The E&O checklist your distributor will send you

Errors and omissions insurance is the last quality gate on a film, and it is where every clearance decision made in production comes back for review. Carriers are consistent about what they want.

The standard application asks for

• Chain of title — copyright registration, option and purchase agreements, writer agreements, and a title report.
• A title clearance report confirming your title is not confusingly similar to an existing property.
• Script clearance report identifying every real name, business, product, address, and phone number in the script.
• Releases for identifiable on-camera subjects, locations, artwork, and third-party materials.
• Music licenses — synchronization and master use for every cue, plus composer agreements and a cue sheet.
• A fair use opinion letter for unlicensed archival, from counsel.

How to make it painless

Assign one person to own the clearance binder from day one of prep and require the editor to log every third-party asset at the moment it enters the timeline. Films that do this get bound in days. Films that do not spend a month reconstructing provenance for footage nobody remembers sourcing.