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Music for client–Pulling Hair Out.
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dewolfemusic.com is your friend.
Make your own selects and let em watch the finished video. Much easier and quicker this way.
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The customer is only always right when they are ordering a cheeseburger. When they are ordering a video, they are admitting they know nothing about making them…hence the hiring of profressionals.
You have to make a cheesburger their way because they usually really do know how to make one.
Good video is made by asking the client how much they have to spend and when it’s gotta be done. That’s all they need to have answers for. If they have more than that, that can grab a camcorder and a laptop and have their son crank it out for em.
Allowing a client, in this case, to prolong and consfuse the issue with a mute point only prolongs and consfuses the issue. They want a video. Make em one. -
Franklin, I may have said it first, but you articulated it much better, kudos.
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We used to use DeWolfe a lot, it was very nice, but it got too rich to keep signed up.
Nowadays, we mostly use a buy-out library of Music Bakery stuff or more and more often, we roll our own using Sonicfire Pro or Garage Band.
Sounddogs is a very neat source online, especially when you need an obscure yet afordable sound effect at 1 in the morning, but they have some nice music cuts as well.
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[Mark Suszko] “We used to use DeWolfe a lot, it was very nice, but it got too rich to keep signed up”
I believe what Mark is speaking of is an annual blanket, wherein your annual usage of music is estimated and you pay a fixed fee per year.
Yes, for some this can get pricey. Especially during unsure market conditions.
I don’t know about DeWolfe but, as an alternative, many companies offer music for a “laser drop” fee. (From the days of vinyl 33rpm records of production music when a “needle drop” meant an individual selection.) With drops you pay for music as used and relative to the distribution.
For example many of the kinds of shows we create are for use by corporate sales people and fewer than 500 copies are ever made. On this type of use we pay (without looking it up) say a $100 for a use of a single track. More often than not our shows are several minutes in length and we purchase a “production blanket” which gives unlimited use for up to ten minutes, for, something like $350. If the client wants to put the show on the internet — therefore reaching potentially many more people — the cost jumps to about $750.
The other end of the spectrum would be a producer who wanted to use production music in a theatrically-released feature film and the fee would be in the tens of thousands.
Production music is a valuable resource that can be as simple and cheap as something you create yourself in SonicFire and as complex as a hiring a music house to write and produce a piece, using the London Philharmonic orchestra so in the end you and your production alone own it. It all depends on what your budget is.
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What makes dewolfe cool is they haggle and are happy to charge one blanket fee per production. No need to even count needle drops when that is the case. Unless a client requests a specific “raindrops keep falling on my head”, they simply don’t register it otherwise.
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Franklin-
Love the list. What would #4 say about the flying logo?
(I’m thinking “Sorry…I don’t do flying logos in MY videos”!)
J Cummings
Cameralogic/Chicago
cameralogic.tv
HDX-900/HDW-730S/DXC-D50 -
Yeah no flying logos for #4 haha
Frank
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FranklinMcMahon.com -
I have an alternative approach to this problem. It’s not too client friendly but does eliminate your headaches, fustration, and the hours you will spend in researching alternative music.
If you have an ulimited usage contract with an online music library (such as grooveaddicts, killer tracks, etc); give the client the online search engine web address for your music library and have them find the exact track that they want to use. Once they find the music they like, have them send you an email with the CD title and Track Number that they picked out.
Most online music libraries will allow most anyone with internet access to search and listen to their music tracks but require an active account to have the ability to download them.
Like I said this is not a client friendly approach to the problem, but it will relieve your headaches and stress. And it will also motivate clients, who have grinders and control freaks mentality, to invest their own time in searching for music or accept your original professional recommendations.
I have only applied this approach twice in my career. Once for a client who was dragging their feet on a project for a better part of 6 months and once for a client who wanted to control every aspect of their video project.
Thought I throw my 2 cents in, hope it helps.
Eric Christians
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I used to do something like that in the old linear editing days, when each edit took longer to do. If a particular client was slowing me down or otherwise being an impediment, I’d send them off to a nearby room to screen a stack of about 25 CD’s for a music cut they liked. Good for at least an hour’s uninterrupted, peaceful work:-) It also made them feel like they were doing something useful, and within their technical ability, and really, they were.
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