Love it or hate it, you'll be bosom buddies with your clearance coordinator in no time
As a script coordinator, one of your primary duties will involve discussions with your clearance department about names and products featured in a script. The results of these conversations can have far-reaching implications that result in new locations, new drafts, and unexpected OT for the art department. Knowing what to expect from clearance, and what's likely to clear or not clear, can keep you a step ahead of the game.
Clearance Defined
Clearance is a separate department and, in scripted television, often a 3rd party company or studio department, whose job is to identify names or intellectual property in a script that might accidentally defame or implicate someone or something. When this happens, it can cause legal blowback on the studio or network after a script is shot and aired.
In simpler terms: clearance warns you when a script's naming of a person or use of a product could get the show sued. A cleared reference means the show gets the green light to use the name or product, while a not cleared reference needs to be changed. For example: let's say an episode of a show involves a character driving their car when the steering wheel falls off and they die in a fiery wreck. This portrays Tesla in a bad light ("this company's products might kill you") and it's not unreasonable to see how Tesla might pursue legal intervention against this message. Similarly, if you grew up in El Paso and had a gym teacher named Mr. White-Scott, and then your script involves a cannibal serial killer in El Paso named Mr. White-Scott, it could be argued you're defaming your old instructor.
This, by the way, is why the twee practice of writers naming characters after their friends, family, and exes, is a nightmare for script coordinators: they never clear and ultimately make more work for everyone involved.
Alternatively, names that are just a first name almost always clear on their own, but may require additional scrutiny if they're ever given a last name.
What Clearance Doesn't Do
Like Liam Neeson, clearance has a particular set of skills: to determine whether the names and uses of objects in the script will get the studio in hot water. Other duties don't include:
Ensuring a character's name isn't a repeat from another episode
Same for the episode title
Proofreading
Analyzing story elements/plots that might have been used in other episodes/shows/films
In theory, those fall under the jurisdiction of the writer, but will likely be delegated to you, my dear script coordinator.
The Basics of Clearance
As discussed above, clearance's job is to flag material in a script that generates legal liability for a show. While clearance can't guarantee that everything cleared is iron-clad against a lawsuit (and anyone can sue for anything), clearance works on some basic principles to determine whether something clears.
For names (or people or things), there are two guiding rules:
There are 0 people or products that share that name in a given place or field, or
There are more than 3 people or products that share that name in a given place or field.
The line of thinking here is that if something doesn't exist with the same name, it can't be defamed, natch. Or, if there are more than three of someone or something with identical names, it's too difficult for any one of them to make the case that they were the ones targeted or libeled; feel free to set your corrupt mayor in the city of Clinton, for example, and not the city of Dallas.
For products, the rule is: the product can't show anyone being injured or killed by a product being used in its normal, intended use. You can't show someone getting poisoned when drinking from a soda bearing the Coca Cola trademark, but a case of Diet Coke can be dropped from a plane and shatter a family's roof. That being said, I'm sure clearance suggested getting Coke's approval for this use of their product to avoid any issues.
On-Screen Clearance
Images on-screen may also be subject to copyright, like Mike Tyson's tattoo, and also require clearance.
This is outside your jurisdiction, however - the art department should have its own line of communication with clearance so that logos, props, and other on-screen material they create for the show is cleared. (Free tip: The props department should avoid using people's real social security cards when possible.) When it comes to copy that shows up on-screen - like a webpage a letter - the writers' room is usually responsible for that. And by writers' room, that means the writers' assistant, script coordinator, or writers' PA. The studio is under no obligation to pay you extra for this work (and also owns the IP of what you write), but some showrunners will compensate their support staff for the extra burden this creates.
Clearance Coordinators
Your clearance coordinator is a human being (like you!) and is attempting to do a good job with plenty of complex, moving parts.
If a name doesn't clear, your coordinator will likely include a few cleared alternatives ("alts") that the writer can choose from at their discretion. Writers never do, though. They'll complain that the names clearance gave you are too New Hampshire-ish when the script is clearly located in Boston or that they once knew a Caitlyn and Caitlyn didn't really talk or sound like this character does. Which means you'll need to bring alts from the writer back to your clearance coordinator. This is standard practice, and you'll need to list the alts in order of favorite to least favorite. Your coordinator will try to clear names in that order, and once they clear a name, they will stop. Which makes sense: of the remaining names on the list you provided them, this was the most favored one. But again, your writer or showrunner will make this difficult for you and ask you to get a few of the other ones cleared. You know, so they have something to choose from and don't feel backed into a corner.
Which is fine, but every clearance report requires time, and by extension, money. If you suspect your writer will want three cleared alts to choose from, confirm that that's the case with the showrunner and express that to your clearance coordinator when they start going down the list.
Communication is Key
What many upper-level writers forget is that clearance reports take time to generate. Every time they want a few more alts cleared ("I think I like this other name better" belongs on your SC bingo card), it'll either take a rush order (which costs the show extra) or 24-48 hours for the next clearance report to come in, where there will be more higher-priority fires eating up their attention. It may take a few episodes for you to get in the groove of your showrunner's style, but the more you can communicate with your writers what they really want (multiple names to choose from), and not just what they think they want (a name cleared as quickly as possible so they can move on from this episode and collect their script fee), the better place you and your clearance coordinator will be.
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