All About the Music

Well I am going to date myself, but back when I was in grad school getting exposed to new music wasn’t as easy as it is now and that was only seven years ago.  At the time I had access to some great musicians as a DJ for a radio station and so was able to negotiate festival rights to my thesis film. At the time I knew my film wasn’t good enough to be picked up and I got the rights I needed for a local festival I had submitted to. However, as a filmmaker, when it comes to licensing music remember that it’s really crucial that you get an all access pass instead of merely a shitty seat in the nosebleed section. 

Ok so analogy aside, a lot of filmmakers get really excited when they get festival rights for the music in their film.  Well don’t get that excited.  Remember festival rights only gives you rights to showcase your film with the music you have in it AT festivals.  In other words if Joe Blow distributor wants to pick up your film and all you have are festival rights 1) you may not be able to keep all of the music currently in your film as your budget may be maxed hence not allowing you to pay for the music to be used commercially once your film is in the hands of a distributor 2) don’t count on the distributor picking up the tab 3) make sure you can come to terms with not using your favorite piece of music if you have not negotiated for the rights to do so

This brings me to another point.  BUDGET FOR MUSIC. If you want to use that fabulous No Doubt song and your budget is $200,000 for your film, don’t be shocked to find out that song you want is actually going to cost you half of your budget.  Understand that you may not have the money for that perfect song and that you may need to find other alternatives.  Look to local, up and coming musicians.  Get referrals from friends and try to go to some local shows in your area to see if someone up and coming has the type of music you could use.  Most of the time you can work with lesser known musicians who are just looking to catch a break.

If you are BFF with a great, really well known musician whose music you love or you have known said musician since you were 9 when you played clarinet next to him in symphonic band, well that’s fantastic. Just remember typically this so called BFF wants to be paid or at least whoever owns the publishing rights to their music wants to be paid. So as I always say GET IT IN WRITING. There are some terrific general contracts you can use as a template in Mark Litwak’s book CONTRACTS for FILM and TELEVISION. What you want to make sure you have in your film is MASTER use license and SYNC rights to all music.  Whether it is a feature, short or pilot try to get as much clearance as you can going into the project. It will save you a lot of headaches later on!