Hasta hace bien poco tiempo, los documentales estaban cómodamente cobijados bajo la capa protectora del periodismo. Hoy, en la medida en que se estrenan en las salas cinematográficas, han perdido esa cobertura. Son entendidos como parte de la industria del entrenimiento. Y eso tiene un precio.
El precio, en concreto, tiene mucho que ver con dos cosas. Con los derechos de las músicas utilizadas, y con los derechos de las imágenes que aparecen en pantalla, por ejemplo, en un televisor casualmente encendido que queda dentro del encuadre.
El interesante artículo del NYT, The Hidden Cost of Documentaries, cuenta sólo unos ejemplos del estado de la cuestión. Pero es muy ilustrativo. Sobre todo, acerca de los gastos que suponen los derechos de autor de imágenes y sonidos.
Clearance costs - licensing fees paid to copyright holders for permission to use material like music, archival photographs and film and news clips - can send expenses for filmmakers soaring into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Jonathan Caouette's "Tarnation," for instance - a portrait of a young man's relationship with his mentally ill mother that Mr. Caouette edited at home, on a laptop computer - was widely reported to have cost $218. In fact, after a distributor picked up "Tarnation," improved the quality with post-production editing and cleared music rights, the real cost came to more than $460,000. Clearance expenses were about half the total.
Securing rights to music has long been a serious challenge. Ten years ago, for instance, the filmmaker Steve James paid $5,000 to include the song "Happy Birthday" in "Hoop Dreams," the 1994 documentary that followed two Chicago basketball players through high school. One memorable scene portrayed a young man's 18th birthday, as the family sang "and his mom baked him a cake," Mr. James said. "It was an important scene, there was some amazement that Arthur had made it to 18. Of course, we wanted that in."
Es igualmente significativo lo que se dice a propósito de la posibilidad de volver a emitir o distribuir en DVD la serie documental "Eyes on the Prize," según muchos, el mejor trabajo sobre los derechos civiles:
"There's a whole generation out there who have not seen the program," said Sandy Forman, an entertainment lawyer heading a project to reclear the rights so that "Eyes" can be rebroadcast and distributed to the educational market. "When the rights were originally cleared, they were acquired for different terms. Some were in perpetuity, some were for 3 years, some for 7, some for 10." Once just one group of rights expired - and there are 272 still photographs and 492 minutes of scenes from more than 80 archives, plus the music - "we had to pull the film from distribution." (...)
"It's not clear that anyone could even make 'Eyes on the Prize' today because of rights clearances," Mr. Jaszi said. "What's really important here is that documentary commitment to telling the truth is being compromised by the need to accommodate perceived intellectual and copyright constraints."
Para quienes deseen una idea más aproximada de lo que está en juego, recomiendo leer "Untold Stories: Creative Consequences of the Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary" el informe hecho por Pat Aufderheide y Peter Jaszi sobre este espinoso y debatido asunto legal y financiero que se cruza en el camino de la creatividad. Y en el de la pura y simple comunicación pública.
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