Instant Moviemaking

Making Movie Music

The emotional landscape of a film is frequently created by music. Adding music to your instant movie makes it seem “smoother” and give your story a sense of forward motion. Music is such a ubiquitous part of movies that you almost don’t notice it unless it’s absent.

Personally, I think you should create your own music track if you really want to call yourself an instant moviemaker, but I wouldn’t blame anyone for resorting to library music. Producing music can be just as time-consuming as producing film, so you might want to focus on your strengths. On the other hand, if you create your own music, you completely eliminate many copyright headaches.

Even if you’re not a musician, there are plenty of great software packages that can help you create a compelling music bed that helps propel your movie. And if you are a musician, you still might want to take advantage of a music creation program, just to avoid the complexities of creating a studio recording. When you create your music track entirely on the computer, it’s easier to get a seamless track without extraneous noise and other distracting problems.

0

0

Tip - Music Copyrights in Movies

Strange but True -- You Can’t Sing “Happy Birthday” in Your Movie.

No matter what you wish when you blow out the candles, you can’t sing “Happy Birthday” in your film without permission. It’s hard to believe, but the song “Happy Birthday” is protected under copyright law. A pair of schoolteachers named Mildred Hill and Patty Hill wrote the song around 1898 and copyrighted it in 1935. Due to several changes in U.S. Copyright law since then, the song is protected until the year 2030. You may have noticed that many restaurant chains that offer to celebrate a customer’s birthday don’t send the staff out to sing “Happy Birthday.” They sing a different tune they’ve made up to avoid paying the license fee. Warner Chappell, the current publisher of the song says that “Happy Birthday” earns over $2 million dollars per year to this day. That’s only one of the many odd features of the copyright law; tunes you’d think are free to everyone are covered under copyright. Can you still sing “Happy Birthday” to your family and friends? Yes, you can; private renditions are fine. Can you sing “Happy Birthday” in your film? Sorry, you’ll have to ask Santa to bring you a different song for Christmas.

0

0

Other People’s Copyrights

Here's another excerpt from my forthcoming book, Instant Movie Making. If you're also an instant movie maker, I'd be happy to hear about your experiences, too!

Copyright law is a two edged sword for the instant moviemaker. One edge can protect you from having other people steal your work. The other edge (the one that’s likely to hurt you) exposes you to expensive lawsuits if you infringe on other people’s work, even by accident.

Ignorance is no excuse if you get sued for copyright infringement. Pleas of poverty won’t help either. If you’ve read any of the recent headlines about the multi-billion-dollar lawsuits over Internet music downloads, you may have an inkling of how serious copyright holders can be.

Several types of copyright infringement are well-known to practically everyone:

· You can’t copy a whole CD or movie and sell it.

· You can’t put scenes from someone else’s film or video into yours without permission.

· You can’t make a movie from the script of an existing movie without permission.

But many film and video makers are not aware that other, seemingly innocent activities can also get you into legal hot water. For example:

· You can’t use a cut from a CD that you just bought at the store as part of your soundtrack without permission.

· You can’t play a copyrighted popular tune yourself on the piano and make it part of your soundtrack without permission.

· You can’t use a cut from a classical music CD you just bought as a part of your soundtrack, (even though the composer has been dead for 200 years) unless you have permission from the performer or recording company.

As you can see from the examples, music is one of the trickiest parts of copyright law for any filmmaker. If you’re just making instant movies as a way of learning your craft and you never exhibit them in public in any form, you might safely bet that you won’t get caught if you throw a copyrighted song into your video. That doesn’t mean that you didn’t infringe, it just means that you’re not likely to get caught. It all depends on how lucky you feel.

 

 

0

Tip - Preparation

This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Instant Movie Making. If you're also an instant movie maker, I'd be happy to hear about your experiences, too!

Preparation

Conventional moviemakers know that preparation is important. It’s at least twice as important for an instant movie maker. When you’re shooting quickly, the only thing you can rely on is your preparation. Here’s what I’ve discovered through painful experience:

Limit the Scope of your Story

The range of stories that you can imagine is unlimited, but the range of things you can actually shoot is not. In order to make a virtue of your limitations, you need to observe those limits. More than once I have dreamed up a story that I thought would be delightful to watch and fun to shoot, and I found that I simply couldn’t shoot the story at all. It’s best to figure that out before you start shooting.

Stick to Locations You Can Control

Conventional movies employ lots of people (for lots of money) to keep control of a location. An instant movie maker doesn’t have that luxury. You can shoot a movie entirely in your own home and still tell an interesting story without being overwhelmed by distractions. If you have the use of an office, that can be a perfectly good location as well, a conference room is even better in terms of control, although it contains fewer intriguing personal details. Shooting inside a car can work well, although sometimes lighting can be a problem.