Age verification
The documented check of legal age by identity card or passport that every serious production requires before the first shoot day.
Age verification is the documented check that every person taking part is of legal age. An official identity document is presented; identity card and passport are accepted. A driving licence is not accepted, because it proves a driving entitlement and is not an identity document.
How the check runs
The document is presented in the original, usually already at the casting, at the latest before the first take. The production compares photo and person, notes the date of birth and takes a copy or scan for the production file. As a rule an ID-Shot is added — a short recording with the document in hand.
No shoot starts without these papers. That is not harassment of applicants; it is the condition for the material being distributable at all: platforms, portals and distributors demand the proof for every person depicted before they accept content.
What happens to the copy
The copy has a tightly limited purpose: being able to prove legal age. Access sits only with the people who actually need that proof, usually production management and the office that administers contracts. It does not belong in circulation in the crew, in group chats or in the publication.
How long it is stored follows not from a single figure but from the purpose. As long as the production exercises usage rights and has to keep proofs towards distributors, there is a reason to retain it. After that the copy is to be deleted. Ask in writing before you sign who stores it, where, for how long and who gets to see it. A production that has no answer to that also has no order in its filing.
The riskier variant is a production without a check
Anyone who hesitates to show their ID usually thinks first of their own data risk. In practice the reverse case is more dangerous. A production that does not want to see age verification usually keeps no other proofs either: no documented consent, no clean contract, no provable agreement about where the material may appear. Your material then sits in a collection nobody keeps books on.
Then there is the distribution path. Without proofs no established outlet accepts the content. Such material is therefore exploited through channels that ask no questions, and that is exactly where you later have no contact. What else marks unreliable offers is in the article spotting unreliable offers.
What you can insist on
You may require that the copy is used only for proof, that it does not go to uninvolved third parties, and that you receive confirmation of deletion when the purpose ends. You may also require that ID data and the consent declaration are filed separately. What else applies at the casting is summarised on the safety page.
This text places the usual practice in context and is not a substitute for legal advice.
An open question about this?
Begriffe erklären das Was, nicht immer das Wie im eigenen Fall. Wenn du wissen willst, was das konkret für dich bedeutet, frag uns — daraus muss keine Bewerbung werden. Viele Antworten stehen schon bei den häufigen Fragen.