I've been doing archival and clearance work on documentary productions for 25 years. I've worked on projects for Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Peacock, Starz, and Paramount+. And I can tell you with absolute certainty: the single most expensive mistake I see productions make has nothing to do with budget overruns or missed shoot days.
It's this: they treat clearance as a post-production problem.
Here's what that actually looks like in practice.
A production spends 18 months making a true crime documentary. They've got archival footage from six different sources, social media clips pulled from Instagram and YouTube, music cleared for the film but not for trailers, and three fair use calls made informally by a producer who read something on the internet in 2019. The edit is locked. The delivery date is in three weeks. The E&O application goes out.
The carrier comes back with questions.
Now you're not making creative decisions — you're in damage control. You're tracking down rights holders for assets that were cut into the film months ago with no documentation. You're discovering that one of your "cleared" archival clips was licensed for documentary use only, and the distributor wants trailer rights. You're realizing that your fair use calls were never reviewed by an attorney, which means your E&O carrier won't cover them.
Three weeks becomes three months. Sometimes the deal falls apart entirely.
I've seen this happen on productions with real budgets, real distributors, and real timelines. More than 50% of the time, clearance expertise isn't engaged until problems have already materialized.
The fix is not complicated. Think up-stream.
Clearance built into pre-production means every archival request is documented from the moment it enters the edit. Every fair use call is reviewed by an attorney before it's locked. Every music license is checked for the specific uses the distribution deal will require. The E&O application becomes a summary of work already done — not a scramble.
If you're in development or early production on a documentary or unscripted project and clearance isn't yet part of your budget conversation, I'm happy to talk through what that should look like. No pitch — just a real conversation.
Teddy Cannon
Founder, Crux Entertainment, Inc. — Archival • Clearance • Legal
25+ years | Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Peacock, Starz, Paramount+
teddy@cruxentertainmentinc.com | cruxentertainmentinc.com
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Very true. I always tell filmmakers that the more work you do in prep means the less work you do in post!
I say this all the time... "You want to work up-stream!!!". Post is always going to have fires to put out. If you don't respect this link in the production line... it's an all out forest fire! Sometimes I'm hired to step into the forest fire.
I had to help with clearances on a short doc last year. it meant exporting an EDL from Premiere, then converting to a file I could read in Google Sheets. So now every clip used was represented in the spreadsheet with time codes. The next task was to go down the list and itemize the source for each clip.
One challenge was that my animation and effects clips, which were exported from after effects, were composited before they reached Premiere. So if they contained material that needed sourcing, it meant some additional work to itemize. After Effects lets you export a file list, but it doesn’t have time codes like an EDL.