Musical soundtrack poll

[RonTheLogician]

Originally Posted by Anoree

...a big appeal of Danielle's videos (or FTV Girls' for that matter) for me is that I hear the genuine reaction or interaction. With a soundtrack playing, I see that getting lost. Dancing videos exempt, of course.

Originally Posted by danielle_ftv

This is the main reason right here that I will not be putting music to my videos.

Well, guys, this is no different than for any other type of film. e.g. Look at any feature film (even musicals) of the hundreds you no doubt already know: you won't hear music playing all the time, but only when it is needed. You'll never hear Tara's Theme drowning out Clark Gable when he tells Vivien Leigh Frankly Scarlett, I don't give a damn! But you will hear music in isolation - or craftily overlaying speech at just the right volume - when appropriate.

Originally Posted by Anoree

Unfortunately, I see a couple of problems ahead if Danielle were to publish videos with soundtracks.

For one, good videos with soundtrack have a different style to them than "pure" ones.

I agree that cinema verite is a genre in its own right. But I was proposing a more polished style.

Originally Posted by Anoree

...Another big part is Copyright Infringement.

Not for a moment did I suggest undertaking piracy! That's why the poll proposal text explicitly cites licensing costs!

I regret to say I am so old that I was creating (documentary) film by the year Danny was born. And I've always scrupulously respected all intellectual property in doing so.

Originally Posted by Anoree

...in some countries (especially Germany, where I live) the videos aren't available on YouTube anymore, just because of the music.

The last time I checked, YouTube has deals with three of the four "super-labels," by which means the property of the first three are conditionally unmolested when posted. Sometimes the owner acquiesces to publication and takes a (very tiny!) fee generated by the ads, and sometimes the owner vetoes publication. YouTube's AI has signatures for the various recordings, which lets it do a good job automatically recognizing even small portions of extant works, making the police work very cheap. Given the harsh reality of life in the dirt-cheap-digital-storage age, labels should be grateful for YouTube, because at least they get something - rather than the nothing they'd get if all piracy was redirected into the shared storage, torrent, etc. world - which would also (sadly!) speed up the general public's education in - and use of - same.

Originally Posted by Anoree

..Apart from the difficult task to select an appropriate music theme, the video itself would need to get cut to the rhythm of the song.

Nope. Excluding musicals, film directors constrain the music to the action, i.e. their artistic vision. The musicians (and the actors and scriptwriters, too) work for the director - not the other way around. Granted, some directors are more liberal, and some more authoritarian. Please notice that music is very structured, so that even existing songs are easily and rapidly reworked as needed: e.g. you can snip out a couple of stanzas, loop them, and even vary the tempo (at constant pitch!) to fit any given interval of time. And all in a jiffy on a powerful machine - not like the Bad Old Days of videotape which I once endured.

Originally Posted by Anoree

...This can be done relatively easy if you use small snippets of different videos... but is a huge challenge on videos the length Danielle creates. I'm sure Danielle could produce these videos in high quality, but it would be a long tedious process.

I will agree that scoring film is an art, just like doing the cinematography. That's why the poll proposal text explicitly cites editing costs! And how much buyers would pay would determine how good a job was affordable: 2% solutions are very different from 50% ones; but both exist.

Well, Danny has vetoed the use of music, and so the discussion is over. But I remember reading she once taught dancing, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to raise the issue. By the way, I seem to recall that the (retired) K M already did Dancing With the Porn Stars - but I guess new episodes shot in Tempe are possible!