JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Music Licensing Opportunity (Indie Feature Film)

Brian,

Thanks for the kind words. I do appreciate it. It's always a challenge when working on these indie films.

One thing that I didn't mention before and it might shed some light on the situation. The music that is temped in the film was selected by the director over a long period of time. He actually put a lot of thought in the music that he wanted in the film and thought that he would be able to license the songs. The problem was, he didn't realize how expensive it was going to cost until I did a budget analysis. That was an eye opener.

During all that time, the producer was trying to secure funding that could have covered a majority of the existing music but the funding did not come through. This is partly what created the delay in me knowing what the music budget was going to be and being able to start looking for music..

I did, however, reach out to some of the music reps that I have long standing relationships with (some over 10 years) and I knew that they would be able to work with what ever limited music budget I had to work with. Songs had started coming in and the director has been very selective and has not made any final decisions yet. There are songs that could end up being the final song but he wants to wait to see what else comes in. I just could not go public with my music searches because I had to have a budget so I knew what I could offer.

As I mentioned in my preview post, the film festival selection is what made time a bit more of an issue. This was the main kick in the butt. It's a good kick because getting selected into film festivals is one of the goals.

My decision to come to JFP folks was not out of desperation in the looming deadline. It was because I remember helping one of our members, Glynda Duncan, and almost getting one of her songs in a film back in 2008. I decided to come back and see what's been going on here and thought that I need to become active here again and start posting all of the films that I music supervise. So that's the plan going forward.

I guess I'm so used to these situations that I don't panic or worry. After 90+ films, I've experienced good situations and some really horrible ones.

When I music supervised "Old Fashioned" back in 2014, I had started off with a smaller music budget and cleared 38 indie songs in about the same amount of time. We ended up getting a bit more funding and some of it went towards the music. It was a great experience and a huge challenge. In the end, we had a great soundtrack that complemented the film. Milan Records released the movie soundtrack album in 2015. There were 20 tracks on that soundtrack album with 12 tracks being the indie songs that I licensed for the film. The composer's score was the eight other tracks. So these awesome indie artists got their music licensed in an small, low budget indie film that almost grossed $2M at the box office and they got their music licensed again in the soundtrack album. It was great for everyone involved.

So, I guess what I'm triyg to say is, situations like this are not always as bad as them seem. And I typed way too much.