Rights clearance for film · an agent fleet · Parallel track

Every frame is a liability until someone clears it. We clear it.

Clearcut watches your cut, flags every trademark, artwork, face, sign and music cue, researches who owns it, drafts the paperwork and hands your attorney an E&O-ready package — in minutes, not weeks.

Open the consoleWatch the trailer2 min 29 s · a film being cleared
Kitchen scene from the salted short film with a Coca-Cola can Living room scene with a framed Starry Night Television showing a recognisable actor Piccadilly Circus street with brand signage
TrademarkCoca-Cola
00:00:10:00
00:10The Coca-Cola Company · attorney review
SC. 00 · TRAILER · our own 75-second short, salted with clearance landmines at known timecodes — real detections, real Parallel research, real dossiers. Nothing staged.
SC. 01The problem00:00:00:00

“Distributors won't touch a film without E&O insurance. Carriers won't bind a policy until every clearance issue on screen is resolved.”

No E&O
No distribution deal.Errors-and-omissions cover is a hard gate, not a nice-to-have.
Turnaround
Weeks.A clearance house reads the script and the cut by hand.
Cost
Thousands of dollars per project.Before a single licence fee is paid.
The catch
Every recommendation must be implemented before the policy binds.The report is where the work starts, not where it ends.
SC. 02How it works · one element, one minute00:00:10:00

What happened at 00:10 in our film, exactly as the fleet logged it.

Four agents on Google's Agent Builder. Gemini for perception. Parallel for research. Rulers made of ffmpeg keeping the model honest. One human holding the pen.

00:10
Frame Scout · Gemini
⚑ TRADEMARK — "Coca-Cola"

The visual pass names the element and its window; the audio pass segments music cues with silencedetect windows Gemini labels.

00:11
Rights Sleuth · Parallel
→ Parallel Search · "Coca-Cola trademark owner film clearance product placement"

Every flag becomes a research objective, at runtime, through Parallel's Search API or its MCP server.

00:13
Rights Sleuth · dossier
← 5 sources · The Coca-Cola Company · ATTORNEY REVIEW

Gemini synthesises the evidence into a dossier and says "unverified" when it is thin. Paper Chase drafts the request; a human sends it.

01:15
Docket Clerk · ADK fleet
report assembled · 7 rows · 12 E&O procedures open

Scene-by-scene report, PRO-style cue sheet, the twelve standard procedures — one PDF for the attorney of record.

Agents flag, research, draft and recommend. They never clear. The only "Cleared" button belongs to the attorney of record — an invariant in the code, not a promise in a README.
SC. 02bThe fleet · ambientagents · services · the human gate
solid = live at runtime in this build (Gemini · Parallel Search · ffmpeg rulers) · dotted = roadmap (Parallel Extract / Task / Monitor · Firestore docket)See it driven by the real run →
SC. 03Exhibit A · what the attorney receives00:00:40:00
Clearance dossier · item_04THE ERRAND · 00:40–00:50 · location / signage

Piccadilly Circus commercial signs

researched via Parallel Search · synthesised by Gemini · 5 sources · confidence high
Rights holder
Landsec (Land Securities) and Ocean Outdoor UK (site operator); individual ad content belongs to the respective trademark owners.
Status
Active commercial digital advertising location; third-party brand logos and display content are protected by trademark and copyright.
Recommendation
Attorney review
Contact / process
Contact Ocean Outdoor UK (operator on behalf of Landsec) for location/display clearance, and the individual brand trademark owners for specific advertisement content.
Summary
Piccadilly Lights are owned by Landsec and operated by Ocean Outdoor UK. Prominent display of the signs and third-party logos requires clearance from Ocean Outdoor/Landsec and the individual brand rights holders, or legal review to determine fair use / incidental inclusion.
Sources
daktronics.com/…/piccadilly-lightslondon.gov.uk/…/piccadilly-circus-advertising-2iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30028028marketingdive.com/…/piccadilly-circus-billboard
Paper Chase · drafted request · not sent
To: Landsec / Ocean Outdoor UK — licensing / legal contact (address to be verified)
Clearance Request: THE ERRAND — Piccadilly Circus Signage
Dear Licensing Team, I am a clearance coordinator for A. Filmmaker Productions, currently finalizing rights for our short film, THE ERRAND. We are seeking permission to feature the digital commercial signage located at Piccadilly Circus in our film. The footage appears for 10 seconds (00:40–00:50) and displays the site's environment and various brand advertisements. We are requesting a worldwide, in-perpetuity license covering all media, including festival, streaming, and broadcast distribution. Could you please confirm if Ocean Outdoor manages the necessary clearance for this location and the display content, or if we must contact individual trademark owners separately? Please provide your current fee schedule and an estimate of the typical turnaround time for such an agreement. Sincerely, Clearance Department, A. Filmmaker Productions, [contact address to be verified]
Attorney of record
Date · sign-off closes E&O procedures 2, 5, 12

