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Demo Reels and The Law


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  • Members
Posted

I was curious about the legality of using pre-existing movie trailers and then stripping the audio from them and replacing it with your own score, merely to function as a demo reel. While these would not be sold as a monetary product in and of themselves, the trailers would be used to help sell myself and my skills, which in my mind makes it enter a a nebulous zone of am I profiting from "the clip" or are my compositions the selling point and the medium over which my score is placed rendered largely irrelevant?

 

if this is in fact illegal, what would you consider the best method to building a demo reel that you could send to prospective clients?

  • Moderators
Posted

In the great scheme of things, if you use someone else's intellectual property, you should either get their permission or arrange to pay them for the use of said material...even if there is no money to be made.

  • Members
Posted

 

In the great scheme of things, if you use someone else's intellectual property, you should either get their permission or arrange to pay them for the use of said material...even if there is no money to be made.

 

 

That was along my lines of thinking, but how does one do such a thing?

  • Members
Posted

 

That was along my lines of thinking, but how does one do such a thing?

 

 

You'd need to find who administered the rights and figure out how much the licensing would cost.

 

If you really wanted to do this, I'd suggest a cheaper way to do it would be to get in touch with your local film-making community and do a couple works-for-hire for fictional movie trailers that you could do the scores for. Some amateur filmmakers love that sort of thing, cuz it let's them stick a bunch of ideas together, without having to do an entire film (and with digital media being really cheap, you can prolly get away with 4-5 trailers made-to-order for a relative steal).

  • 2 weeks later...
  • Members
Posted

Without the written permission of the copyright owners....? Yeah, it's real illegal and if you post it online, it'll get you popped in a heartbeat.

  • Members
Posted

Well, I put a call out to one of my friends and he sent me two scripts for upcoming shorts that he's producing. First one starts shooting in September and each one is going to be about 10 min. The first one isn't going to have as much music, but the second one will have more. :)

  • Moderators
Posted

Well, I put a call out to one of my friends and he sent me two scripts for upcoming shorts that he's producing. First one starts shooting in September and each one is going to be about 10 min. The first one isn't going to have as much music, but the second one will have more.
:)

 

change his mind about the first one...background music can really help...many filmmakers overlook the value of background music:thu:

  • Members
Posted

change his mind about the first one...background music can really help...many filmmakers overlook the value of background music:thu:

 

It's kinda low budget X-File-esque. He wants a lot of silence or low-mixed pads except for the end. I do get to write a theme for a cheesy off-screen reality TV show though. :D

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