COPYRIGHT LAWS ARE A B****! WHERE TO GET COPYRIGHT FREE MUSIC!

If you have ever seen any really big brand on the T.V, internet or even just a logo, you will have probably seen something to do with copyright.
Quite usually it comes down to this symbol:

For anyone who is new to the concept of copyright (and if you are new to it, what the hell have you been doing? :-D), it essentially a tag where if someone has a legal right to this process. Any major brand song? That's copyrighted to the music artist.

Now I could copy and paste an entire law stuff, but if you are really interested in the ins and outs of the copyright laws, click this link here: http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law

I won't go too into the copyright laws, but how it affects me as a film-maker and others like me is what we can use for free and what we need permission for.
For a lot of film-makers out there, we need resources we can use to help construct our videos. One of the biggest examples of these is music.

We can't go using tracks willy-nilly without peoples permission if a piece of music is copyright. For example: If I wanted to use one of Eminem's new tracks Berserk in a video of mine, I would need the creators permission to use it in my video and this permission would most likely include us giving the artists royalties (money) in return for using their track.

(There is a lot of text here, so I just wanted to break it up with a meme thats slightly relevant)

If we film-makers want to make some money off a film by monetising something or by using it for commercial purposes, we need copyright free or royalty free music.
With copyright free/ royalty free music we can use the tracks provided to us for whatever we want as long as we either credit the creator or in some cases pay for them.
It is true however, that you can see a lot of Youtube videos using popular tracks without the creator's permission. Now this is against copyright to use these tracks without their permission and without crediting them, but Youtube is a very lenient place for this stuff.
And I wouldn't think that the creators of these tracks would be searching 24/7 to find people who have used their tracks without their permission. There is just too much content in Youtube to comb over.

The problem for us film-makers how can we get music we can use for free?
There are 3 solutions to this problem:
1. Compose your own music
2. Get permission to use copyrighted tracks for free
3. Use Copyright Free Music

For me, because I'm not the most musically talented person, I use a lot of Copyright Free Music in my videos. I do compose music the odd time, but in order to save time its better to bring in tracks that are up and ready to go. If you believe you are musically talented enough to create your own music, be my guest. I may make another blog post later down the line showing you how to make a basic soundtrack for a video. But if you are looking for tutorials on how to compose, look here for tutorials on one of the most basic tools, GarageBand: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/How_to_score_with_GarageBand 

To help out anyone who does want to copyright free music, I have a list of places where you can get these tracks here at the bottom of this Blog post. I also have included a video created by Indy-mogul who covers the topic and what to look out for when using them as well having some links of their own to copyright free music.

Hope this is of some use to you!

http://www.youtube.com/user/FreebieFM
http://www.purple-planet.com/
http://www.royaltyfreemusicfree.com/
http://www.gumballmusic.com
http://www.downloadroyaltyfreemusic.org
http://www.royaltyfreeze.com
http://www.luckstock.com
http://dig.ccmixter.org/
http://www.jamendo.com/en/
http://www.musopen.org/
http://www.nosoapradio.us/
http://www.machinimasound.com/
http://www.firstcom.com/
http://www.freesound.org
http://www.sweetsoundeffects.com
http://www.mobygratis.com/film-music....
http://incompetech.com
http://joshwoodward.com
http://freemusicarchive.org
http://royaltyfreekings.com
http://mattmcfarland.com
http://audionautix.com
http://anthonykozar.net/music
http://freemusicforvideos.com
http://beatsroyaltyfree.com

NEW VIDEO!! That Moment When a Friend Cancels Plans

New That moment video! Sad one this time! Can you handle the feels?

I 


I think I may start making more videos like this alongside my comedy ones. Drama and that kinda stuff. THERE'S A DEVELOPMENT IN THE CHANNEL!

I've been wanting to make a more drama like video for a while, and this is just a taste of what is yet to come!

NEW VIDEO YET AGAIN! AND IT'S TOPICAL!

2 videos in 3 days? I'M ON A ROLL!

Say hello to a video inspired off a blog post of mine. Enjoy! :-D

GOOGLE IS STUPID! R.I.P Youtube Video Responses

Okay, so when I say Google is stupid, maybe its a bit of a strong term. I'll rephrase it:

I don't understand some of Google's decisions.

