High School Arts Video Production Curriculum


Video Production Curriculum

VIDEO COPYRIGHT LAWS AND ISSUES

FAIR USE - USE IT OR LOSE IT

Stay Free! High School Media Literacy Curriculum
How did Mad Hot Ballroom survive the copyright cartel?
Answer: by limiting music that played in classrooms, haggling over clearance fees, and cutting out a scene.
Sewell: We first cleared music for two years for festival use, and then went back and negotiated for worldwide commercial use in all media, for perpetuity. It was extremely expensive. For most films, music licensing is 1 to 10 percent of the production budget; ours came in at 45 percent: $140,000.
The biggest problem was granting Most Favored Nation status. [Granting a rights holder Most Favored Nation status requires giving them the highest fee you pay for a comparable song. For example, if Warner Chappell asks $10,000 for a clip but you have to license a Sony clip for $12,000, you'd have to also give Warner Chappell $12,000 if it has MFN status. - ed.] I would only agree to that for the classics. Things like Frank Sinatra hits.
How much did it cost for the average song?
Sewell: It depends on how many entities are attached to it. Our typical total cost for a classic was about $15,000-20,000, split between publisher and master rights. With the Rocky Theme, the publishers didn't want to overexpose the song. That was the issue with Ray Charles' "Hit the Road Jack" as well.