How to License Music for Movies

The cost to license music can vary from $0 to a million for a song. As a director, I prefer using music that’s already been made rather than working with a composer. There’s something special about musicians who created from their own inspiration and passion and whose music can also help my movie. Working with a composer has a time and a place, but generally, my first option is to place music and learn how much it costs, so that is what this article focuses on.

The legal side of things

I’m not a legal professional, but I’ll explain what I've learned in the simplest terms possible. 

For movies, you need two licenses to use a recorded song: 

1. The publishing rights to whoever wrote the music. 

2. The license to the recorded track. This is known as the master license or synchronization license.  

Typically, when you pay for the licensing, the cost of the publishing license and the synchronization license is equal.  Sometimes, they’re owned by the same person.  We call each of these licenses“sides.” So you have to pay for both “sides.”  

Pricing

To get an idea of pricing, consider how famous an artist or song is and whether or not they’re represented. Very few artists release songs for free, but they do exist. Kevin Macleod, who I use a lot, releases his music for free but accepts donations. The reason he releases music for free is to expose more people to his work to get composing gigs. But this is very rare.  Another way to get free music is to find a musician who loves your work and who you know intimately.  Maybe you can do an exchange.

What’s another thing to consider when you are negotiating a price? If you’re showing on television, likely the artist will suspect you have a higher budget—the same thing for feature-length movies.  

What You Need To Know Before Approaching an Artist

It’s essential to know your overall music budget and how many tracks you need to license.  Musicians rarely give a rate upfront when you ask. They always ask about your budget first, as they don’t want to say a number that is too high that may scare you off, nor do they want to say anything too low where they can’t maximize their profits for their assets.

You also need to know the length of the license.  Most artists will always suggest a license of about a year and for only one type of media.  This means you’ll have to go back to them if you want more licensing. One year is a common length, which could work for a film festival run or a commercial. This can give you time to raise more money for a more extended license because the ideal licensing length and platform you want in your contract is “worldwide and in perpetuity.”  Perpetuity means forever, and worldwide means you can use it in any format existing or to be created, though it’s wise to include those words and be specific in your contract.

Photo by Ricky Rosario on set of Frames of Reference

Who To Contact

Often the most annoying part about licensing is getting hold of the owners.  Sometimes many people own a song because they purchased parts of it, or maybe it was written and recorded by an entire band who no longer work together.  If this is the case, getting in contact with everyone can be a lot of work. Oftentimes the synchronization license is owned by the record label who may have paid for the recording, and the songwriters own the publishing rights. But it can vary, and everyone can sell the rights to their songs.

Mid-range artists sometimes charge around $500 for both sides if they’re not on a label.  But I’ve found this to be more true if I know the artist or at least have met them. If they’re a friend, I may get songs for around $100 for both sides.  

From our award-winning short drama, Prologue

As for represented artists, more people are taking the pie, and they have a middle person negotiating for them.  For example, I licensed from a lesser-known independent artist, Emika, who Ninja Tunes represented.  Ninja Tunes wanted a cut and negotiated with me for a worldwide license in perpetuity.  They argued for $2000 per side after I had already paid them $750 for the first year of theatrical release. So, in the end, I ended up paying $4000 for the song at the end of my movie Prologue.  I also paid the same amount for a more famous composer who represented himself, Goran Bregovich, for the same short movie.  Goran’s people made a deal with me because Prologue is an independent short movie, and they knew I wasn’t making money on it.

For a feature film or television show, you may be able to negotiate a royalty deal where they take less money upfront but will receive some of the profits from the movie their art is helping to create. This is generally only an option for features and content made for broadcast.

Negotiating Price

Marcellus Hall an Artist in New York City played around the world including in at Seoul Webfest.