And that's the truth.
Quite recently, Youtube cancelled the Video Response feature. It actually stopped being used on the 12th of September.

Now I don't want to go on a rant here, but I don't understand this executive decision to take away something that is a brilliant way for the community of Youtube to interact with each other. Not only that, but it allows people to get more attention for their similar content.

Google has announced, saying that in order for people to better interact with their fans they are going to invest time in creating new ways for the user to connect with their fans.
Even the words here are brilliant. We may take this as a sign of what Google thinks that Youtube and its users is. The people who make content are essentially mini celebrities and the people who watch them are fans.

As much as this language could be taken for granted and say its nothing, we can see it differently if we look at Youtube as a different kind of place to them. Youtube is a community to some people, and because of this decision, some people won't be able to connect as well as they would want to with their audience.

There has been a suggestion that they may allow Youtube links to be included in comment sections now, which I don't understand. It would mean that people would have to fish through the massive amounts of comments there to find these videos when before they could be just seen in a completely different section of the video.

In their Youtube section that explains how to make a video response, they wrote this:


Video responses are going away. On 12 September we’ll be sunsetting the video response feature, and video responses will no longer be shown below the video player. Video responses are rarely played (the click-through rate on video responses is 0.0004%), so we're investing in new, more effective engagement features instead.

Now, thinking that Google has people who perhaps have waaaaaay bigger brains than ours, perhaps they do have a better way to connect content creators with their audience. But why don't they just release this new change while getting rid of the other.

 Instead they are leaving people dry of this new feature, saying its going to be great. A promise is sometimes not good enough, but hopefully Google knows what its doing and will come up with a better solution to this problem than they have with other recent changes they have made i.e Youtube layout and paid subscription channels.

Well, I guess that was kind of a small rant. I just don't understand these decisions that Google and Youtube make sometimes. I know everyone dislikes change in one way or the other, but all we can do is hope for the best in this situation.
And right now it seems like I'm making this out to be worse that it seems.

I guess I'll just lighten the mood with a.......

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RANDOM VIDEO TIME!!

A VIDEO IS BORN!! NEW YOUTUBE CHANNEL TRAILER!!!

Say hi to my new fancy Youtube Channel Trailer. This bad boy will appear every time someone who hasn't subscribed to me visits my Youtube channel!

Have a looksy :-D



So yeah, after a month's hiatus from my Youtube channel, I'm finally BACK! Expect more videos on the way ladies and gentleman, I am READY FOR ACTION!!!

Everything is a learning experience

A while ago I released a trailer for a 5 minuite short film I made called "What you deserve". IN the description I did say this was going to be the next thing I released.
Well guess what? I lied! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!

All jokes aside, I'm actually rather disappointed by it.

You see I have a code when it comes to uploading things to the internet. When I have made something, I take one final look at it and ask "Am I proud of this?" If the answer is no, then I scrap it. And this happened with "What You Deserve". 

Original What You Deserve was a college project and unfortunately I wasn't able to use my own personal equipment. Because of this, the overall production quality went down a lot and because of other restrictions it went down in quality in other places as well. 

The end product got full marks at college, but when I looked at it for another point of view. A view for publication on the internet, I just didn't like it.

I'll give you some idea of what it is about.

Agent Soloman gets a job for a man called Stephen Hollywell, a man who is rather high up in the business world. We follow Soloman as goes to complete his job and gives him What he Deserves! With the help of comedy relief character Jhonny.

The script was fairly solid, however its the execution that could have been done better. The stalking was rushed, the characters were likeable but quite undeveloped and the acting in some parts was atrocious.

However there is some things to learn from this experience. From it I was able to try out shooting a dialogue scene, shooting a scene in public, trying out my spider rig and being able to direct a team of people. It was also useful as I now know a guy who is my regular Assistant Director.

I guess the point to my rambling here is that even if you have projects that fail, you learn something from them. Its never a waste of time if you learn something.

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RANDOM VIDEO TIME!!!

Writers Block? Maybe.......

