The main problem when choosing a soundtrack for a movie, first of all, is the legality of its purchase from a particular company. The copyright issue concerns the legal side of filmmaking, complying with the laws, and ensuring that your project is free of claims.
Perhaps, you know the cases of blocking videos on YouTube, where the illegal audio recording was used. Google Corporation, which owns this video portal, uses its search engine to identify illegal music. Websites that violate copyright are being closed, new laws are emerging; all this forces us to pay more attention to the choice of soundtrack for the movie.
In this article, you will learn about several valuable sources of music for a movie. Study the material carefully.
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a licensing organization that allows authors and copyright holders to distribute their works more widely and freely and makes it easier for consumers of content to use those works. Since under copyright law in most countries of the world, all rights belong to authors automatically, Creative commons make it possible to transfer certain rights to the public through a family of ready-made licenses recognized by the legal laws of many countries. By the way, Google performs advanced searches for licensed content.
Creative commons provides aspiring filmmakers with great opportunities to use diverse music for educational and non-commercial purposes. The specialized site Jamendo is quite popular today. On this platform, everyone can place compositions of their own production and indicate the necessary type of license, and everyone else has the right to use this music in accordance with the license. The site has a Pro section where you are asked to pay a certain amount if you need a track for commercial use or for other purposes.
Production Libraries
The music in the movie can be original (it is usually written by a specially invited composer), a compilation (based on various samples previously recorded by different performers), or selected from production libraries.
Production libraries are resources with musical works that are created specifically for movie and media production. To create an original musical sound, you do not have to involve the necessary specialists every time: the production music was composed and recorded earlier for use in works that are typical in nature. The original company producing the production libraries owns the copyright and related rights to the works, which greatly simplifies the process of the legitimate use of the works of the production library in the final product.
The quality of this music is good, and in some cases even higher than high-budget projects since the producers of production libraries are not constrained by the time frame, the financial framework, and can also attract almost any means (composers, performers, orchestras, etc.) to build a verified musical image.
Production libraries contain music that has both a general theme of use, style, performance and variations of arrangement, performance, mixing, as well as commercial timing (60, 50, 15 seconds). The most popular today are sounddogs, gettyimages, autionetwork, etc., and production libraries. You can easily visit them at any necessary time.
Professional Musicians
If you need more subtle and serious work on the soundtrack or background, then contact the professionals directly. Surely, there are professional studios in your city you can cooperate with. But you should take into account that the cost of collaborating with studios directly depends on the number of hours spent and can cost a pretty big sum.
Try to study this issue on social networks and on specialized sites. Look for freelancers who are ready to write music to order. Perhaps, there are people who want to work on an interesting project for the sake of a portfolio or for a certain fee. It’s great if there are musicians among your friends who are ready to work on your movie for free. With them, you can spend more time discussing your idea and experimenting with sound effects.
Write Music Yourself
If you feel the strength and creativity in yourself, then try to write music yourself. There are many programs (FruityLoops, Mixcraft, Acid Music Studio) with which you can select the right samples and compose the right melody, especially if it is unobtrusive background music. Here you have the main advantage – you are not limited in time, and you do not have to pay money to anyone. But at the same time, it is worth considering several times whether you are ready to spend time and effort on writing good music. Not everyone can make this work.
So, use these 4 available options and find the best track without any difficulty!