Sound and copyrights

D

David Evans

Well-known member
Hey guys,

I'm shooting a short film and there is this scene where a man is watching TV. In order to avoid copyright issues, I chose not to film the TV and whatever show was on. All I show is the man and different bits of the living room with a Rotolight anova pro LED simulating TV light. But I do want to have sound during this scene to simulate there was an old movie on the TV. Any ideas how to do this and avoid copyrights? I guess maybe recording something myself and passing through some sort of filter to make it sound like a old movie?

Thanks
 
Alex H. said:
You'd be surprised at how many old films out there have lapsed into the public domain. That means there's no copyright, which means you can use them without issue. Picture or sound.

http://publicdomainmovies.net
Click to expand...
Like Alex says, and the added advantage you can show the TV and have your audience guessing which movie. But if it's background just recording yourself rhubarbing also works. Had the same problem a few weeks ago where scene had a horse race call in the background - I just rhubarbed and fuzzed a few race calls - gave myself a credit for it otherwise no-one would have noticed: https://youtu.be/tvBCOQ199TU
 
I'm notorious for using my older movies when I need to do this sort of thing. Since I control all the rights, it doesn't matter if I show it, hear it, or anything. You can use shorts, commercials, features, whatever you've done.
 
Alex H. said:
You'd be surprised at how many old films out there have lapsed into the public domain. That means there's no copyright, which means you can use them without issue. Picture or sound.

http://publicdomainmovies.net
Click to expand...

Great idea! Though I'm not sure I'd trust that website since they don't seem to trust themselves:

"publicdomainmovies.net is not responsible for the accuracy, compliance, copyright, legality, decency, or any other aspect of the content of other linked sites. If you have any legal issues please contact the appropriate media file owners / host sites. If a referenced movie is violating copyright and you want us to remove that content or have any query, please Contact Us"

This might be a good place to look:
https://archive.org

They're pretty careful and spell out if there are any licensing issues or not. For example:
https://archive.org/details/3stooges

Good luck!
 
Jim Feeley said:
Great idea! Though I'm not sure I'd trust that website since they don't seem to trust themselves:

"publicdomainmovies.net is not responsible for the accuracy, compliance, copyright, legality, decency, or any other aspect of the content of other linked sites. If you have any legal issues please contact the appropriate media file owners / host sites. If a referenced movie is violating copyright and you want us to remove that content or have any query, please Contact Us"
Click to expand...

Overly-cautious legal jargon. Typical disclaimer. "We're providing you this information, but it's on you to make sure it's actually not illegal."

There are, of course, several other sites full of public domain movie resources.
 
Sure, but it looks like publicdomainmovies.net is just a very casual collection of links to films elsewhere on the web. And some of them sure seem like they'd still be under copyright.
Why trust an anonymous list when you can go to a place such as archive.org that's careful?
 
The copyright on old films and TV shows can be murky since there are a number of copyrights involved. There used to be tons of "old movie" shows on afternoon TV because they could show them for free but then the copyright on music got changed and while the films were not protected the music was.

Most shows, films, radio shows and even music didn't go to much effort to keep their rights till the 60's or so because there was very little possible income from most of them. Music kept the composers rights but for most things there was no reasonable way to copy them and who was going to watch old shows... Turns out a lot of people but hardly any of them ever filed any copyright paperwork so they only ended up with whatever got retroactively enacted.

I would not be worried about anything off of the internet archive for your use.

What I have done in the past is create stuff. We had a couple of actors do a play by play for one show and I tossed in game sounds to match. I also needed a bunch of late night TV ad's for a piece and also some different shows, so we made those and I keep them in the library.
 
Thanks for all your help, guys. I found a movie in all of those databases that might be ideal for this scene in my film. The movie is called The Flying Deuces (1939) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031322/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

That soundtrack in the style of classic Hollywood and the sound of the dialogues is just what I want. Does anyone know if there’s anything still copyrighted about this movie?

Thanks!
 
Guys, is everything at archive.org in the public domain? I wanted to use the sound of an old Daffy Duck cartoon and they have it there. Just wanted to make sure everything there is in the public domain. Makes sense that it is, otherwise they couldn't have it there. Still...
 
Copyright is all about time after death of the rights holders - so Gershwin music has been confusing people for a while now because the music is out of rights control, but the words weren't in many jurisdictions. However the Gershwin organisation changed the descriptions to say Words and Music by George AND Ira Gershwin, neatly extending the period. With old movies containing so many rights covering them all is nigh on impossible. If you look at movie credits, it rarely says if the design of something is protected - Does George Lucas own the design to every single element used in the Star Wars movies? I expect so, but maybe he wanted something and licences it, and not bought it? Would the design of a particular alien he liked mean that in the 50/70 years after his death, depending on where you live) you could use the bit of the movie with this alien in it? How would you find out if the alien belonged to Fred Smith, who Fred Smith is or was, and how to get in touch with him or his estate?

There are some amazing cases where copyright gets taken back by other people - some music ones here for interest.http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/songs-on-trial-10-landmark-music-copyright-cases-20160608/the-verve-vs-the-rolling-stones-1997-20160608.
 
Thanks! But when a movie is said to be in the public domain, what does it mean, exactly? I did my research and The flying deuces and daffy duck and the dinosaur are two films in the public domain. What does it mean? Can I use its image and sound? To be in the public domain, I would guess everything, every credited intelectual property had to be out of copyrights. Right?
 
In the US I don't think the life of the composer is part of the formula. But the copyright for music is huge like 100+ years.

As to the films. Maybe.

Many old films were never copyrighted because what was the point? Really till home video recording became possible there was very little "stealing" really possible. That is why, if you are old enough, you will remember tons of movie shows on TV in the afternoon and late night (it was free for the stations). But in the 70's some time they redid the copyright on music and made it retroactive. Suddenly a lot of movies that were out of copyright were now covered under the music copyright of the score. Over night all those movie shows disappeared.

Now some of these composers were working under contracts that gave the studios all the rights and if you don't defend you copyright you loose it so some of the films are probably totally in the clear. Any music composed (and recorded) before 1924 I believe (though check to make sure) is out of copyright. That won't cover very many sound pictures.

But my best guess is that it's not covered. The reason is that WB needs to actively enforce the copyright and if it's sitting in the internet archive they certainly know it and would have issued a take down if they had any rights to protect.

If you were making a big budget film I would have your rights folks hunt it down but if it's a smaller project I would not be very worried. If they haven't asserted their copyright with the Internet Archive they aren't going to with you. Also the IA is pretty good about doing due diligence so they probably checked before it was posted. Un like YouTube, for instance, IA is curated and nothing goes up until it has been vetted.
 
To your last question. If it is on the Internet Archive then to the best of their knowledge it is totally in the public domain.

But it can be very complicated with things like films because there can be many rights holders and the US loves to litigate just about everything.

That said between the checking the the IA does and the need of rights holders to actively protect their rights the odds of having a problem are very low, especially with something produced by a major studio.

Also as to music. On a lot of old low budget things like radio shows and probably some B films there is not any really original score. In a LOT of cases the score was just hunks from classical music patchworked together. It would only be the "contemporary" music played on say a phonograph that might be an original composition.
 
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