Posts Tagged ‘Film’

Using Existing Recordings–Not So Fast!

Wednesday, April 10th, 2013

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq.

Dear Law and Disorder:

A few weeks ago you wrote a great article about how to obtain a mechanical license when someone wants to record music. But what about using a recording that already exists? We would like to promote an upcoming concert at our venue by putting some recordings of the artist on our website. Since the artist gave us the recordings, are we ok?

Thanks…and no, you may not be ok.

Any time you want to use an existing recording of a composition, whether to put on your website, or as a soundtrack to a film or video, you will need to get permission (aka “a license)” from the composer (which often means contacting the composer’s publisher) as well as permission (aka “a license”) from the owner of the recording (which is often a record label.) That’s right, you may need to get two separate licenses! Why? Because copyright law creates a separate copyright in compositions and a separate copyright in the recording of a composition.

Just because an artist or an artist’s manager gives you a recording and gives you permission to use that recording, doesn’t mean that the artist owns the recording or has the rights to give. Even if it is a recording of the artist’s own original composition or if the composition itself is in the public domain, the artist may not own the recording. In which case, the artist cannot give you permission to use it, much less the artist’s manager.

Shortly after I posted the earlier blog you mentioned (The Mechanics of Mechanical Licenses, March 6, 2013), Peter Christ of Crystal Records Inc. (http://www.crystalrecords.com) sent me an email which exactly and accurately addressed this issue. He graciously agreed to let me post it here:

Your explanation was very clear and should help those who want to record music that is not public domain. However, it does not address the situation of a person who wants to use a recording already made, and on a record label, for their web site or their movie or other background music use. It should be made clear that the publisher needs to be contacted and ALSO the record label or other copyright owner of the recorded music.

We sometimes find out that our copyrighted recordings are being used as background music for films or on someone’s web site. This is not legal without our permission, and when it is discovered, the legal expenses can be very high for the perpetrator.

 

Some people want to do it right, and we frequently get requests for license to use our recordings for films, web, etc. We always appreciate that someone is honest and knowledgeable enough to request a license. However, in most cases, they do not realize they need a license both from the record company and from the publisher of the music. And in many cases, the music was recorded under an AFM contract and additional payment must be made through the union to the musicians on the recording. It should be pointed out that even if the music itself is public domain, the recording is most likely not, so permission from the record company, and possibly the union, is definitely needed. So the two minutes or so they want to use can get quite expensive.

Thank you for your excellent column in Musical America.

See, I don’t make this stuff up just to make your lives complicated! Bottom line, when it comes to music rights there are three rules: never assume—always ask—and know who to ask.

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For additional information and resources on this and other legal and business issues for the performing arts, visit ggartslaw.com

To ask your own question, write to lawanddisorder@musicalamerica.org.

All questions on any topic related to legal and business issues will be welcome. However, please post only general questions or hypotheticals. GG Arts Law reserves the right to alter, edit or, amend questions to focus on specific issues or to avoid names, circumstances, or any information that could be used to identify or embarrass a specific individual or organization. All questions will be posted anonymously.

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THE OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER:

THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE!

The purpose of this blog is to provide general advice and guidance, not legal advice. Please consult with an attorney familiar with your specific circumstances, facts, challenges, medications, psychiatric disorders, past-lives, karmic debt, and anything else that may impact your situation before drawing any conclusions, deciding upon a course of action, sending a nasty email, filing a lawsuit, or doing anything rash!

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Posted in Artist Management, Arts Management, Copyrights, Law and Disorder: Performing Arts Division, Licensing, Music Rights, Presenters, Publishing, Recordings, Venues | Comments Closed

Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival: Never a Dull Moment

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

If you’ve ever sat in the theater watching a dance and wondered how the performers went from working with the choreographer in the studio to being masters of their own movement on the stage, the Emmy award-winning filmmaker Elliot Caplan has made just the documentary for you. It’s called 15 Days of Dance – The Making of Ghost Light. On August 5 at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Caplan spent an hour describing his process and showing an excerpt of his 2010 film. Why just an excerpt? Because 15 Days is 22.5 hours long.

Clearly not a commercial enterprise, 15 Days bears the mark of Caplan’s advanced station as a documentary filmmaker of dance. Like Merce Cunningham, who gave him his first job filming dancers (and whom he served for 15 years as the company’s filmmaker in residence), Caplan records movement from unconventional perspectives. In 15 days, he digs deep into the ritualistic process of—watch, do, repeat, watch, do, repeat—that is the basis for most dance creation. While this process may sound like a snore, it is not. The twelve dancers of the American Ballet Theatre Studio Company, who are the center of the film, are hothouse flowers. All under age 20, they are schooled within an inch of their life in the rigors of classical technique. It’s fascinating watching them take codified ballet movements (passé, pirouette, penché) and slowly fashion them into the narrative threads that give choreographer Brian Reeder’s Ghost Light its glow.

Wearing a Yankee baseball cap and sitting with Jacob’s Pillow Scholar in Residence Maura Keefe, Caplan demonstrated that he is a devotional dance documenter—and a mensch. While most dance documenters arrive on the scene when the dance is done and paid for, in the case of 15 Days Caplan took the initiative. He convinced the University at Buffalo, where he serves as a professor and the Center for the Moving Image’s artistic director, to foot the bill for the creation of a dance. When Caplan got the funding, he made two calls: to New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre. The ABT Studio Company called back first. They recommended for the job the choreographer Brian Reeder, a frequent contributor to the company’s repertoire.

Formerly a dancer with ABT, New York City Ballet, and Ballet Frankfurt, Reeder doesn’t mind being around moving cameras while making a dance in the breathless space of 15 days. His ballet, set to a recording of Aaron Copland’s Music for the Theater with Leonard Bernstein conducting, pays homage to the mix of sleaze and innocence redolent of vaudevillian stage culture.

Yet 15 Days isn’t focused on the ballet’s subject or the final product. Caplan documents the job of dancers, working day in and day out in a bare bones studio. In the half-hour segment seen at The Pillow, Caplan creates a near seamless compilation of the 15 days in which the dancers learned Reeder’s material. We see the dance from beginning to the end, but it’s not in a continuous spate of time. At the beginning of the rehearsal process (and the dance), the performers are tentative. Watching them is at times is cringe-making: many of the women have bodies of 12 years olds and their vamping like vaudevillians just doesn’t cut it. Yet by the end of the 15 days (and the end of the ballet), the dancers almost own the material. (And the pixy leg blond, who I noticed most, has acquired just enough je ne sais quoi to deliver a sexy backbend).

Ultimately, this section resembles time-lapse film. As the lithe dancers repeat, absorb, and own Reeder’s choreographic material, it’s like watching petals of an exotic flower opening in slow motion. When the dancers take command of the material, the film blossoms.

You can see three of the 20 segments of Caplan’s epic work on how a dance is created from the ground up by going to 15DaysOfDance.com. It’s worth the trip.

As for the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, where this free event took place, it is a dance Mecca. Anyone interested in the following—ballet, modern, jazz; Butoh, Flamenco, tap; dance film, dance history, and historical dance sites (the Pillow is a National Historic Landmark)—should make a pilgrimage to Becket, Massachusetts in the Berkshires. It’s only a 20-minute drive from Tanglewood. It’s beyond special. http://www.jacobspillow.org/

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Posted in The Torn Tutu | Comments Closed