Getting An Early Start

As soon as I discovered that we creating a music video as part of our second year coursework I was ecstatic. This is something I've wanted to do for a very long time and was thrilled by the idea that we'd get to pick our own artist and song.

The thought that followed immediately after was exactly what should I choose? There were so many different songs that I loved and could easily come up with creative videos for. And then I bought Paramore's new album. The whole self-titled album was an absolute triumph and I knew that I would revel at the opportunity to create a video of one of these songs. Better still, only two of the tracks - 'Now' and 'Still Into You' - were released as singles and so were, and are, the only ones which had pre-existing music videos (with the exception of a member exclusive video for 'Anklebiters' which came out recently). This was great, as after listening to the album just a couple of times I was drawn towards '(One of Those) Crazy Girls' and had already come up with some ideas.

The only problem was that I knew that I needed to ask permission, and well, Paramore are pretty big. I knew getting hold of them would be hard, but I still tried tweeting Hayley Williams, the lead singer, as you can see below:

I had little faith that she would reply as she has over 3,000,000 followers and my tweets most likely became swamped in the massive backlog she receives every day. So, I went onto the Fueled By Ramen website (Paramore's record company) and found some contacts that I could potentially go out and e-mail.

Despite being unable to obtain specific permission, I did a little research and it seems that I should be able to use the song anyway. This is to do with the 'Fair Use'. The Fair Use Doctrine is a part of copyright law that gives users the right to use copyrighted material without expressed permission. When uploading both of my lip sync videos to YouTube, a warning pops up, notifying the video publisher that they have submitted copyrighted content, stating that it will therefore not be able to be viewed in some countries. However, to bypass this, uploaders can dispute that there content does not infringe the terms of use in copyright, due to Fair Use.

For the task ahead, there isn't necessarily a need to make a dispute as the video is not intended to be public and will be uploaded as 'Private' so that only those with the link and the uploader can view it.

The important thing in this situation however is that this particular song may not be the one I use for my exam. I need to know what marks I should be hitting before I get too carried away or set on an idea. But, at least I can say I have something I could work with and also that I am a little more knowledgeable about how copyright affects my plans.