I’m an independent filmmaker but have gotten a deal with a famous artist.  I licensed Woody Guthrie, who, if you don’t know, wrote: “This Land is Our Land” and “America the Beautiful.” He is one of the most respected American Folk composers of all time.  He is deceased, and various people own his songs, but I wanted to use a cover song performed by the artist in my documentary, Marcellus Hall an Artist in New York City.  I had a meager budget for the series–$10,000 for 31 minutes of an independent web series. But the featured artist in my documentary, Marcellus Hall, is a similar artist to Woody Guthrie, and admires him greatly. So it was important to me to use “Hard, Ain't It Hard,” which was owned by Woody’s kin. Luckily for my team and me, the owner was taken by the documentary and gave me a deal for $500 in perpetuity for the publishing rights, but this is not common.

When making feature films, a lot of these prices go up.  I’d say from a short or web series to a feature or a television show, expect a price hike of 2-4 times.

Every single contract is unique and negotiated by both sides.  It’s always wise to have options because you never know what an artist will say.  I’ve had artists who would not license their music to me after seeing my movie. They wouldn’t even give me a price.  Why? I’m not sure. They wouldn’t say. 

A common question is, what do famous artists cost?  Well, I keep my ears open.  For a news television show I worked on, we licensed the publishing rights to an early 1900’s composer’s most famous song.  We played it safe because the copyright holders are trying to make as much money as they can in the final years they have the rights to the music’s copyright.  This ended up costing $10,000.

How about Pop artists?  I’ve heard Brittany Spears’ songs go for around $20,000 for both sides, which seemed low to me.  Then I’ve heard almost everyone say The Beatles’ and Radiohead’s songs are around $1 million dollars for both sides.  

Myself (Justin Joseph Hall) playing bass for my senior photo

A mid-range price I’ve heard was $80,000 for the Grease soundtrack because the musicians (bass player, guitar player, all the singers) are all union, so many people are getting a slice of the payment. In this case, the team I was working with ended up cutting costs by licensing a song that only uses the original vocals of the cast with alternate instrumentation. This wasn’t ideal but was likely unnoticeable to the average audience member, and it saved tens of thousands of dollars in licensing fees.

Ordering more from the same artist and agency also helps you negotiate, especially from independent artists.  So try to use songs from the same artist, writer(s), or publisher. For example, it may help to take songs from the same album. Or get to know the artist by offering to share your work with them before you ask to license music. You never know; a little legwork can go a long way.

Don’t forget about your trailer!

In the past, I’ve been successful at asking to include publicity and advertisement use when I’m licensing an entire album or multiple songs from an artist. If you have a lower budget, is there a band that’s not as known or a singer who wants to get a song to a broader audience?  They may be willing to let you also license for publicity and advertising.  

 If you have any questions, please contact us at info@fourwindfilms.com  We’re happy to answer a few of your questions or work at licensing music for you for hire.

Copy Editor - Piper Werle

How to Make a Feature Documentary Movie Budget

By Justin Joseph Hall

Producer Mahomi Ejiri and Justin Joseph Hall filming in Ebina, Japan for Frames of Reference. Photo by Yoshitsugu Kosaka.

You have your idea for a documentary and need to create a budget for a grant, potential partner, and just to have a good plan of attack. So, what does a professional feature documentary budget look like?  What is the range a feature documentary should cost?  These common questions are sadly hard to find the answers to. 

Even though I don’t consider myself a producer, I have had to stand in the producer’s role creating budgets many times.  From asking fellow filmmakers with more experience to teach me along the way, I’ve gathered that information into one place for others to learn what I have over the years.

First off, you’ll need a spreadsheet budget template. Below is our company’s documentary budget template.  The numbers in the template are my budget for a feature-length documentary I directed that is currently in post-production, Frames of Reference. The rates I have are not industry-standard, but rather rates for a particular project.  Rates vary widely depending on region, whether it’s a union job or not, and on each individual person you’re hiring.  

You can take the link below and duplicate it (File→Make Copy) and save it as your own to modify for your needs.  It also is what you can follow along to understand what I’m talking about in the below paragraphs.

FOURWIND | Documentary Budget Template

Along the bottom of the google sheet are three tabs. While working in this document, 99% of the time you’ll just be changing information in the first tab.  All of the first tab (Details) correlates to the second tab (Topsheet). The "Topsheet" is a quick summary of the entire budget at a glance. In the second tab you’ll find the typical industry breakdown on top, and a breakdown at the bottom in the section,  "BREAKDOWN BY FILMMAKING PROCESS."  That's not in most budgets, but I personally found it to be a helpful estimate for me to understand cost differences between Production and Post-Production.

