NoFilmSchool » music

Vimeo Launches Very Handy Music Store for Finding and Licensing Tunes for Your Videos

Koo — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:55:08 +0000

This makes so much sense, it’s a wonder the other video sharing services haven’t done this before (unless they have, and I missed it). Vimeo, home to a world of videomakers and creatives, has launched an easy and fast way to find and license music — legally — for your videos. Tracks start at $0.00 (there are a number of “free for personal use” tracks) and typically fall into two categories: $1.99 for personal licensing, and $98.00 for commercial licensing. (more…)

What Indie Filmmakers Can Learn from Kanye West

Koo — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:31:18 +0000

Today saw the iTunes-exclusive album release of Watch the Throne, a collaboration between rap megastars Kanye West and Jay-Z. What does this have to do with independent filmmaking? Good question. Regardless of what kind of music you listen to, I think there are some lessons to be learned from the career arc of Kanye West, as well as the digital-first distribution strategy the duo employed for today’s album release. Caution: this post is not going to win any awards for organization or brevity. I’m going to ramble on here: (more…)

Some Great Deals in Headphones: the Audio-Technica ATH-M50 and ATH-M35

Koo — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 21:36:06 +0000

I would be called an “audiophile” if I’d ever had enough money to actually buy top-quality audio equipment. In lieu of such funds, however, I’m often on the lookout for good deals in the audio world. And while I’m never going to spend $2,700 on a pair of headphones, if it were possible to get 50% as good sound for 5% of the price, I’d jump at that opportunity. So I went to B&H Photo to listen to dozens upon dozens of sets (unlike a lot of stores, B&H has many headphones — maybe 50 in all — plugged into the same source, with individual volume controls for each). After hours spent listening, here’s what I discovered: the Audio-Technica ATH-M50 ($120) and ATH-M35 ($55) sound as good as headphones costing several times as much. (more…)

Music vs. Silence: 5 Simple Rules for a Better Film

Koo — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 22:25:14 +0000

This is a guest post by musician Milosz Jeziorski.

Your most powerful asset as a filmmaker is understanding the tools available to tell your story. As filmmakers, we are creators and initiators of experiences and emotions. A film is ultimately successful when the audience can feel connected to the ‘emotional narrative’ the film traverses. If you’re a frequent reader of NoFilmSchool then you already have an edge in understanding the tools available for the visual aspect of film. This article aims to put you in control of the aural tools: sound and music. I’ve seen directors improve their films tenfold by taking the time to consider the role that sound and music play in a film. (more…)

Johnny Cash's Final Studio Album Gets a Beautiful Crowdsourced Music Video

Koo — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 12:49:13 +0000

What do you do when you have a final studio album from the late, great Johnny Cash, but no way to have the legendary man in black appear in the music video? Crowdsource it. This is what director Chris Milk has done with Cash’s song “Ain’t No Grave,” setting up a Flash-powered website that allows visitors to hand-draw individual frames of the video. The video is then dynamically pieced together from these frames, based on ratings by viewers — in this way, it is an always-changing work of art. Here’s the video in its current incarnation: (more…)

Das Racist's Music Video for 'Who's that Brooown' is a Game

Koo — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 21:38:57 +0000

This post won’t appeal to everyone, but even if you don’t listen to rap music — and “joke” rap at that — the group best known for last year’s novelty smash Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell has a new mix tape out, and to promote it they’ve created not a music video but a game. Regardless of whether you listen to classical or klezmer, hip-hop or happy hardcore, this is a very clever way of getting people to listen to a song repeatedly. (more…)

Watch The Walkmen Perform 'Lisbon' with Flash-based, Real-time, Multi-angle Switching

Koo — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 18:13:29 +0000

The Walkmen’s new album Lisbon is an aural treat, and they’ve been given the multi-angle treatment as part of Pitchfork’s POV Concert Series. The online player allows you to watch their show from any of six angles in real-time (or step back and watch all six angles at once). Here’s the POV interface: (more…)

Arcade Fire's 'The Wilderness Downtown' is a New Breed of HTML5 Music Video

Koo — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:04:29 +0000

I’m a few days late with this, and at the speed of the Internet that might make this old news. But as someone who’s currently evaluating the relative merits of HTML5 vs Flash (for the interactive implementation of my project 3rd Rail), I was intrigued by director Chris Milk’s interactive video for Arcade Fire’s latest album The Suburbs. Built entirely in HTML5 (which means you’ll need a compatible browser to experience it), the multiple window-spawning video makes very clever use of Google Maps and its streetview feature to personalize the video for your own hometown. (more…)

Radiohead's First Concert Film in 15 Years is Fan-made and Free

Koo — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 21:16:21 +0000

The best live show I’ve ever seen was Radiohead performing at All Points West just outside NYC here in 2008 (though this recent Flaming Lips show was pretty incredible too). Radiohead’s 25-song, two-encore set sounded amazing, the weather was great, and, well… it was Radiohead. I bring this up because the band, who famously self-released In Rainbows with a “pay what you want” model to great success, has just lent their music to a crowdsourced Czech concert film made up of 50 different amateur camera angles. Radiohead has much greater ownership of their music than most bands (they left their former label EMI because they wanted rights to the master recordings), and with ownership comes the ability to do something like this — just because they want to. In fact, this fan-filmed show — which has the same backdrop and a similar setlist to the show I witnessed — is their first concert film since 1995. And not only is it free, but the highest quality version is available not through iTunes or Amazon, but BitTorrent. (more…)

What do musicians earn? What if we had these statistics for filmmakers?

Koo — Thu, 20 May 2010 16:18:14 +0000

For a musician to earn a meager living (defined here as a minimum wage of $1,160 a month), how many self-pressed CDs do they have to sell out of the back of a truck every month? If they have a record deal and their music is listed on a subscription service like Rhapsody (a former employer of mine), how many streams do they have to generate to take home the same amount? David McCandless, author of the book The Visual Miscellaneum: A Colorful Guide to the World’s Most Consequential Trivia, has published detailed statistics for musicians (included below). What if we had these same numbers for filmmakers? (more…)

1,000 free songs from SXSW

Koo — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:00:57 +0000

As the SXSW music/interactive/film superfest kicks off in Austin this weekend, I was reminded of a comment made by this week’s interviewee Barry Jenkins. His film Medicine for Melancholy originally premiered at SXSW ’08, and later kicked off Independent Film Week (where I saw it). During the Q&A, Barry was asked where he’d found all the wonderful independent music in the film. His answer (I’m paraphrasing here): “I keep a playlist of songs in iTunes by unsigned bands that I think might work in a film.”

In this vein, SXSW offers a great opportunity even for those filmmakers who aren’t attending the conference. Bands playing at the festival typically release a free MP3 in advance of the show for promotional purposes; every year for the past five years, these MP3s have been collected and released as an unofficial torrent. This is a great opportunity to listen to a lot of music, from bands signed and unsigned. Of course, there’s no guarantee that an unsigned band will agree to let you use their music in your film, but the chances are certainly better in the situation where you can ask them directly, rather than deal with a label.

It’s my understanding that, because all of these songs have been publicly released gratis, this torrent is legal. I may be wrong, but either way no one’s going to get mad at your for downloading this compilation of over 1,000 free and current MP3s. If you need a bittorrent client, for the PC try uTorrent and for the Mac try Transmission.

Start that iTunes playlist in preparation for your next project, or just enjoy the tunes!

Link: SXSW Torrents