No plagiarism, but ...

A forum for sharing views on the art of film, video and AV sequence making as well as on competitions, judging and festivals.
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TimStannard
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No plagiarism, but ...

Post by TimStannard »

... an observation on copyright.

Last evening at Staines we watched a selection fo films from BIAFF 2013. Among those we watched were two animations based on poems. One of them, the Diamond Award winning "The Jumblies", was based on Edward Lear's poem and "Red Riding Hood and the Wolf" was a poem by Roald Dahl. Whilst the former is out of copyright I wonder whether the maker of the second had actually obtained permission to use the work. I've no reason to believe he had not, but there was no indication in the credits that permission had been granted.

I am raising this as I suspect that a large number of members/entrants (most of whom I'm sure are aware of copyright concerning the use of music) are not even aware that permission to use written work is required.

The IAC/PPL/MCPS licence does not cover this. When I recently filmed a school prizegiving (I know!) which contained a couple of poetry recitations, I had had to contact the publishers of both poets (one who is still very much alive and another who has not been dead for seventy years) in order to obtain licences. The video was for personal use by staff and parent, was not being offered for sale and both rights holders allowed me to use the material without any charge although the terms under which I could distribute the DVDs and the quantity were very strictkly defined.

Broadening the conversation a little, whilst i do think that setting someone else's work to a video has much merit (especially for those of us who struggle to come up with ideas) a lot iof the reactions I saw in the audience were all to do with the poem and nothing to do with the video - I would hope that the judges take such matters into account. I would encourage the makers to team up with another non-commercial talent who has the story-telling ability, in order to create a truly unique work. There must be thousands of unpublished or self-published poets out there who's be only too flattered to have their work made into a film.

As an aside, I found the Lego film (Red Riding Hood) a much better experience as the images and narration worked together both in terms of timing and the humour in the characters seemed to reflect perfectly the humour in Dahl's lines.

In the case of "The Jumblies", the narration was delivered in a rather flat manner. The undeniably technically excellent and artistically clever animation detracted from the narration and vice-versa. This wasn't helped by the fact that the event being narrated rarely matched the event being shown on the screen. As a result I found my concentration constantly switching between the visuals and the audio ("Oh, that's referring to the pink paper and pin we saw 20 seconds ago") and I found myself switching off well before the end. This was a shame as it looked absolutely stunning.
Tim
Proud to be an amateur film maker - I do it for the love of it
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FredD
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Location: The New Forest, Hampshire.

Re: No plagiarism, but ...

Post by FredD »

quote.......I would encourage the makers to team up with another non-commercial talent who has the story-telling ability, in order to create a truly unique work. There must be thousands of unpublished or self-published poets out there who's be only too flattered to have their work made into a film.......'

A site worth investigating in this context is :
http://www.moviepoet.com

Fred
"Films are never released, they escape !" Ben Burtt
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TimStannard
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Joined: Fri Feb 11, 2011 5:20 pm
Location: Surrey

Re: No plagiarism, but ...

Post by TimStannard »

FredD wrote: A site worth investigating in this context is :
http://www.moviepoet.com
Thanks for the link , Fred. I fear I'm going to be wasting quite a lot of time on this site instead of completing a documentary I filmed in 2010 and family videos going back to 2008!
Damn you, Internet!
Tim
Proud to be an amateur film maker - I do it for the love of it
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