The third tab (Fourwind Films_OldFormat) is the way I create budgets for smaller projects.  These budgets are fine if you’re not applying for grants from third parties outside the film industry.  For the purpose of this article, we will ignore the third tab. 

Starting the “Details” Tab

In the “Details” tab there are "Above-the-line" and "Below-the-line" costs.  Above-the-line costs are what the film will cost whether or not the project is completed.  These are starting costs and are usually the amount you should raise before starting to officially work on the project.  The below-the-line costs are what things cost as you complete the project.  

Let’s start at the top.  There is an estimate of how long I plan to work on each step of the project. The steps I plan for are Research, Prep, Shoot, Wrap, and Post. 

Research

Estimate how long you may need to research or nail down what you need to know before you can make effective decisions on casting and locations.

Prep

Prep is how much time is needed for pre-production before the shoot. Are you shooting internationally and need to gather local crew, get visas for parties traveling, and possibly vaccinations? Think it through. When doing your first budget it’s wise to include everything you can think of and then cut the budget down after a first estimate. I’ve heard this advice from many line producers.

Shoot

How long will you need to shoot?  How much travel time between locations?  As a general estimate, I like to assume for an interview-based documentary that I’ll need a minimum of 115 hours of footage.  However, if your documentary is a vérité documentary, I’d say you need about 50% more footage as there is less ability to direct and produce on vérité documentaries.  In that case, I’d aim for at least 180 hours of footage.

Producer Yoshitsugu Kosaka during production for Frames of Reference in Ebina, Japan.

Wrap

Wrap for a documentary really depends on how much paperwork and rental returns you expect to have when you get back.  For documentaries usually, this is not a lot of time as crews and personnel tend to be smaller than narrative sets.

Post-Production

For post-production, I have been told that four months to edit a feature documentary is pretty standard.  The more produced the script is and the more support your editor has the more feasible this would be.  If you have four months to edit a film, I assume the director or producer is highly involved in the editing process and, at the very least, has an outline of what they would like the film to look like.  I also would assume there’s at least one highly capable Assistant Editor if not two, as well as some sort of Production or Post-Production Assistant.  To hit that four-month mark you may even need more than one editor.

Now, scheduling changes again when editing vérité footage.  Vérité footage takes twice as long to assess as interview footage.  Constructing the narrative tends to be much more complex.  Because of this, I’d suggest a minimum of one year of editing for a vérité feature-length documentary.  Again this is assuming a great Assistant Editor and/or Associate Editor is on board to fully aid the editor.

Great, now you have a sense of how much time the project will take.  You can use this information for the “#” and “UNIT” columns. 

Finishing the “Details” Tab

The rest of the process is reading through each row and deciding which ones you want and need to create a budget for. Begin with above-the-line costs. Who are the personnel you will need to get the project made? The main director and producer as well as any executive producer costs should be included here.

As a starting basis for a feature, I put a year’s salary for the director. This way, if the project takes 1-2 years, the director is covered to concentrate on the project long enough to make sure it is always moving forward.  If you’re creating something shorter, or there’s much more support than normal, you may want to adjust this.  But I start there as it’s important to have someone to keep the project on course to ensure a timely finish.

Things that really rack up production costs are executive producer costs and the number of crew you bring to set. This all depends on your style of filmmaking and changes from project to project. If you have questions about specific line items please write to me at my email address below.

Producer Ricky Rosario during production for Frames of Reference in Barranquilla, Colombia.

As for finishing in post-production, this is something many people do not have much experience in budgeting. Luckily for you, I run post-production for Fourwind Films and we estimate these costs for any project that comes in our door. This is the basis for how I estimate how long each of these post-production steps may cost:

The edit will last 4-6 months per 120 hours footage shot (again recall vérité footage takes almost double the time to edit and assess).  

Coloring takes 1-3 days per 10-20 minutes of finished video. Keep in mind, the longer you spend on color the more detail your colorist can pull out of the image.  

