thinking RIAA

Paul Marino has an awesome article up at thinking machinima concerning the RIAA takedown of a machinima site. We are seeing a very scary premises. It is a choking of personal freedom of expression, at a most innocent level.

From the article:

While I don't agree with the RIAA here (obviously), a move like this should encourage us to work with smaller artists who are willing to license their music and/or work with Machinima filmmakers.

I fully support this. As an example I have two versions of The Everseason. One is done to Radiohead's 'Exit Music for a film' and the second to the music that was composed by Randy Jones to the film story itself. - I have the animatic storyboard with Radiohead available from the site so please don't rat me out. I'm innocent! ;P - I tried to get rights to 'Exit Music for a film' to release with the film but as the record label licensing manager told me, 'Getting Radiohead is like getting the Beatles'. Also, to fully use a song you have to get rights to the recording, and secondly, rights to the lyrics/music. So when I couldn't get rights to the recording for my film I tried to get rights to the lyrics/music. I figured I could find a musician to perform it. The song publishers wanted to see the piece before considering to grant rights and I felt it would be next to impossible to find a band to recreate the song since that song is so....Radiohead.

So I then contacted a few music composers that professionally solicited their interest in working with machinima makers in the machinima.com forums. Found Randy who created a superfantastic composition of the film and brought it to a whole new level of quality.

The moral of the story being, if your serious about machinima, you have to find yourself a music composer for your films. You just don't 'own' the film if you don't have rights. Its also a win/win relationship for machinima producers and musicians in publicizing your respective skills, and who knows, he or she may just be the next John Williams.

thinking machinima