Video montage in a musical

[eamon]

Hi all

 

I am looking for some information on the use of a video montage of licensed released films in a paid public performance.

The show in question is 'Mack & Mabel' and calls for a montage of the directors previous films

 

Albeit this is a musical society canon, I am not a musical fan so have never seen this show before.

 

My question being is how have people who have performed said musical worked on the issue of securing rights?

I appreciate I am based in Ireland and am following up licensing here. I know a film itself is straightfoward but am unsure

what is the stance when faced with an edited montage of a selection of films.

 

Just looking for info when I speak to the powers that be.

 

 

Cheers

 

eamo

[Jram]

When a local am-dram group did it (easily 12 years ago now), they took the leads down to a local park, in costume, and recreated key scenes. Mainly it just involved a pretty actress in distress, a hero to save the day, and a baddy with top hat and moustache that he could twirl menacingly.

 

Worked very well, even if you could see the motorway in the back of some shots ;) So yeah, film your own stuff in black and white and add some kind of flicker/grain to the footage - that's how that group got round the issues.

[eamon]

Hi Jram

 

cheers for the advice. That thought had crossed my mind

 

the show is coming upon me soon and they only mentioned this recently. Think some strong words are going to be had.

 

Will propose this but know I am going to be in front of a wall in a swinging my head motion...

 

Cheers

 

eamon

[Jivemaster]

If the play/musical is licensed for their production, then ask the rights owners if they have an approved video clip for the purpose called for in the script, or an approved supplier of that video montage that is licensed for production. After all the rights owners have required you to produce the work as licensed, so they might help with the important bits!

[eamon]

Hi

 

That was one of me thoughts.

 

Just wanted to get some back ground info before I place boot in the prosterior of the nice man I am dealing with....

 

 

many thanks

 

eamon

[Nick S]

Several of Mack Sennett's films are in the public domain, and freely available at http://archive.org

 

Could you use some of these for your montage, and then avoid the rights issue entirely?

[KevinS]

Several of Mack Sennett's films are in the public domain, and freely available at http://archive.org

 

Could you use some of these for your montage, and then avoid the rights issue entirely?

 

Not this side of the pond where our copyright laws are different - Archive.org is a US site and "freely available/downloadable" does not neccessarily equate to "free to use" here.

 

In the EU the copyright (in a film) runs until 70 years after the death of the author or principal director. Mack Sennett died in 1960 so we have a while to wait before his creations are in the public domain here.

 

Also, any easily-available, licensed copies (eg on retail DVD) of Sennett's films and similar will be the copyright of whichever company is marketing them. Doesn't neccessarily mean you can't use them but they are likely to want to extract a pocketful of Euros from you for doing so.

 

Making your own mock-ups or contacting the Mack and Mabel rights holder to establish if there is an available rights-cleared montage is probably the safest way forward bearing in mind we are dealing with some big name rights holders such as Warner Bros, Paramount etc.

 

KS