Sound Design is optional, especially in documentary film. Whether you do this really depends on the director and style of the film. I’d suggest budgeting for this even if you think you won’t need it. In general, I’d suggest a sliding scale of 1 day (cheap) to 1 week (expensive and stylized) per 30 minutes of finished video. 

Dialogue Editing is normally 1 week per 30 minutes of finished video.

Sound Mixing you can estimate at 3 days per 30 minutes of finished video.

Promotion and marketing are often the most forgotten part of the budget.  Almost wherever you look, it is suggested to tack on 1/3 to 1/2 of the total budget to make the film just for marketing. If you don’t tell people about the movie you made, no one will know it exists and no one will want to watch it. Promotion is part of filmmaking if you’re making a film for an external audience.

That’s about the quickest summary of creating a documentary budget I can possibly put forward. Any additional questions, please write to me at justin.joseph.hall@fourwindfilms.com.

Find out more about Justin Joseph Hall and his work at the Fourwind Films website. Or, follow him as host of the podcast Feature & a short or on LinkedIn.

If there are other questions you want to be answered in a blog post, let us know at info@fourwindfilms.com or visit our website at www.fourwindfilms.com. Also, we work with a large, diverse community of crew and artists working in most aspects of the filmmaking process and are always happy to help make connections. And we are always building our community! Send us your work for review or feedback.

Advice for Filming a Documentary in Cuba as a Foreigner

By Piper Werle

This article is based on an interview with Emily Feng. Answers have been edited for clarity.  

A young male ballet dancer in Havana divulges his passion for the art form in a culture known for fostering machismo. A successful Chinese restaurateur who fell in love with a Cuban man gives insight into her daily life.

Film still of Carlitos taking a private ballet lesson in Havana, Cuba. Photo courtesy of Emily Feng.

These are the subjects of documentary filmmaker Emily Feng’s two short docs: Carlitos and Tao Qi, named after the dancer and the restaurant owner, respectively. A couple of years ago, Emily took the NYU course: Documentary Video Production in Havana, Cuba. The course website is enticing: “From rhumba and salsa, Revolution-era art and literature to the recent opening of American influence, Havana is a landscape that is overflowing with possibilities for documentary storytelling — and it’s yours to discover.” The U.S. and Cuba have a fraught history, yet since Obama eased travel restrictions, more and more people from the U.S. are visiting the Caribbean island. 

This is not an article about how to determine your eligibility to film in Cuba. Rather Emily shares her experiences and biggest takeaways for anyone who can benefit from a first-hand perspective. 

The poster for Tao Qi, courtesy of Emily Feng.

Censorship and Checking Your Privilege

“Be aware of censorship, permits, your privilege, and your Western point of view. It’s really important to have an open mind and don’t let any past prejudices or judgments hinder you from telling the story that's true to their world,” Emily advises. All of the students in her program had to write up film treatments prior to travel and get them approved. On that, Emily shares:

“Anything related to the government, U.S.-Cuba relations, or anything political was kind of —  I guess the program also wants to be careful because it wants to maintain its relationship with Cuba. So they have to be super careful about the films we’re producing there.”

Fourwind Films actually considered filming in Cuba for the documentary Frames of Reference, but director Justin Joseph Hall was advised by Jon Alpert, director of Cuba and the Cameraman, not to bother. Frames of Reference examines the successes and failures of education systems around the world by talking to people directly impacted by them, and getting access to educational systems in Cuba was not predictable due to budgetary concerns. Justin ended up shooting in Colombia instead.

Having a Translator or Local Guide

Emily is not a Spanish speaker and was able to secure a local peer to help her conduct interviews and get around the city. Being with the NYU program gave her a special “in” to securing a translator she could trust and work with, though she emphasizes how friendly, open, and helpful the locals she encountered were, and how this friendliness reflects the wider culture: 

“In the first few days we got there we were roaming the streets trying to figure out where to go to find our subjects. And this lady saw that we were just a bunch of foreigners roaming around and came up to us and was like, ‘what are you doing here?’ We told her and she started naming all these ideas for us. She was like, ‘my husband’s brother works at this place, you could go talk about him, you could go interview him.’ Or like, ‘my friend’s friend does this, you can go talk to her.’ Everyone was so helpful, and so much communication is word-of-mouth.” 

