What does copyright law mean?

Well, if you hadn't noticed, I've spent the last four years fighting my alma mater, NZSM (New Zealand School of Music) and complaining about the horrible mental health results in elite music training. I may have gone crazy, but they're the ones that primed me to go off like that. - They think they might have a case to win in court; I strongly disagree, particularly given that I'm mentally ill with an incurable condition (bipolar I), and I felt like their attempts to curry my favour insulted my intelligence. Points in my favour: none of my Just Like Yesterday screenplay involved music students. I never named a specific institution during the Beach Song Ad, and my personal profile wasn't the same as my business page. In fact, Amanda (formerly Michael) Riddell and Riddell Productions are separate entities; we were an actual limited liability company, thanks to James Ashcroft's advice. In essence, their parent institution (Victoria University of Wellington) really wants me to produce Just Like Yesterday as a movie because they're broke and decided to fire a bucketload of arts and culture people; this would allow them to save face, rather than admitting that a business model based on exploiting international students isn't so viable in this era of anthropogenic climate change. In fact, VUW is so upset at the negative publicity that the NZSM has attracted (it wasn't just me👋), that they're intending to close that institution by 2025 or 2026. They're planning to ditch the theatre department too, so how could I possibly agree with that bureaucratic bullshit decision made by soulless bean counters and then make a film to help them pretend that they're not cutting those core programs. I mean, what kind of a fucking uni doesn't have a proper arts department? - I've been extremely clear on what I expect: I wrote that screenplay on the dole, so I expect VUW to pay me $50,000 for that screenplay with the express condition that the sale is for the screenplay only, and has nothing to do with my body, voice or my songs. If they want to be a movie studio, then they should fucking deal with me like a movie studio, Anyone in the film industry would agree with me that the person who writes a screenplay has the exclusive copyright. That means that movie studios and producers actually end up buying those rights from the original writer. That is always the way: James did that with Owen Marshall in order to make that film of Coming Home In The Dark. VUW has to accept that I do not consider paying them to do a Masters degree of a screenplay that I wrote on spec to be fair compensation. Nobody would, particularly after my recent run of success: my PR is way better than theirs, and so is my reputation. I was joking when I said that I was the most trusted politician in New Zealand, but that's probably fairly close to the mark if you take that to include Chloe as well as me. 🤣 That's also true regarding the NZSM and their reputation. I had a crush on a celebrity; they had a professor that assaulted young men. Even then, people mostly found my crush funny. They can either wipe my debt entirely to get that screenplay, or they can pay me the $50,000. - So, yeah, for Sasha and the young film buffs: be ready to lawyer up. My brother was the one who talked to the lawyers. Producing real movies requires that there are proper contracts in place for all the cast and crew, including things like back end points, which we assigned before shooting Portrait of a Knight .. that was a mistake; for Shipwrecked, I'd probably assign points, but then review those after the shoot. This Amanda vs. Goliath tale has taken up a huge amount of my time, but ultimately I discovered that if I stuck to my guns on my copyrights, then I was able to say no to various attempts to swipe those EP songs for other productions. I might be paranoid, but I distinctly think NZ Opera wanted them for Unruly Tourists. As for Shipwrecked: the Tina story -- I'll only ever refuse to license my songs, and that basically means that nobody wants to make it. While Shipwrecked: 2030 dystopia is suddenly looking tons more real after that Wellington Stories trilogy. Catering is the real key to a good shoot, though. Tim Jones nailed that, and I think that was really helpful when the shoot wasn't going well. The length of the shoot for The Castle was basically determined by their catering budget.