This creative and practical tutorial helps middle and high school students create a portfolio for high school or college film and video programs. Students, artists and educators share tips on how to navigate the application process -- from getting ready for interviews, to putting together the best work samples.
As you are making your film, the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment has put together these helpful questions about tips for copyright in film-making.
Head here to see the full presentation.
To use music in your NYC Public School Film Festival submission, it needs to be either original, in the public domain, or licensed under Creative Commons.
Public domain music refers to all the music whose rights are expired, that don’t have copyrights or the music whose authors submitted into the public domain.
Creative Commons is a system that allows you to legally use “some rights reserved” music, movies, images, and other content — all for free. CC offers free copyright licenses that anyone can use to mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry.
Exzel Music Co. offers royalty free music that can be downloaded for use in your film. You will need to credit the music based on a Music License statement that is generated for you.
Music free of copyright protection that can be used in your film. You are not required to credit the artist, but it is appreciated.
Where music composers post tracks for royalty free licensing to video producers. All of the music in this online library can be licensed for royalty free use in films, videos, video games, YouTube videos or other digital multimedia productions. You are not required to credit the artist, but it is appreciated.
Find lots of royalty-free music by Moby for your projects. The only condition is that you use it for an independent, non-profit film or project, video or short. You are not required to credit Moby.
Free classical music; browse by composer, performer, instrument, form and time period. You are not required to credit the artist.
How to Use Music in Your Film
Most films you’ve watched include songs and background music to make the films better, and you probably want to do the same. Here’s what you need to know about how to get music into your film:
Some of the resources from Websites for Legal Use provide music in the public domain that you are free to use in your film.
Make sure that the license agreement allows the song to be used for the duration of NYC Public School Film Festival and beyond.
the song’s title,
the artist’s name, and
where you got the music from (website, URL, license agreement, etc.)
Yes. You must check to see whether the websites where you took the music or the music license requires you to list the song’s name, composer, performer, or music label in your film’s credits. If you need to list this information on the film credits, add it to the Music Credit Sheet and we will add the information to the credits at the end of your film.