Dropped Frames

Music is constantly intertwined with our daily experiences, whether we’re watching television, shopping at the grocery store or driving in our cars with the stereo on. There’s much talk in forums and on blogs about whether it’s appropriate to use music in news videos. In most cases, I would say you probably shouldn’t. But I would argue that if your video is in the vein of a mini-doc and isn’t hard news, then perhaps the line becomes a little more grey.

I think you should always question yourself hard when considering music. Is this song too dramatic? Will this music detract in any way? Does video really NEED music? Then get a second or third opinion. I’ve seen some otherwise decent videos go wrong quick with poor music choice.

I think music can sometimes make a nice pacing medium. If you are only using one voice, it can break up the monotony of asking your listener to sit and listen to the same interview for a few minutes. However, I think it shouldn’t be an excuse for not having good nat sound.

I get peeved whenever I find one of my photographs used somewhere without the permission of either the paper or myself. It’s just seems like good karma to ask permission when appropriating someone else’s work, not to mention the legalities of fair use are a bit ambiguous. Three times I’ve used music in newspaper videos and each time I got permission a different way.

The first was in Ian’s Peace. My heart was set on Aphex Twin’s “QKThr.” Weeks earlier, SNL used a sample from Aphex’s song “Avril 14th.” Apparently the song was not cleared in advance and the digital short has since been removed from both NBC’s site and Youtube for copyright infringement. You can see the SNL short towards the middle of this video.

I contacted the licensing folks at Chrysalis records and asked permission in writing and sent a hidden link to a draft of the video. After agreeing to a nominal fee, we were given the green light to use the song.

The N&O has an ASCAP license which allows us to choose from a vast library of music. I’m always surprised both by what songs I find and don’t find in their library. I attributed ASCAP for Nine Inch Nails’ “Persistence of Loss” in Promise of Protection.

A few weeks ago, my wife came across the album Soundtrack to a Vacant Life by Benn Jordan, better known as The Flashbulb. Turns out Benn is sick of the culling pennies on the dollar through iTunes sales.

Benn wrote a Please Read file and uploaded high quality rips of his album to a private bittorrent server. According to Benn’s blog, the experiment of purposely leaking his album to “pirates” at least paid off in terms of free publicity .

I particularly liked the first track, “Prelude” and thought it would be appropriate for the latest video I was working for a five part series on the failure of mental health reform in NC. So I did a google search and found that Benn was represented by Vapor, a music composition, licensing, and sound design company. Through Vapor, Benn’s work was used in the Dove Evolution ad (one of my favorite viral campaigns).

I called Vapor and explained that I would love to use “Prelude” in a short documentary news video and I had a very limited budget (more specifically no budget). I emailed along a few samples of my videos that featured music and crossed my fingers. Within a day I had an answer. We could use the song and Benn and Vapor agreed not to charge us! They even went so far as to give me access to alternative versions of the song.

Last Thursday, we posted the minute-long trailer on newsobserver.com, two days before the series “Mental disorder: Failure of reform” ran in the paper or online. The trailer featured Benn’s song, short B-roll clips, photographs, and three lines of text: Millions of dollars wasted… Dozens of avoidable deaths… Six months of News & Observer investigation…Friday morning the director of the NC mental health system “retired”. Coincidence?