The draft was generated from the dossier; the sanitizer replaced an address the model invented with "[contact address to be verified]". A human sends it. The dossier's recommendation is the fleet's; the signature is not.

SC. 04Who it's forscript → cut → attorney → insurer

Clearance touches everyone between the script and the insurer.

Indie producer
a screenplay, then a cut
Script clearance before you shoot; cut clearance after; one E&O package.
Editor · post supervisor
an EDL or FCPXML
Flags mapped to clips and reels, a marker list for the timeline, re-scan of only what changed.
Clearance coordinator
ten projects at once
Fan-out research, drafted requests, one docket per project.
Attorney of record
the pen
Evidence per flag, the only "Cleared" button, a sign-off page that closes the twelve procedures.
AI filmmaker
a generated film
The same flags — invented brands, synthetic likenesses, reproduced artwork; provenance and disclosure on the roadmap.
Broker · insurer
a submission to bind
A standard package where every recommendation shows implemented or not.
SC. 05Proof · salted films, ground truth, published scoresrun_evals.py

We built films with landmines at known timecodes, then let the fleet find them.

Every number below is reproducible from the repository — the ground-truth JSON sits beside each film.

FilmDifficultyPlantedDetectedCues ±3 sSpurious
the_errandbaseline salted film552 / 20
backlotsmall + occluded items441 / 11 · our own fake masthead
controlmulti-item frame · no music (false-positive control)330 / 00
syntheticsynthetic-style frames (AI-film mode)332 / 20
Total4 films · precision 0.938 · 0 false positives in negative zones15155 / 51

Script mode found 19 / 19 salted entities in the sample screenplay. Full benchmark → · Source on GitLab →

SC. 06Pricing · indicativethe hackathon build runs on free tiers

Indie

PER PROJECT · PRICED BY RUNTIME
  • script mode + cut mode
  • dossiers with sources
  • drafted requests
  • E&O package PDF
Try the console

Studio · post house

PER SEAT · COORDINATORS, EDITORS, COUNSEL
  • everything in Indie
  • EDL / FCPXML import + cut-diff
  • attorney role with server-side sign-off
  • audit trail for every agent action
Talk to us

Insurer channel

PARTNER · BROKERS AND CARRIERS
  • standardised submission package
  • implemented-or-not per recommendation
  • producer referrals
Partner with us
SC. 07Questions
Is this legal advice?

No. Clearcut flags, researches, drafts and recommends. Clearance decisions are made and signed by your attorney of record — the product is built so that no agent, tool or endpoint can mark anything Cleared.

Does it work on AI-generated films?

Yes. Detection watches pixels and audio, not provenance. Generated films carry extra risk — invented brands, synthetic likenesses of real people, reproduced characters and artwork — and those land as the same flag types. Provenance (C2PA) and platform disclosure checklists are on the roadmap.

What happens to my footage?

In the hackathon build, uploaded clips are processed and deleted after the run; only the docket (flags, dossiers, report) is kept. Projects are remembered per browser. Accounts with roles are the next step.

How do you know it works?

We salt our own test films with known clearance landmines and publish precision, recall and cue accuracy per film. The one "spurious" flag on the current set is a fake magazine masthead we drew ourselves — reported anyway.

Can other agents use it?

Yes. Clearcut runs as an MCP server (projects, docket, detect, research, draft, report, cue sheet — deliberately no "mark cleared"), and the Rights Sleuth consumes Parallel's MCP server for research. Any MCP-aware host can call the clearance department.

What is it built on?

Gemini for perception and synthesis, Google Cloud Agent Builder (ADK) for the fleet, Parallel Search API and MCP for research at runtime, ffmpeg for the rulers. Apache-2.0 on GitLab.