Filmmaker Agreement

watchmycreation is operated by Sajai Digital (sole proprietorship), Flat No. 1101, J Wing, Empire Square, Kalewadi Road, Near KWT Tower, MIDC Chinchwad, Pimpri Chinchwad, Pune, Maharashtra 411019, India. Contact support@watchmycreation.com or +91 98504 69469.

Your account

• You must be 18 or over, and you confirm that when you register.
• You give us accurate details — your name, a working email address and a phone number — and keep them up to date. Your email address is how you sign in, so keep access to it secure.
• You sign in with a six-digit one-time code sent only to your registered email address. There is no password. A mobile number is required when you register and is how we reach you about your account, but it is not verified and a sign-in code is never sent to it.
• We approve each account before its films can go on sale or it can be paid, and we may require further identity or bank verification before releasing a payout.
• You are responsible for what is done through your account.
• Registration is open to filmmakers resident in India, with an Indian bank account or UPI ID: sign-up accepts Indian mobile numbers, and payouts are made only to Indian accounts. A filmmaker who is not resident in India is accepted only by prior arrangement with us.
• We record your acceptance. When you tick to accept this agreement at registration, and again each time you submit a film, we store which document you accepted, its version, the date and time, and the IP address you accepted it from. That record is the evidence the agreement exists; our Privacy Policy says how long we keep it.

Your film stays yours

You keep ownership of your film and of everything in it. Nothing in this agreement transfers any copyright or other right in it to us. The licence below is non-exclusive: while your film is on sale here you remain free to license, sell, screen or publish it anywhere else.

The licence you give us

For each film you upload, you give us a non-exclusive licence to:

• store and copy the film, and transcode it into the formats needed to stream it;
• stream it to the people who buy a ticket, on the terms of that ticket;
• sell access to it — tickets — at the price you set, in our own name, and issue the invoice for each sale;
• use its title, description, poster, trailer, stills taken from the film, and your name and public profile, to show the film on watchmycreation and to promote it, including in search results, link previews and our social media accounts.

How long it lasts. The licence to sell tickets, and to show and promote the film, ends when the film comes off sale for good. The licence to store, transcode and stream it does not end then: it continues for as long as we need it to honour tickets already sold, until each of those tickets’ access windows has closed, and the licence to store it continues until we delete the file. Your original file. We keep the file you upload, privately, as a backup to re-encode from, until the film is deleted; if we take a film down, we keep its original for 180 days afterwards as the record of what was removed, and longer if a court or a government agency requires it. Drafts. A film you start in your studio but do not submit, and do not edit for 7 days, is deleted automatically, with any video and poster uploaded to it; we email you 2 days before, and editing, uploading or submitting restarts the count. We may still keep the records of what was sold, and the invoices, for as long as the law requires, and promotion published before then does not have to be withdrawn.

Your promises about the rights

For every film you upload, you promise that:

• you own the film, or hold a licence from everyone who does that lets you grant the licence above;
• you hold the rights to everything in it — script, music, footage, artwork, performances and trademarks — for streaming and sale online;
• everyone identifiable in it agreed to appear, and a parent or guardian agreed for anyone under 18;
• it follows the content rules in our Terms and Conditions and breaks no law in India;
• it carries any warning or disclaimer the law requires of it; and
• what you tell us about it — its title, description, age rating and content warnings — is accurate.

Indemnity

If a claim is made against us because your film infringes someone’s rights or breaks the law, or because you broke this agreement, you agree to compensate us for the loss, damages and reasonable legal costs it causes us, and to help us respond to it. We will tell you promptly about any such claim.

Review, decline and takedown

• Every film is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale, ordinarily within 24 to 36 hours of submission. No automated or artificial-intelligence system judges what your film contains; the automated checks that run — encoding, duration, playback protection, whether a poster is really an image — look at the file. We may decline a film; when we do, we tell you why, and you can change it and submit it again.
• Once you submit a film, its price, rating and content warnings are fixed while we review it and after we approve it, except as described under “Price and your share”. We may replace a poster or trailer on a film that is on sale, to correct it, and we record that we did.
• We may take a film off sale at any time — on a complaint, on a court or government order, or if it breaks this agreement, our Terms or the law — and we tell you why.
• When we take a film down on a complaint or an order, we normally stop playback at once and refund every ticket still within its access window or not yet started; each of those refunds is reversed from your earnings. We refund the unexpired part of that film’s listing fee pro rata, as our Cancellation and Refunds policy says, unless we took it down because you broke this agreement, when we may withhold that refund.
• Listed or unlisted, and you choose. At upload you say whether the film goes in our public catalogue or is reachable only by its link. Unlisted leaves it out of the catalogue, out of our sitemap and out of your public profile, and asks search engines not to index its page — but the page itself, the link preview, the checkout and the player are unchanged, and anyone you send the link to can buy a ticket and watch. It is a choice about being FOUND, not about who may watch.
• You can take your own film off sale at any time, from your studio. It stops selling at once. Every viewer who bought a ticket and has not finished watching is refunded automatically, without having to ask, and those refunds are set off against your earnings exactly as any other refund is. Your listing fee is not refunded — you ended the period, not us. The studio tells you how many tickets will be refunded, and how much, before you confirm.
• If we withdraw a film for any other reason — because your account is blocked, or because the film breaks this agreement, our Terms or the law — tickets already sold for it can no longer be played while it is withdrawn, and a viewer who had not had a fair chance to watch it is refunded under that policy.
• Coming off sale is not always a withdrawal. When a film’s listing has lapsed, or a change in our rates means its price no longer covers the cost of a sale, the film stops selling but is not withdrawn: tickets already sold for it stay playable for their full access window.

