CLEARANCE TOOLKIT

Clearance Risk in Film & TV

Tactical Framework

In an ideal world, we’d have enough time to review each request thoroughly and understand the full context before making a judgement call. In reality, questions like “Will this graffiti invite an expensive complaint?” or “Is that prop-placed phone going to raise an alarm if it's thrown at the wall?” are usually asked only moments before they are due on camera (sometimes it’s in the moments afterwards).

We often don't have enough lead time to work through all the scenarios and figure out the best option. When time is tight and an issue needs to be resolved quickly, it's best to focus on just two things:

How prominent is the item?
How risky is the context?

These are your two fastest and most reliable levers to work with. If you imagine them as a 2 × 2 grid like this, you can assess the safest next step super quickly.

Clearance Risk Matrix

2 x 2 Matrix - Outlining Context/Prominence risk for Film and TV productions

High-Risk Context + High Prominence

This is the danger zone.

If the item will be clearly visible, is mentioned in dialogue, or important to the story somehow, then caution is needed. Where the context is also controversial, defamatory, violent, sexual, political, or commercially sensitive, then the risk is high and you need to pull the emergency brake.

Call a standby director to explain, let the producer know, and flag the problem in writing. Keep it short - just the facts - and try to give the quickest, safest backup plan. It's impossible in that moment to know what's happened to lead to that situation, so make sure you’re focused on a cleared outcome rather than blaming anyone.

High Risk Context + Low prominence

Still risky — but manageable.

The context may be sensitive, but the item itself isn’t clearly featured. If its background only and only seen fleetingly then you can decide if a viewer would realistically notice it? If the item is a loan from a brand or has been prop placed then that fleeting view is far more likely to be noticed by the team that will be watching your show to see how the agreed items will show up.

Your options might include:

Softening the shot or adjusting the adjusting framing

Reducing focus

Swapping it out quietly for a generic options or one you’ve purchased rather than prop placed

If it remains barely perceptible, risk drops significantly. But don’t ignore it — background elements in controversial scenes can still cause problems, particularly if freeze-framed and directors often decide to change the shots and focus on something uncleared.

Low Risk Context + High prominence

Usually commercial risk rather than legal risk.

The scene itself is safe, but the item is clearly visible. This happens a lot with Branded products, Logos on clothing or recognisable packaging. There's nothing bad happening and there are no laws being broken but it might cause some issue with delivery further down the line.

Depending on the delivery guidelines of the distributor - they may want all trademarks or any implication of endorsement to be agreed in writing. Without that there could be issues at the delivery stage and costly VFX to paint things out.

These situations are often fixable — but they shouldn’t be ignored just because the scene feels harmless.

The scene itself is safe, but the item is clearly visible. This happens a lot with branded products, logos on clothing, or recognizable packaging. There's nothing bad happening and there are no laws being broken, but it might cause some issues with delivery further down the line.

Depending on the delivery guidelines of the distributor, they may want all trademarks or any implication of endorsement to be agreed upon in writing. Without that, there could be issues at the delivery stage and costly VFX to paint things out.

These situations are often fixable — but they shouldn’t be ignored just because the scene feels harmless.

In Summary

When you’re under pressure, complexity paralyses. Using “Prominence” and “Context” cut through noise. They help you to -

Prioritise
Escalate appropriately
Defend your decisions later

Most clearance crises come from clearly identifiable material used in emotionally charged or commercially sensitive contexts

Focus there first. Everything else is triage.