Copyrighted Music for Films entered in Film Festivals...

[Alex]

Each film & video festival has it's own rules.

Generally, if your film is not selling anything, and you don't stand to make any money, and the festival has no prize money, copyrighted music in Film Festival entries may be allowed.

However, there is one more telling issue for determining if a festival can and cannot show your film.

If the film festival is charging admission when they screen the film, then copyrighted music that has not been cleared may not be allowed.

And finally, it doesn't hurt to ask the film festival!

[nahie]

A good way to avoid all that is to just have a local musician make some music for your movie. I've done that many times. It helps with the "legal" stuff and it can be fun to work with creative minds of other disciplines. Most of the time they do work for free but I have also paid some of them in various ways, not just with cash. Anyway it is also good to have "original" music because if you use a piece of music people have heard before, it tends to bring up memories they may have when they first heard that music, etc. and it may clash with your film.