About a particular piece of music

[GTO911]

Hi everyone.

My friends and I are planning on filming a short movie that we might consider sending to festivals depending on it's outcome and overall quality. Anyways, all of us are just starting out after graduating from a film school, so basically we're absolutely clueless about some things that we suspect might become problems later on.

First of all, we're still on the process of writing the script. Now, the writer suggested (actually it was more like begging) that we'd use a song that he thinks is the most indicated for a scene at the beginning of the film. The song is called 'Also Sprach Zarathustra'(I think) by Richard Strauss, which most of us heard from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'.

The thing is, I know very little about author rights when it comes to music, so logically I want to make sure we're not going to get in trouble if we do this. Someone from my crew mentioned that if the song has been published around more than 50 years ago, than it can be of use to the public, but I feel safer asking you guys.

If anyone could help me out with this one, I'd be eternally grateful.
Thanks for your time.

Alexis.

 

[Joe999]

Length of copyright:
http://www.k-state.edu/academicpersonnel/intprop/webtutor/tsld009.htm
But even if the sheet music for copyright has expired, you can not simply copy and use the performance of that music, such as on a CD of Mozart performed by the Philadelphia Symphony-- they have "expressed" the music, and copyright protects the expression of something, like a music CD expression of music composed by Mozart. Now if you could get some musician friends together and record your own performance of Mozart then the recording becomes yours.

There are also many royalty free soundtrack sites to buy at affordable costs music for film, etc., e.g. twistedtracks.com, royaltyfreemusic.com, etc. or Sony ACID Pro for making your own music using royalty free loops, etc. (I love Sony ACID Pro, incredible).

... Someone from my crew mentioned that if the song has been published around more than 50 years ago, than it can be of use to the public, but I feel safer asking you guys.. If anyone could help me out with this one, I'd be eternally grateful.
Thanks for your time. Alexis.

 

[GTO911]

Thank you very much Joe999 for your quick reply. Now that you explained this to me, it does seem pretty logical. I've been checking the websites you mentioned, and it's good to know that there's always this kind of possibility.

Anyways, since the beginning I wanted to avoid using other people's work in our film, since people have been warning me a lot about how copyright issues could affect the budget, or even the schedule of the film.

I'm going to give the Sony ACID Pro a try, maybe someone from my team knows how to use it. (Is it similar to other music composing programs such us FLstudio or Reason?)

Thanks again for your help, and forgive me if my questions seem elementary.

 

[Joe999]

There is a free version of ACID you can download,
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/products/product.asp?pid=383
and if you are a student or educator you can get it cheap at
http://academicsuperstore.com
ACID lets you have unlimited tracks, "paint" music loops onto tracks, move them, overlap, mix, fade, etc. You need content music loops to really do anything terrific-- I have bought about 10 CDs of content--search ebay and you can find other loop collections cheap, but here are SONY's content CDs, this link is to their cinematic collection but they have lots others:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/loop_libraries/default.asp?cid=3

That said, I think if a budget allows it, it is always better to work with a composer (film scorer) rather than use loops, but I have to say it is really really really fun to play with music creation with acid pro, and the potential exists to make music to even sell as a music cd which is cool.

Thank you very much Joe999 for your quick reply. Now that you explained this to me, it does seem pretty logical. I've been checking the websites you mentioned, and it's good to know that there's always this kind of possibility.

Anyways, since the beginning I wanted to avoid using other people's work in our film, since people have been warning me a lot about how copyright issues could affect the budget, or even the schedule of the film.

I'm going to give the Sony ACID Pro a try, maybe someone from my team knows how to use it. (Is it similar to other music composing programs such us FLstudio or Reason?)

Thanks again for your help, and forgive me if my questions seem elementary.

 

[GTO911]

This software really looks promising

The idea of being able to create music while you see the frames of your film at the top of the screen is awesome!

Too bad it's so expensive, but I guess good software always is. I'll take your advice though, and try to get myself a... composer (notice I took the word 'good' out of the sentence), I just hope it won't cost a dime, since I'm planning to spend all my savings on a good camera (which, I read from a lot of people in the forums, is a bad idea).

Thanks again Joe999!

The similarity between our names makes me wonder: Coincidence? or we both have zero creativity when it comes to making up forum nicknames?

 

[Joe999]

Well, if you do not need some of that capabilities of ACID PRO, there are lots of free audio editors for which you can still use the CDs of Sony Content at that link I gave, or other loop music that is cheaper elsewhere (search ebay for acid loops). ACID is cool in that you pain on measure, you can change the key (A to F#, etc) if needed. And yes ACID lets you see your film frames to "score" your film. Sony ACID loop music CDs have lots of .wav files (loops) for composing, they can be used by any audio editor, however the wav files also have embedded info that Sony ACID uses for painting loops, changing music keys, etc. that other non-ACID editors would not be able to use (to my knowledge).

I have seen lots of composers willing to score films for free. Too bad we can't all afford Hans Zimmer

This software really looks promising

The idea of being able to create music while you see the frames of your film at the top of the screen is awesome!

Too bad it's so expensive, but I guess good software always is. I'll take your advice though, and try to get myself a... composer (notice I took the word 'good' out of the sentence), I just hope it won't cost a dime, since I'm planning to spend all my savings on a good camera (which, I read from a lot of people in the forums, is a bad idea).

Thanks again Joe999!

The similarity between our names makes me wonder: Coincidence? or we both have zero creativity when it comes to making up forum nicknames?