The two most important things I learnt at my Film Course...

Vamp · Post by **Vamp** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 8:44 pm

1. You can use 1.5 minutes of any copyrighted song in a film without having to pay royalties.

2. The Zoom In/Dolly Out effect

iamnothing · Post by **iamnothing** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 10:08 pm

1. You can't in the US. In fact, you'll usually have to pay synchronization rights as well as royalty rights (often to different people, depending on who has which rights). You may be able to get a break for academic filmmaking, though if you move to the mainstream festival route, you'll usually have to pay inexpensive festival royalties.

2. Dollying is good.

Vamp · Post by **Vamp** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 10:51 pm

Well, seeing as the South African film industry is so non-existant, with the exception of a few places, like www.kryptosite.co.za and www.greggwatt.com (The guys who organized the course), The music thing is allowed

JohnTravoltaisMyHero · Sat Dec 06, 2003 3:22 am

iamnothing wrote:1. You can't in the US. In fact, you'll usually have to pay synchronization rights as well as royalty rights (often to different people, depending on who has which rights). You may be able to get a break for academic filmmaking, though if you move to the mainstream festival route, you'll usually have to pay inexpensive festival royalties.

This is true. But for academic filmmaking, they say that you can only use up to 30 secs. (as far as I know). I'm also hearing that alot of schools are trying to make it so that copyrighted music is not allowed for any length of time without permission.

Epsilon · Post by **Epsilon** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 7:18 am

As far as I knew, you were only allowed 30 seconds without paying for the song and/or getting authoritive permissions. If you check out any big corppration website that sells copyrighted media, ie. BestBuy.com, CircuitCity.com, they won't place an example over 29 seconds in length. I read the copyright rules some while back. I know about the syncronization rights and junk too. It gets very complicated.

Pretty much to play it safe, anything copyrighted over 90 years ago is guarenteed safe for anything, commercial or not.

Simon Rylance · Post by **Simon Rylance** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 9:12 am

basicly, if its "educational' pourposes u dont pay, and if its not u do!, u usualy pay for songs in 30min sections

Ornsack · Post by **Ornsack** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 3:25 pm

Point 2 is an overused effect, never use it!

foxwood · Post by **foxwood** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 5:12 pm

thats a great effect, and it is over used in certen situation like roads, just be creative with it, like in Virtigo.

Ornsack · Post by **Ornsack** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 6:04 pm

Yeah but Vertigo is decades old and all the creativity has gone when used since then... If you do it people will think you're taking the p*** out of other films... And if that's your intention, well that's overdone too and nobody will laugh

Epsilon · Post by **Epsilon** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 8:46 pm

Personally, I like the Zoom Out/DollyIn effect better!

If you are going to use it, do it very litte so that it is not noticable, but gives a slight suspense to the shot.

joe · Post by **joe** » Mon Dec 08, 2003 3:23 am

thats different for vertigo because hitchcock invented that effect, so he pretty much could do anything he wanted with it and still be original.

Epsilon · Post by **Epsilon** » Mon Dec 08, 2003 3:33 am

Well that is a different circumstance!

Hitchcock made some great classic thrillers! Great stuff.

foxwood · Post by **foxwood** » Mon Dec 08, 2003 2:10 pm

also we use it to look down roads and long strate distances, he used it looking down stairs, and such, something the we don't do much of today, anyway. And didn't hitchcock invint most of the cool cam moves.

iamnothing · Post by **iamnothing** » Mon Dec 08, 2003 8:57 pm

Academic filming is usually given a lot of freedom when it comes to music rights and soundbites. Unfortunately, most soundbites are less than 30 seconds and do not fall under the good graces rulesets.

As for corporations using music, part of the contract for sale is to allow presentation of the product (such as a listening station). The ability to let you listen to music, for however long they want, is already there. The problem came along with WalMart when they initially didn't have such a clause (I believe it was around '91, but I can't remember) and the music companies threatened to make them pay fees for presenting the music. WalMart threatened to not sell CD's if they pushed it, and while the music industry is a big mover and shaker, they saw more of their profits going through the floor with WalMart opting out on music sales than the entire Napster/P2P problem.

The rights problem gets sticky when it comes down to having to obtain two licenses: usage and synchronization. For academic institutions, the companies usually don't care...unless you get big and someone wants to release your school shorts on DVD. Then whoever is footing the bill will be paying through the nose. Same goes with festival rights. Of course, some festivals won't even let you submit for showing unless you have both your usage and synchronization contracts for your copyrighted music (or a festival waiver).

The thing that p*** me off about it more than anything is that the artists usually don't get anything. Or next to nothing.