Resources Books Music Rights Unveiled: A Filmmaker’s Guide to Music Rights and Licensing – Brooke Wentz and Maryam Battaglia Online Sources of Sheet Music, Recorded Music, and Sounds All of these resources should either point you to material in the public domain, licensed under the Creative Commons, or material that is Royalty Free or […]
Protecting Yourself Making an independent film is exciting. You’re creating something wonderful to share with the world, and working with other brilliant people to make your dream a reality. But it’s also full of potential legal headaches. (And possibly also personal relationship headaches.) Here are some tips for security and problem prevention for your film.
Security and Prevention Read More »
Music is Complex If you want to have a very specific mood set by the film score, you will probably want to hire a composer. The benefits are having a custom made set of music tailored just for your film by a professional. But you will then have to pay attention to a new set
Music is Complex So you might think if you are just at the film festival stage that you don’t have to acquire the licenses to use any copyrighted music in your film. This would generally be wrong. Attorney and former television documentary producer Gregory R. Kanaan notes in an article for MovieMaker that most film
Music is Complex If you are trying to minimize your music budget, the least you could pay for a piece of music for your film is to use either public domain or Creative Commons licensed music. There are very few sources of true public domain music recordings. But there are a decent number of sources
Music is Complex Music licensing has many variations and nuances, and so I’ve given it its own section. You can find ways of getting real music into your small budget production. But of course you need to make sure that you’re licensing it correctly and / or that you have contracts and agreements in place
Issues and Pitfalls Read More »
Budget but Beware Royalty free material in the form of photos, film clips, or music is not “free” in the sense of paying no money for use of the material. The true meaning is that royalty free use frees the buyer from paying royalties, or recurring payments, to the content producer. So in the standard
Budget but Beware Fair use is a set of limitations on the ability of copyright holders to claim infringement that are baked into the Copyright Act. The ability to claim fair use of a copyrighted work is primarily applicable to fact-based works, non-commercial or educational use, or commentary or criticism. Additionally, the work where fair
Budget but Beware Public domain works are not covered by copyright. They are owned by the public, and are available to be used and remixed into new works. However, you need to be careful about making completely sure that the material is in the public domain before using it. Also be cautious about works with
