Postcards & YouTube Music Copyrights

For the last several months I've been at odds with YouTube and their crackdown on copyright music in videos. I guess this is more about pressure from record companies than YouTube stopping it, but things are certainly changing.

While I've always respected copyrights when submitting to festivals, YouTube to me was more about free range. It was lip sync videos, fan videos, and home video put to music. While not everything is off limits, and while some copyrighted songs are still allowed to play - others are blocked months after a video was uploaded. This is the challenge I've been facing with some of my video postcards - my travel edits that I've uploaded.

It's difficult to say how serious an issue this is, as there's no list that says which songs are approved and which aren't. YouTube's audioswap feature is also available, put the choices in music are painfully bad and lame. It's worth removing the video and uploading it with a new track than settling on one of their options.

My newest videos often feature independent artists or royalty free music as to avoid this problem now - however, it's my older projects where there's background music playing that I'm concerned about. I suppose I'll just have to re-edit and re-upload if anything happens.

Here are two of my travel edits that I recently uploaded again. The nice thing about them is that they weren't cut specifically to any piece of music, so most songs compliment the footage. It just means a bit more work on my part and research for more talented independent musicians - not that I was taking credit for anyone elses music to begin with.

Driving Through Western Nebraska


Black Hills Photo Collage

Bellagio Fountain Remix

Somewhere between a series of animated ink blots or gushing oil geysers is where I'd categorize this latest edit. I had started out with the idea of making a short travel clip of the fountains at the Bellagio that I shot while on vacation in Las Vegas last November. The further I got into it the more I felt like switching things up.

If you want to experience what the fountains are really like you can go to Vegas yourself or watch one of the thousands of videos already uploaded on YouTube. I opted for some inverting, overlapping, and rhythmic cutting. It was fun playing with the patterns and motion in this short, which made experimenting easy - and then creating several variations after mixing it with the MGMT Kids Soulwax Nite Remix. Parts of my footage were filmed from the top of the Eiffel Tower at the Paris Hotel, and others at various points out front of the Bellagio itself. Yes, it's different, maybe even a little weird and/or pointless, but to me it sure feels energetic and cool.

Siblings (2008)

My sister was visiting and I said to her, like I say to almost everyone I know, 'We should make a movie'! It was July 2008 and I had the rough idea for Siblings in the back of my mind for a while. Nothing complicated, just a little flick about sibling rivalry and a punchline. The kind of short that doesn't take long to set up, and is so much more about playing around than specific shots.

While this project is far from my most ambitious work, it's the kind of short that I hope to make a lot more of.

With all the film school projects I feel like my portfolio is already heavily weighted in experiments, art shorts, video poems, etc. and the random comedies that everyone else uploads on YouTube are something that I'd like to have more of myself - even if it's just to attract a few more like-minded viewers. Pull 'em in with the popcorn flicks, make 'em stay for the art.

Siblings was almost entirely devised on the spot. Like I said, I had a rough idea about my sister and I playing in the playground entirely because it just seemed like it'd be funny. The punchline of the short was a product of the shoot. Originally, the ending we discussed involved my sister and I sitting on a park bench, my sister still grumpy and emotionless, we're both drinking slurpees. I'm beaming ear to ear after playing on all the equipment, my sister chucks her slurpee at me and says 'Now can we do something that I want to do'!



That ending would've worked well too I think, but the idea for the change came on the walk back from getting the slurpees. We thought it would be a funny twist if instead of being emotionless the whole time, my sister finally cracks on the merry-go-round and has a bit of fun . . . which ultimately leads to the revised twist. And there's the dynamic between my sister and myself in a nutshell - at least in my comedic view.

A couple months later, I was playing with the Siblings footage trying out some new filters and effects that I had just purchased. What resulted was a the Siblings Remix, mainly just an animated music video playing on the footage we shot that day cut to a remix of Coldplay's Viva la Vida. The remix video doesn't really add anything new, but as far as editing exercises go it was fun to make and seemed worth sharing. The animated nature of the footage was perfect for trying different things, so I guess it was only a matter of time before something else came out of it. For being so simple, it sure makes for an entertaining family home video.

Also, check out the surprsing sequel, Siblings 2!