?In respects to the copyrighted song, it all depends on whether you plan on making a profit off this video. When a generic band plays copyrighted music and is planning to make a profit it has to pay for the rights the song. However there are loopholes as to how close to the original your performance is. You can easily modify the melody or some aspect of it and make it sound a bit different (different instruments, perhaps an additional layer), perhaps alter the sequence in which the melody is played, like variations on a familiar theme. If your not planning on making a profit off of this, then knock yourself out, i doubt any corp is going to knock down your door over an non-profit film, then again we are speaking about the RIAA.

I dont know exactly how the movie law works, but when you think about when actors are filmed flipping the channels on a tv, i dont think they would have to get permission from every channel shown. Once again this probably is a case of how long and detailed your taped footage is. If anything, i would only show enough to get whatever point across that your intention is of showing a movie within a movie.

Assume you have to pay the person who wrote the song even if you perform it yourself just as you'd like to be paid if someone redid your movie but added new actors and changed a scene or two. You still wrote it and bled your creative heart into the thing and deserve compensation.

If you can't pay then find a musician to come up with original music. They're trying to break in as well and you'll likely find a lot of talent willing to work for low budget filmmaker scale (that is nothing).

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

Alright, thanks for your replies!

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