Price and your share

• You set each film’s ticket price, within the range your studio shows for it. The lowest price is set so that a ticket covers the costs of selling and streaming it; the highest is set by us.
• Ticket prices include GST, which we remit. From each ticket we deduct the GST, the payment gateway’s charge, the cost of streaming the film (charged by the minute of runtime) and a flat platform fee. The rest is your share.
• Your studio shows the exact split for any price before you set it. Our Pricing page works an example through at the rates in force today, and our earnings calculator does it for any price and runtime.
• The split of each ticket is fixed when it is sold. We may change our rates; a change applies to tickets sold after it, never to one already sold. We give you 30 days notice, by email, before a change that reduces your share takes effect.
• If a change in our rates means a film’s price no longer covers the cost of a sale, the film is taken off sale until you set a new price in your studio. A ticket already paid for is still honoured, and we absorb the difference, not you.
• Listing a film carries a listing fee, which depends on its runtime and keeps it on sale for 90 days. The schedule is on our Pricing page.

Refunds and your earnings

When a ticket for your film is refunded, your share of it is reversed. The original sale is not edited: a negative entry is added to your earnings instead, so what you are owed is always your sales less your refunds. A partial refund reverses the matching part of your share. If a refund comes after that sale has already been paid out to you, the reversal is deducted from what you are paid next.

Payouts

• Before you can be paid, your account must be approved and your profile must have your PAN and either a UPI ID or a bank account with its IFSC. We do not verify your PAN against government records; it is a declaration you make to us.
• When earnings become payable. A sale becomes available to withdraw 7 days after it is made. Refunds are deducted as soon as they happen.
• How to ask. Request a payout from the Payouts page of your studio. You can make one request every 7 days, and each request takes everything available at that moment.
• When you are paid. We pay a requested payout to your UPI ID or bank account within 4 working days of the request. We may also pay out earnings you have not requested, to the same details, in a periodic payout run.
• Tax deducted at source. We do not currently deduct TDS from payouts: each payout is paid in full. If the law comes to require it, we will tell you before we start, deduct it only from payouts made after that at the rate the law sets, pay it to the government against your PAN and issue you the certificates. It would come out of what we pay you, never out of the ticket price.
• Your statement. Your studio shows, for every payout, what was earned, what was withheld and what was paid. Please raise a query on a statement within 30 days of it.
• We may hold back a reserve of up to 10% of your earnings for 90 days against chargebacks, refunds and claims, and release it at the end of that period less anything properly deducted. This is a right we may exercise, film by film, where the risk warrants it — not something deducted automatically from every payout.
• We may withhold a payout while we are investigating a complaint about one of your films, where a court or agency has directed us to, where your identity or bank details are unverified, or where the law requires it.
• If your refunds outweigh your available sales, nothing is paid until later sales cover them.

Tax

You are responsible for declaring and paying income tax on what we pay you. We do not currently deduct TDS from your payouts; if that changes, it will be as described above. If you are registered for GST, add your GSTIN to your profile.

Each payout is documented by an invoice for your licence fee, issued when the payout is paid and shown in your studio. If your profile carries a GSTIN, it is a tax invoice from you to us, which we issue on your behalf and number in your own series, and the amount paid includes the GST charged on it. If not, it is a self-invoice we issue under reverse charge: your payout is the taxable value, and the GST on it is paid by us under reverse charge, on top of your payout and not taken out of it. Either way you need a postal address and state on your profile to request a payout.

Foreign currency and cross-border sales

A viewer outside India is charged in US dollars. Every film has a price in US dollars, from US$2 upwards, as well as its price in Indian Rupees. A viewer we detect as buying from outside India is shown the dollar price and charged it, by card; a viewer in India is charged the price in Indian Rupees. Which applies is decided by us, from where the purchase is made, and is shown before you pay. A ticket sold in US dollars to a viewer outside India is an export of services and carries no Indian GST. A payment or refund that involves a currency conversion is settled strictly at the amount actually realised after conversion and after any gateway or bank charge: the rate is fixed by the payment gateway, the card network and their settlement bank at the moment each transaction is processed, and we neither fix nor guarantee it. Your own bank may also charge you for a payment in a foreign currency; that is between you and your bank. Every film you sell carries a price in US dollars as well as its price in rupees. It starts at the lowest the studio allows, which is the price your film is given if you do not choose one, and you may set it higher at any time, without the film going back for review. If we raise that lowest price later, a film priced under it is sold at the new lowest price until you change it. Deductions and taxes will apply at actual bank conversion rates and per applicable international laws, and your net payout will be settled in your bank account in INR. This clause sets out how such a sale is settled.

