DIY Filmmaking Sucks

How to choose the music for your film

Music is crucial to your project. It's the secret ingredient that goes directly to a viewer's heart.

I've been wrestling with music on my sci-fi feature, In-World War, which is currently in post-production.

It took me a while to figure out a process that works for me, in deciding which tracks go best where in the film, and which parts of the movie to score (i.e. compose new music specifically for a given scene).

If you want to learn from our pain and misery (highly recommended instead of going through it all yourself), find out how we are facing the challenges of selecting music for our film.

Read the story of being Lost in Musicland on the In-World War blog.

Royalty-free music for indie films

Looking for royalty-free music for your film? Don't do it.

A friend asked me for suggestions for websites that have good royalty-free music for a friend's short doc and I thought the reply I gave (slightly edited) may be helpful to anyone considering using royalty-free music in their indie film projects.

(When I'm talking about royalty-free music, I'm talking about music that is marketed as "royalty-free" -- as opposed to getting music for free for your project, which I definitely endorse as you can see, if you read on.)

The filmmaker in question had a short film which had been named after a classic big-band song.

Here's my take on royalty-free music and what I suggested she do:

I'm not a big fan of royalty-free music. It generally sounds cheap and like musak.

I'd suggest she find a local swing band that has their own songs (Lavay Smith and the Red Hot Skillet Lickers?) and see if they would let her use some music. Smaller local acts are often totally open to that, particularly if it's a cool flick with no commercial potential (which the short sounds like).

Real songs by real people are so much more engaging than canned royalty-free music.

You'd need to get a formal licensing agreement, but you can get for very very low rates from Brooke Wentz of the Rights Workshop. Maybe a couple hundred dollars for the contract?

If you have about $1000 (yeah right -- who has that?), they can actually find and clear a song for you -- doing all the legwork. I think that's their rate; you should contact them to confirm. Might even get an actual rendition of your dream song that's in the title of the short. Their website:

http://rightsworkshop.com/

Have you tried to find out if you can clear the song yourself? Who knows? Might not be that expensive for a small short film that's only going to be shown at festivals.

On the other hand, it's more likely to be way too expensive for you. And finding a local band would be the smart choice.

One other approach would be to create a tune using Apple's Soundtrack or Garage Band software. They have samples that you can build into a song or soundtrack. That would be royalty free, but still might sound a bit canned.

Lastly, you might want to consider changing the title of the film, since you're obviously invoking the song (a great tune, by the way).

There might be rights issues with using that title. I *THINK* you're in the clear since I recall that titles cannot be copyrighted -- but then I remember Spike Lee talking about having problems with that on one of his films (so I read).

So, bottom line: I can't help you find royalty-free music (other than suggesting a google search), but I do recommend finding a local band who would let you use their music, in return for helping expose a new audience to their music via the film.

UPDATE

My pals Ryan and Rebecca Coseboom of the deliriously-good band Stripmall Architecture had some important feedback on this post from a musician's perspective.

Ryan felt it was disingenuous for an indie filmmaker to offer exposure to indie bands in return for using their music. He's right. This inspired a wider rant from me about indie filmmakers that spout endless bullshit about their projects (read it here: Don't be an indie film bullshit emitter)

Rebecca also had some great feedback for DIY filmmakers looking for music for their films: "You might also consider music released under a creative commons license which is slightly different from strict 'royalty free.'"

How to get your music in a film

A former filmmaking student asked how his band could get their music in independent or student films.

Here's what I told him -- based on our local San Francisco scene (he was a UC Santa Cruz student, so I mention that too). If you're not in the Bay Area, you can use this a cheat sheet but fill in with filmmaker organizations and schools near you:

My suggestion is to basically do networking at filmmaker events. Your goal is to meet upcoming filmmakers and let them know they can use your work -- and get them your audio (online or via CDs).

Here are a few SF-oriented places to look:

- San Francisco Film Society - they have taken over the Film Arts Foundation programming (some of it anyway) including filmmaker events, under their "filmmaker services" department

- Bay Area Video Coalition - has classes and some events as well

- Colleges: obviously UCSC had a robust film department and you can try posting around campus near where the filmmaking students hang out and take classes. But in the bay, SF State has one of the top filmmaking programs. Also California College of Arts (the Oakland campus is the filmmaking school, I think) and Academy of Art have film/video programs.

- You can also go for some geurilla advertising: get on Craigslist and other local bulletin boards letting filmmakers know you're there. Plus you can contact filmmakers directly when they post to Craigslist looking for talent or crew -- and also try to connect up via Facebook, YouTube and Myspace.

It's very tough to get traction. Usually you have to have a connection with the filmmaker and you should assume they'll be using the music for free (i.e. they got no money and you should expect none).

But it's possible.

My suggestion: make your own damn movie and then you can do as much music for it that you want (see the great indie film The American Astronaut for example).