So yeah, as of recently if you are subscribed to my Youtube channel (and if not, here is a link to my channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/profkranc) then you may have noticed that my channel has lacked channel updates for quite a while now.
Truth be told, its because I have writers block.

If you create any type of art then you will have come across a part in your life where the ideas just stop. Your mind river has it a blockage. And you just can't get rid of it.
I will say I have got a few scripts that I could dig out and get into production, but these scripts are of rather large productions and would take ages to make.

But right now, I'm really dissapointed that I can't just work through it.

There are two main ways to get past writers block.
The first is to ignore the task. Get away from it and inspiration will eventually come.
The second is too power through it. Force yourself to write and see what comes out.

But the problem with me is, I don't even have a fresh starter idea to work on.

But don't take this and start thinking that I've ran out of juice (awesome metaphor there :-p). I just need to get my head straight and keep going. Something will come out eventually......

In the meantime, I will still blog. I don't have writers block for blogging, just for vids. Hopefully after this blog post, I will finally be able to get something out for you to watch or get excited about :-).

Also, to keep you occupied:

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RANDOM VIDEO TIME!!

I can't wait for the Superman vs Batman movie, can you? :-D

YOUTUBE CONSULTATION ADVICE: MAKE IT PRETTY

As I said in one of my previous posts, while I was at Summer in the City I visited a Youtube consultation area in which I got advice from Youtube staff in how to make my channel better. And so, in these small little blog entries I will tell you what they helped me with.

Would you Rather?

As the title would suggest, the Youtube staff advised me to try and make my Youtube channel and content more visually attractive to the audience. Looking at it now, it seems really simple. Would you subscribe to a channel that looks like this:

Or would you rather subscribe to a channel that looks like this:

Obviously you would subscribe to the second one. It seems to have had more effort put into it. There are a few important elements in this channel that were specifically pointed out to me by the Youtube staff.

Attracting viewers! What can you do?

The first was a profile picture/ Youtube avatar. Before, it was a blue square that was standard for Youtube channels without assigned pictures. The Youtube staff told me that when someone looked up your channel or when it happened to pop up in a search, you want to advertise to the viewer. Make the channel look interesting and draw them in.
This is the same for when it comes to custom youtube thumbnails.

On Youtube, there is a partner program which gives you certain benefits which can help buff up your channel. This includes custom thumbnails.
Now you can see that some of the bigger Youtubers, if not all of them, use custom thumbnails in all of their videos. This is because it makes the video look more visually attractive. I unfortunately haven't added custom thumbnails to my videos as of yet, but I do plan to in order to try and get more viewers in.

The staff then told me about trying to make your channel then more attractive to people once they arrive at your channel.

Make a Youtube Banner!

They told me to do was make some Youtube banner art for my channel. You can see my Youtube channel art here:

As you can see, it is very simple. Literally it is a special font and edited to make it look like it is glowing and an added lens flare cause they are cool :-D. Even though it is simple, it still make the channel look nicer and more professional. Because of this, we encourage the viewer to believe that we are professional and put effort into Youtube.
You can go all complicated with your design, but I believe making it simple is better. I also chose it to go this way because I didn't know what else to do at the time :-p.

If you are wanting to make a Youtube banner, you do have to follow certain guidelines when uploading it.
Youtube, of coarse being weird, only accepts banner art that is 2120 pixels by 1192 pixels in size. But to help with creating a Youtube banner, here is an image to help with it:

http://www.customermagnetism.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/youtube-one-channel-template-r1.jpg

Click the image to go to the original link. Download it, it should help :-)

Anyway, with that the Youtube staff just advised me to make the videos themselves look as attractive as possible for viewing with:

• A Nice structure to the video
• Good video quality
• Good Sound Quality
• Quality Content

Conclusion! 

In any case, everything I have written in this blog post has all been about appearance. Appearance on Youtube is a key thing to gaining subscribers and viewers to both your videos and your channel. Keep that in mind if you start a Youtube channel :-D

With this small amount of knowledge I pass onto you my friends :-). I hope it helps. There will be more as this isn't the only knowledge that was given to me. Stay tuned!

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RANDOM VIDEO TIME!!!