• No fixed rate. The conversion rate is the one the gateway, the card network and their settlement bank apply when the transaction is processed. We do not fix it, guarantee it, or make good a movement in it.
• Your share is worked out on what is actually realised. For a sale that involves a conversion, the starting figure is not the price you set but the rupee amount that reaches our account after conversion and after any gateway, network or bank charge. Our fee, the streaming cost and any tax withheld are then applied to that realised amount.
• Your statement shows both. It names the gross amount charged to the viewer, the amount realised in rupees, and the deductions between them.
• A refund follows the same rule. We refund what the gateway actually returns, which may differ in rupee terms from what was realised, because rates move between a sale and its refund. Any difference, and the original conversion cost, fall on the sale rather than on us.

Reviews of your film

A viewer who has finished your film may publish a star rating and a written review of it. Reviews are permanent and public, and an average appears on the film’s page once it has 5 of them. You may reply to a review, and you may report one that breaks the content rules in our Terms and Conditions — a review that breaks them is hidden. You cannot have a review removed for being unfavourable, and we will not remove one on request. A review left on a ticket we refund in full is hidden automatically.

What we promise, and what we do not

We will host and stream your film with reasonable care and skill, review it within the time stated above, apply the access controls described here and on our Terms and Conditions, account to you accurately, and pay you on time. We do not promise that the service will be uninterrupted or free of error, that your film will sell any tickets, or that it cannot be recorded. We do not use digital rights management and we cannot stop someone recording their own screen; if that is unacceptable for your film, please do not list it.

Our total liability to you under this agreement, in any twelve-month period, is limited to the greater of the platform fees we retained from your ticket sales in that period and the listing fees you paid in it. We are not liable for loss of profit, revenue, opportunity, goodwill or data. Nothing here limits liability for fraud, or any liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

Confidentiality

Listing a film shows each of us something the other would not otherwise share: our rates and how the service is built, and your unreleased film and its commercial terms.

• You keep confidential what you learn through your account and that is not already public — our rates beyond what is published, how the service is built and protected, how a film is reviewed, and the terms of any other filmmaker’s listing.
• We keep confidential what you tell us and that is not already public — your film before it is published, and the fact that you submitted it if it is withdrawn or declined; your identity, PAN, GSTIN and bank details; and your earnings, sales figures and payout history.
• Neither of us has to keep confidential something already lawfully known without a duty of confidence, something that becomes public through no fault of ours, or something a court, regulator or tax authority requires us to disclose — in which case we tell the other first where the law allows, and disclose only what is required.
• This lasts for 3 years after this agreement ends; an unreleased film stays confidential for as long as it is unreleased. Either of us may ask a court to stop a breach of this clause, because a leak is not a thing a later payment can undo.

This clause does not change what our Privacy Policy says about personal data, or what our Intellectual Property Policy says about passing your contact details to someone who complains that your film infringes their rights.

Events beyond our control

We host and stream through infrastructure that may be located anywhere in the world, and we depend on our hosting provider, our payment gateway and the wider internet to run the service. Neither of us is liable for a delay or failure caused by something beyond our reasonable control — an outage at a provider we rely on; a natural disaster, fire or flood; war, terrorism or civil unrest; a government act, order or restriction; or a strike at a third party. Where such an event stops us reviewing, publishing, streaming or paying out, the time limits in this agreement are extended for as long as it lasts and we tell you what is affected as soon as we reasonably can. Where it continues for more than 30 days and stops either of us performing, either of us may end this agreement by telling the other. None of this excuses a payment that was already due before the event began.

Leaving, suspension and blocking

• You may leave at any time. Take a film off sale from your studio, or write to support@watchmycreation.com to close your account. A listing fee is not refunded because you withdrew a film.
• Either of us may end this agreement on 30 days written notice. Ending it does not cut short a listing period you have already paid for, unless we end it because you broke this agreement. The clauses on the rights you promise, your indemnity, confidentiality, liability, tax and what happens to tickets already sold survive it.
• We may block your account if you break this agreement, our Terms or the law, or if a court or government authority requires it. Blocking signs you out at once and takes all your films off sale, and you cannot sign in while blocked. We tell you by email.
• When a film comes off sale because you left or were blocked, tickets already sold for it can no longer be played, and a viewer who had not had a fair chance to watch it is refunded under our Cancellation and Refunds policy. Each such refund is reversed from your earnings.
• What you have earned stays yours. Leaving or being blocked does not cancel earnings: they stay on record, refunds are deducted from them, and any balance we owe you is paid to the payout details on file, subject to the same PAN requirement.

Changes to this agreement

We may change this agreement. We publish the new version on this page with a new “Last updated” date, and email registered filmmakers before a change that materially affects them takes effect. Our rates change as described under “Price and your share”.

Notices, law and disputes

We write to you at the email address on your account. You can write to us at support@watchmycreation.com, or with a legal notice at legal@watchmycreation.com. This agreement is governed by the laws of India, and the courts at Pune, Maharashtra have exclusive jurisdiction.