P1. Use of music in film - legal considerations

Right of use:

The difference between publishing rights and recording rights is that for a publishing licence you need permission from the people who own the rights to the music, and for a recording licence you need permission from the artists who produced the music themselves.

To go about clearing a piece of music for you film you need to firstly find out who owns the rights to the music. If the song you want is published, you need to get rights from the publisher, and obtain a publishing licence from them. You can find out who owns the rights to the song by contacting the latest publisher, or if you know the record company you can find out their details on the website and message them. There is a company called PRS music which helps you find out who owns the rights to music. If the music hasn't yet been published, then it will probably be the composer of the music who owns the rights, and this will therefore be easier to obtain, as your film could be good promotion for their music.

You will need to get the recording licence from the rights holder (producer or record company)  if the music has been pre-recorded. If it hasn't, then you can arrange the sound recording, which gives you copyright access to the music.

If the composer has been dead for over 70 years, the copyright will have expired, but you might need to ask for clearance from the right holder in the recording.

Incidental music is music used in a film which is supposed to create a certain mood or atmosphere, and is often referred to as background music.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a type of copyright license which distributes free work, which would otherwise be copyrighted. It can also be known as 'CC' and according to Wikipedia is 'used when an author wants to give people the right to share, use and build upon work that they have created'.

According to their website, Creative Common exists to help ensure everyone 'from individual creators to large companies and institutions' get a 'simple standardized way to grant copyright permission to their creative work'.

Here are there 6 licences:

Attribution CC BY: Allows you to remix, tweak, distribute and build upon their work as long as you give credit to their original work.

 Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND: Allowed for redistribution, commercial and non commercial, as long as its unchanged and you give credit to the artist. 

 Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA: Allows you to remix, tweak, distribute and build upon their work as long as you give credit to them and licence their new creations under the terms. 

 Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA:  Allows you to remix, tweak, distribute and build upon there work (for commercial purposes as well) as long as you give them credit and licence your new work under the terms. 

 Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC: Allows you to remix, tweak, distribute and build upon their work, although in your new work you must acknowlege them and be non-commercial. 'They don't have to license their derivative works on the same terms.' 

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND: Allows you to download their work and share them as long as you give credit to them and don't change them in any way or use them for commercial purposes. 

My Choice of music

This is a link to the music I decided to go for:
http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html/index.html?genre=Jazz
(Mining by Moonlight)

Reason for choice of music:
I wanted to go for positive background music in my sequence, but didn't want anything too upbeat so decided to go for Jazz. I chose this song, as it adds a positive relaxing vibe to the sequence, which portrays the college to be a safe and welcoming place (or so we think).

Evidence of rights:

Sources:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/filmmaking/guide/before-you-start/music-rights
http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/filmmaking/guide/before-you-start/legal-faqs#musicvideo
https://creativecommons.org/

P1. Submarine Analysis and Lesson on Sound 25/02/14

Today we had a presentation from Dave about the use of sound in film. We learnt that sound had many purposes and covered some of them, which were:

- Sound can change the mood of a sequence

- Can be used to inform, for example you could have a helicopter sound off screen and you wouldn't need to see the helicopter itself to know its there

- Sound can change/add to the pace of a sequence (fast, energetic music would exaggerate the fast pace of a chase sequence)

- Sound can be used to trigger an emotional response from the audience

- Sound can be used to create suspence (an example is the theme tune in Psycho or Jaws)


We also learnt about different types of sound such as:

Contrapuntal sound:
Sound that is unexpected and doesn't match the picture.

Diegetic sound:
Sound that is within the narrative world (sound that the characters can hear) such as dialogue, doors slamming, music coming from a stereo.

Non-diegetic sound:
Sound that isn't within the narrative world which the characters can't hear, such as music or a narrators voice over.

Sound Bridge:
Connects two scenes or shots together (in friends when the scene changes there is a specific tune that plays)

Character Motif:
Music that is connected or represents a certain character (James bond theme tune)


We analysed film clips such as Submarine and discussed as a class how we thought the music chosen was effective, and discussed what we thought its meaning could be. We also looked at scenes from films such as Saturday night fever and Toy story, which had different music over the top. This showed that the music really did effect the mood of the film as each song gave off a different emotional response, although the picture stayed the same.

Submarine Analysis 

In this sequence, a young boy named Oliver has just shoved a girl into a pond and is now regretting it. To redeem himself from this mistake, he is writing a guide for the girl, on how to avoid getting bullied in the future. In the lesson, during watching this clip we were looking out for sound, and how it creates purpose, elements and meaning for the audience.

Purpose
The purpose of the music used in this clip is to enhance and portray Oliver's mood and emotions towards the situation, and create a sense of  regret for what he has done. The music is use to draw us into Oliver's mind set, and feel similar emotions to him (as if we were in his place). Then the diegetic sounds are use to make us more aware of (bring to our attention) objects or situations, such as the typewriter, the draw opening and the splash of the pond. The diegetic sound isn't just used just to enhance, but also to inform, for example, the cheering students in the college show us that the act the boy is doing in the playground is impressive.

Elements
Both non-diegetic and diegetic sound is used in this sequence. The non-diegetic is the music, which is used to set the mood and the diegetic sound informs and enhances situations. There is also an L cut used, where the type writer acts as non-diegetic sound and plays over a scene where it is not actually there. This is used to tell the audience the shots they are seeing are in the past and are parts of Oliver's memory's.

Meaning 
The music is emotional, as Oliver regrets what he has done to the girl. For the audience to feel his remorse, they need to be directed in the right direction (by the music choice). The soundtrack used is calm, relaxing, slow, and uses instruments such as a violin to create this mood.

P1. Sound Sheets

P1. Metadata

For my footage I have imported, I have renamed each shot, telling me the scene it's in, the shot number and the take, so I can easily refer back to my storyboard and photo animatic to see the order my shots should be in and easily find them.

P1. Problem

Problem:
In today's lesson the problem was that I didn't get much work done. The reason for this was due to the fact I was helping my group members Dayna and Robyn, with their visual effects, which took a long time.

Solution:
Next time they ask for help, if it's something easy i'll quickly explain what to do, or if its complicated I'll get them to ask Nick or Dave what to do.

P1. Improving my sequence 04/02/14

In the first half of this lesson, I took Dave's critism into account, and made Robyn's face more red on Adobe After effects, as it was too subtle before.

Before:

After:

P1. Appraising the Rough Cut

Audio
The audio we have recorded is fine, but at some points in the sequence, the dialogue is louder than other points. Once my sequence and visual effects are complete, I will go through the sequence and key point the audio louder or quieter where needs be. Also I will go through it illiminating any sounds in the background that aren't supposed to be there, and test out some royalty free soundtracks on top of the clips.  The strengths of the audio, is that we have recorded clear and recognisable sound to edit, and don't need to re-record anything.

Visual Effects
I plan to have 7 visual effects in my sequence and have currently done 3. The improvements I can make to these visual effects is firstly on the effect were Robyn turns bright red. I need to adjust the hue and saturation and increase the opacity of the mask to make her redder. Also with the invisible Dayna shot I need to make the action of her knocking into Jays bag more visible.

Sequence
Once I've finished placing in all the film footage in the places it's supposed to be, and have finished all of the visual effects, I will then crop unnecessary footage of clips to shorten it down to 3 minutes and make the sequence less boring.