Authorship Below‐the‐Line
John Thornton Caldwell · 2013
This chapter outlines some mechanisms by which “authorship” and “creativity” are publicly invoked, industrially spurred, managerially dispersed, and profitably gleaned from among “craft,” technical, and “below-the-line (BTL)” workers in US film and television. It places particular emphasis on the systematic ways that creativity is distributed and harvested according to longstanding craft distinctions, union contracts, and industrial precedent. Three areas to clarify the reasons the collective/distributed models just described are useful in better understanding BTL authorship: the legal context of “intellectual property” (IP); the economic conditions of BTL production cultures; and the material conditions of BTL production work.