So, fast-forward to March 2007, and Magnatune is presenting a workshop on music licensing at the film festival portion of South by Southwest. Because I'd proposed the session, I got to name it: "Epic Music for your Film on a Not-so-Epic Budget," and I saw it as a chance to present key information that I felt had been overlooked in the big BMI-sponsored session in the previous year.
Easier said than done, as it turns out.
The room in which the workshop was held was full to capacity, with several people standing against the walls. Magnatune's founder John Buckman was our own representative. As his co-panelists the SXSW folks had chosen Jason Janego, Head of Business & Legal Affairs for Magnolia Pictures (Murder Party, Crazy Love, Jesus Camp, Fay Grim), and entertainment lawyer Roger Kass of RingTheJing Entertainment, whatever that is.
No moderator had been assigned to the session, so things started in a rather free-form fashion. It soon became clear that there were several musicians in the room, all of whom wanted to turn the topic from "how to license music for films" to "how to get my music into films." To help the panelists out, I began acting as a de facto moderator and tried to steer things back toward the filmmakers' needs.
Now, Magnolia Pictures is a deeply cool production and distribution company. Really, they don't come much cooler. Their work, their choices, their commitment to truly interesting material—it's exceptional and they've put out some great stuff in recent years. So it really surprised me when Jason Janego advised the audience to "just use any music" in their films. For someone sitting on a music-in-film panel, he didn't seem very enthusiastic about the aesthetic role music plays in the medium, and if he had any pointers on how to find/license good music on a limited budget, he didn't mention them. He doesn't work on production side, so I guess it's understandable, but I was somewhat disappointed on behalf of the audience. The RingTheJing guy might as well have not even been there. When he spoke at all it was in such a rarefied patois of industry and legal jargon that went straight over the participants' heads. John was the sole panelist to offer some basic, cost effective strategies, but they mostly hinged on Magnatune's music licensing service—a great option, but also very unique in the industry.
At the session came to a close and the participants began gathering up their things, I mentioned to them that I'd brought some free copies of a rough, step-by-step guide I'd just started on the general/overall music licensing process, including strategies for getting any label to work within a smaller budget. Well, they cleaned me out—took every single copy I had, and I continued to get multiple requests for more at our booth throughout the week. By the time the festival was over, I was on a first name basis with the folks at Kinko's in downtown Austin.
The entire experience was my second taste of how difficult it is for beginning filmmakers to get thorough information on the music licensing process, even when I myself had proposed the workshop that was supposed to have presented it to them. Once again, I emailed the SXSW programming folks to share my impressions. I suggested that next year they might consider including a few panelists from their own annual crop of featured directors and/or music supervisors, especially those who have managed to craft incredible soundtracks on smaller budgets—like Jamie Babbit of Itty Bitty Titty Committee or Gary Hustwit of Helvetica.
Another thing I did was decide to expand the music licensing guide and make it more widely available—something that should happen shortly on this blog.
More in tomorrow's thrilling Part III conclusion!
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