I’ve got this problem, well it’s not really a problem. More like a catch-22. Anyway, I’ve got this short film I wrote and directed where reality TV is mocked. Half the short is basically this clichéd clip show of the “greatest moments” of the program. For a clichéd clip show I obviously needed music that reinforced the ridicule of the situation. I was out of time (it was actually a school project) and didn’t think twice to use copyrighted music. Indeed, the crappy commercial music suited perfectly the short.
So here we are now.
I would like to send this movie to festivals but for obvious copyright issues I can’t. I faxed several request (8 in totals) to publishers and labels and stuff, only one got back to me so far: I had to pay between 250 to 500 dollars to use a 20-second background music (not even the crappy commercial one)! I should also point out the fact that this short is strictly non-commercial, and had/has a zero-dollar budget behind it.
This leads me to either:
a) wait for the other requests to come through and miraculously be free
b) send the short to festivals despite not having the copyrighted rights to the music
c) find copyright-free music
Ultimately I went with c).
I came across this great site where there are tons of music from around the world under creative commons, which means (depending on the group) you can freely use the music as long as you credit the artist.
This site is Jamendo. It’s awesome.
One problem though.
I’m looking for crappy commercial music, and I can’t seem to really find it over at this indy site.
It’s been weeks now since I’ve tried to replace the copyrighted songs. Replacements has yet to be found.
Oh and the songs I’m talking about are:
Coldplay’s The Scientist©
Fergie’s Finally©
(the crappy commercial music bash was actually towards Finally, not The Scientist)
In other news, Ken Levine just posted a great post about “why writers direct”.
