Video contracts in 2026: clauses that protect you

A video contract earns its keep in six clauses: who owns the copyright, what the client may do with the footage, whether raw files transfer, how many revisions are included, what happens if a shoot is cancelled, and how much you collect up front. In 2026 there is a seventh: whether AI tools touched the work.

A written contract is now the baseline

Demand for video work is not the problem. Getting paid cleanly and keeping what you make is. The contract is what handles both, and in some places it is also required by law.

New York State's freelance law took effect on 28 August 2024. According to a law firm summary of the statute, a written contract is required when the work is worth $800 or more, alone or added to other jobs for the same client over 120 days. The client has to keep a copy for six years, and not providing one carries a $250 civil penalty. If you work for New York clients, a missing contract can cost them. Our guide to written-contract laws covers the other places that have similar rules.

It matters because late pay is common. In Remote's 2025 Contractor Management Report, 85% of freelancers said their invoices are paid late at least some of the time. The clauses below are how you keep "some of the time" from becoming your problem. This is general information, not legal advice, and rules differ by country and state.

Who owns the video by default

Under US law, you do, unless you sign it away. The statute says copyright in a work "vests initially in the author or authors of the work" (17 U.S.C. 201(a)). You shot it and edited it. The client does not get copyright just because they paid the invoice.

Work made for hire is narrower than most people think. For a commissioned piece by an independent contractor, both conditions have to be true: the parties "expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them" that it is a work made for hire, and the work falls into one of nine listed categories (17 U.S.C. 101). One of the nine is a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, so a video can qualify. An email that says "obviously we own it" cannot.

That is the single most useful thing a video contract does. It forces the ownership question onto paper. If you say nothing, you keep the copyright, and the client is paying for footage they may not fully own, which is a bad surprise the first time they reuse it in a new campaign. If you want to keep ownership and grant a licence, say so. If you are selling the copyright, price it as the asset transfer it is.

Usage rights: what the client can actually do

Ownership is a yes or no. A licence is where the money is. A good one sets four limits:

• Media: organic social only, or paid ads, broadcast, out-of-home, in-product.
• Territory: one country, a region, or worldwide.
• Duration: six months, twelve months, or perpetual.
• Exclusivity: whether you can license similar footage to anyone else.

A 30-second brand film licensed for organic social, one market and 12 months is a different product from the same file licensed for all paid media, worldwide, forever. If your contract only says "final video," you have given away the second at the price of the first. Spell out the grant and you also create an honest upsell: the client who wants to run the cut as a paid ad next year extends the licence instead of assuming it was always theirs.

Raw footage and the final cut

Treat these as two assets, because they are. The deliverable is the graded, exported video. The raw material is the camera originals, the project file, the layers and the colour work. Most freelancers deliver the first and keep the second unless the client buys it.

Say that in writing, because clients often read "we paid for the video" as "we get the project files." Handing over raw footage lets the client, or the next editor, re-cut your work forever, and it exposes your unused takes. If a client wants the originals, that is a priced line item. A clean clause reads like this: you deliver the final export in the agreed formats; camera originals and project files stay yours and may be licensed separately.

Revision limits that stop scope creep

Open-ended revisions turn a profitable edit into a loss. Fix it with a number and a definition. Include two or three rounds, and define a round as one consolidated set of feedback sent once, not a trickle of notes over three weeks. Then name the overage rate so a fourth round has a price instead of an argument.

The word that prevents the fight is "consolidated." Ten emails with ten small tweaks count as one round if they arrive together, and as several if the client keeps reopening a version you already closed. Clients rarely object to a cap that is written up front. They object to learning about it after they have used it.

Kill fees for cancelled shoots

Video work has a risk that desk work does not: you can lose the job the day before the shoot, after you have booked gear, talent and a location. A kill fee covers that. One production company defines it as "a cancellation fee charged by a production company when a project is canceled on short notice".

The same article puts a cancellation within a week of the shoot at 50 to 75% of the project cost, and one inside 24 to 48 hours at 75 to 100%. Add a line that makes non-refundable third-party costs (equipment rental, location fees, permits, talent day rates) the client's responsibility whatever happens. A kill fee is not a penalty. It is the difference between a cancelled shoot being a shrug and a hole in your month. The guide to kill fees and cancellation clauses has sample wording.

An AI-tool disclosure line

This one is new because AI changes the ownership maths. The US Copyright Office published its "Copyright and Artificial Intelligence" report in parts: Part 1 on digital replicas (31 July 2024), Part 2 on copyrightability (29 January 2025) and Part 3 on training (9 May 2025), all listed on its AI page. In Part 2, the Office concluded that outputs of generative AI can be protected "only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements," and that this does not extend to the mere provision of prompts.

Using AI to assist a human-made edit does not bar protection. Handing the creative decisions to a tool is different. Two practical points follow. If you use generative AI for part of a deliverable (a generated B-roll clip, an AI voiceover), that part may not be protectable, which limits what you can honestly promise to assign. And many clients now have rules about AI in brand content. A short clause stating which parts, if any, used AI tools, and confirming you hold the rights to what you made, protects both sides. It is cheaper to disclose up front than to renegotiate after the client's legal team asks.

Deposits and the payment schedule

Collect money before you shoot. Stripe's guide to invoicing film work says a standard deposit is 30% to 50% of the total project cost, and the kill fee article above notes a non-refundable deposit of roughly 25% to 50%. Half up front is common, with the balance due on delivery or at an agreed milestone.

A deposit does two jobs. It filters out clients who were never going to pay, and it funds the out-of-pocket costs you carry before you hand over a frame. Tie the schedule to milestones: deposit on signing, a second payment at the end of the shoot or on first-cut delivery, and the final payment before you release the high-resolution export. The post on collecting a deposit shows how to ask for it.

How Delivvo gets the contract signed and the deposit paid before you shoot

Delivvo puts the quote, the contract and the deposit invoice behind one link, so the clauses above are agreed before you press record. The contract text is a template you edit, and you should check it with a lawyer.

1. Build the quote from packages and add-ons: the shoot day, the edit, an extra revision round, a licence extension. Each add-on has its own price, which makes the upsell visible.
2. Send the contract from the same link. Put your usage-rights, raw-footage and revision clauses in. The client signs with a typed or drawn signature, and you get a signing record with a SHA-256 hash, the IP address, the device and an archived PDF.
3. Collect the deposit on the same page. On the Pro plan, the one-page close lets the client pick a package, sign and pay in one visit, and Delivvo creates the client, project, contract, invoice and payment schedule.
4. Split the rest. A payment schedule holds up to 12 payments, so deposit, first cut and final balance each get a date.
5. Review the cut in the client portal. Clients leave approvals and messages there, so feedback arrives in one place, which makes the "consolidated round" rule easy to enforce.
6. Deliver big files. Files up to 50 GB on Pro and above upload as resumable transfers, so a full-resolution export does not need a separate file-sharing service.

If you also cut the footage yourself, Cutroom is Delivvo's AI video editor. It runs on your own computer, the client's files stay on your machine, and it costs $99 once with no subscription. Clients pay through your own gateway and Delivvo takes 0%. The contracts and e-signatures page shows the signing step.

Read more about contracts and e-signatures, or start with the CRM and client portal.

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