Emily’s guide, a Cuban student who had worked with the NYU students to make his own film, was also instrumental in helping Emily get around, as public transportation and even taxis can be difficult to navigate. If you need a translator, Emily has this advice, which works for any language: 

“One thing I learned was that to build a stronger connection with my subject, even though he couldn’t understand me and I couldn't understand him, we had to talk to each other. I had to ask my questions looking at him instead of looking at my translator. So that the relationship is between me and him and not my translator and him. In order to build a more intimate bond with my subject I needed to ask like this, even though it felt really weird.”

Film still of Carlitos with his ballet tutor. Courtesy of Emily Feng.

Finding People to Interview 

Though it depends on when you go, Emily had limited access to the internet, and it’s not something that you can count on working. This makes for a far less regimented process than one might have while making a documentary in the U.S., or another country where Internet access is more ubiquitous. Emily says:

“I had limited internet access and social media usage, so finding subjects solely stemmed from talking to locals and getting referral after referral. It was a fascinating experience to make documentaries without the usual technology we have like emailing back and forth and calendar invites. It was definitely more of ‘a show up and hope they remembered that you had scheduled an interview with them’ situation. I think the most important thing was finding subjects that I connected to in some way, even though our lives were so different.”

Emily knew before arriving that she wanted to make docs about a male ballet dancer and a Chinese restaurant owner. Once she got there, she just needed to do the work of finding subjects. While that search took a lot of work, having the specific intention helped her find Carlitos and Tao Qi. Tao Qi caught her attention immediately:
“I remember when I arrived at the restaurant (named “Tien Tan”) she was just sitting outside by herself smoking a cigarette, she just looked so badass. She was wearing all red and looked so powerful. Seeing a female restaurant owner really drew me to her, and I was really interested in what her immigrant experience was compared to mine. Growing up in the Western countries I didn’t really hear about Asians in other parts of the world.”

Film still of Tao Qi in her home. Courtesy of Emily Feng.

Research and Mindset

I asked Emily if she had any skills or mindsets that helped her:
“I think it requires a lot of openness. I find that sometimes it’s very easy for people to go to a non-Western country with their Western points of view, and I think that that is not beneficial to the truth of the storytelling that you want to portray. You have to understand where they’re coming from, what their culture is, what their background is, to really tell their story. And I think that you need to be really brave. I’m a pretty shy and introverted person, especially since I didn’t know Spanish that well, so it was difficult for me to go up to people and talk to them, but I learned that people are so nice there.” 

She also recommends learning some Spanish if you don’t speak it in order to build stronger relationships with locals and doing research, including watching other films set in Cuba. Her class found Cuba and the Cameraman by Jon Alpert (who is a guest on one of Fourwind Film’s Feature & a short episodes) especially helpful. If you’ve seen Jon’s impressive documentary, which is currently streaming on Netflix, it only affirms all of what Emily shares. 

Emily Feng’s documentaries are making the film festival circuit! You can learn more about Carlitos here and Tao Qi here.

Emily Feng, director of Carlitos and Tao Qi.

About the filmmaker: Emily Feng is a writer, director, and editor based in New York City. She has worked on music videos, narratives, brand campaigns, and documentaries. Most notably, her documentaries shot in Havana, Cuba have been selected at Best Shorts Competition, PopDoc Awards, Asian Film Festival Los Angeles Hollywood, and Seattle Asian American Film Festival. She is currently working on writing her first feature film as well as working as a videographer and video editor for The Chelsea Music Festival in NYC. She aims to make space in the industry for stories of underrepresented voices and to connect people, despite our differences, through our shared humanity and emotions. 

If there are other questions you want to be answered in a blog post, let us know at info@fourwindfilms.com or visit our website at www.fourwindfilms.com. Also, we work with a large, diverse community of crew and artists working in most aspects of the filmmaking process and are always happy to help make connections. And we are always building our community! Send us your work for review or feedback.