Thread: Need some direction

Anyone have any ideas about who to contact to find out about SONG copyright permissions in LOS?

Just sitting down to begin the (hopefully) not-too-arduous task of securing permission to include a Thai song in a film.

Some of you may remember my Korean mate who studied film in Cali. Well, the two of us are in the end stages of production on our first docu. collaboration.

In so doing we chose several songs from 'Royalty free music" during the editing phase but this one Thai song works so well with a certain sequence of scenes that we included it without permission. Now, as we prepare for festival submission, we're a bit stuck on what to do.

On the one hand we could take a risk, do nothing and hope no-one who is connected to the singer/band ever sees the film (quite possible as our target audience is Westerners).

On the other hand, (if I knew who to contact) I could feel it out and simply say that we are planning a film, and may we use your song(?), etc. It's a popular enough Thai song that most Thais would recognize it and the singer at the chorus.

Any ideas where to start? Before I started whacking away on google, I thought of you all.

ta for any info.

It's probably not the best idea to post it, but I will PM the title/artist to any posters I trust who think they (or their spouse) may know what office to contact.

@THX Pm sent

Funny how memory works. Can't find my keys, glasses etc. but I remember reading Somtow on the Bundit controversy a year ago on his blog in the nation. Here's one link and you'll find a few more posts in the same area of the blog. Indirectly related to your specific copyright request but maybe relevant in a broader way since you're producing a doc...

Somtow's World: And now ... back to Controversy ...

you'll need two sets of rights: the rights to the actual song and the rights to the recording itself. that's why you hear so many covers in movies. you may not have a problem with the artist, and you may not have a problem in Thailand in general, but if you ever want to distribute the thing it's extremely likely to spook potential distributors if you haven't cleared the music. distributors tend to not want to do *anything* that would risk even a superfluous lawsuit, even on a tiny film (for example, a friend of mine had to change the name of her film from Strawberry Fields to What Happened To Her? And the Strawberry Fields just because it *might* attract the attention of Beatles' lawyers, even though her title had to do with actual fields of strawberries...

oh and for the synch rights (the recording) you'll need to contact the record label, for the publishing rights (the song) the artist or publisher.

^
it would be 'trading on the name,' basically a bait-and-switch. if you name something after the title of a famous work, and it is thought that this title will attract people to your work because of false expectations of a connection, then you could conceivably be in trouble.

in my example it would be trading on the name in theory. in practice it was just distributor paranoia.