Wondering if anyone here knows of a way/place to register the creative work one does as an editor, in a similar way to screenwriters being able to register their work at WGA to prove that, as of a certain date, they were the sole writer of that piece of work.
Say you created a documentary film out of a pile of footage a client handed you with no script or guidelines whatsoever as to what the film should be. You sort through a mountain of footage, conceive a through line, and craft a great film. Then, after you send the finished piece, and the FCP project file, to the client -- they start tinkering around and making little changes. That's their right. They own the film.
But what happens when they decide to give themselves co-editing credit after changing only 5-10% of the film? That's why I'm wondering if there's a place where editors can register their work to show that as of a given date, the edited version they created was in fact created solely by that editor. So in the future, no one else can credibly claim that they are entitled to a credit for work they didn't do.
I ask not as a matter of copyright ownership. The client clearly owns the copyright. It's more about proper credit in the eyes of the film industry.