off long after you’re dead and gone.
Confidentiality is taken very seriously by the industry and there are very good economic reasons for this. Take any and all NDAs you have to sign VERY professionally. Read them carefully and follow them TO THE LETTER. And if you refuse to sign an NDA, then the project is highly unlikely to involve you in it at any level going forward.


3 Comments
SK
22/2/2022 03:40:13 pm

Just stumbled over this during researching for something as my own as an industry outsider.

This is a very interesting topic as I've found quite some expositions about the fact that an NDA can NOT cover information as confidential that is already publicly available. Which would mean that upon release at the latest you can't be sued for sharing all the information that is published during the release.

So, in that case - or generally whenever any sort of information originally covered by the NDA is published by someone else where it can be accessed by the general public - it's not about any legal claims or threats of fines but solely about the question if the relevant people you want to work with again get pissed too much.

The same goes for information that has been revealed to you BEFORE signing an NDA - which would probably go for about anything regarding original script, dates, locations, characters etc. that have been shared before signing a contract. However, that might be trickier as it would make it almost impossible to enforce NDAs.

So, if that information is correct, it's not that much about legal obligations but about relationships and your reputation.

Would love to know if anyone has any further insights.

Also interested in why screenwriters who have legitimate concerns about having their unpublished and not yet in production stories stolen are discouraged from using NDAs while projects that are already in production and certainly can't be stolen, produced and released by anyone else earlier just because an actor states that they're part of the project, playing character X or that filming as started would forbid that sort of information to be shared with an interested fan base as that's promo for the thing and doesn't give away any content data that could be used to replicate it - or even specific locations that could be invaded by the general public. Not even if you take all cast members together would anyone know more than which actors are involved and what the names of their characters are. Don't think that level of secrecy makes any sense at that late a stage in development?

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