Materials Part 2

Materials:

There are many different kinds of materials which can be used within the production of media, and short film specifically. What follows here are ideas about the kinds of materials which may be used on a short production.

Self-Generated materials:
- Materials you yourself generate for your production can include anything from creating your own sound or video effects to making your own props and costumes.

What impact might the construction of props or costumes in-house have for the production company and the production?

(Think in terms of what impact it might have compared with hiring or renting them)


Archive material
- Archive material is old footage used in previous productions from various genres and mediums.
- Documentary filmmakers often use archive footage to build and authenticate their narratives.
Example:
A recent example of a film which uses archive footage is Senna, a 2010 British documentary directed by Asif Kapadia, that depicts the life and death of the great Brazilian motor-racing champion.


Find some productions that have used archive footage.

Explain how the footage was used.


Library Material:
- Library material refers to material stored in libraries of sound or video effects.

Focus: Sound libraries
- When a film is complete, the wild tracks of non-dialogue sounds will usually be collated by the production company for use in future projects.
- Over many productions a library of sounds and sound effects will be built up.
- A large production company, such as the BBC, has a vast library of different sounds that can be tweaked and reused.
- These may contain anything from raindrops to footsteps.


Focus: Video libraries
- The BBC will also have libraries of video materials.
- Collections of different video effects often referred to as action essentials.
- These may include anything from landscape sunsets to traffic on a busy street.


What is the BBC sound effects library?
- The BBC effects library has long been viewed as the standard library. Everything from cars to planes, boats to trains. Sounds domestic, urban, country and international. More than 90% of the effects are recorded instantly on to a digital stereo – a considerable lot of them utilizing binaural methods. The rest have been exchanged from analogue to digital.

What different bundles are there at what cost?


Internet
- The interned is one of the newest ways to get copyrighted sound and video effects for your production.

Can you find any other materials libraries that have material you could use in your production?
- Prosoundeffects.com


Case study:

Freesound Go to www.freesound.org

What is freesound?
- Sound video clips that you can get for free. Freesound is a collaborative database of Creative Commons Licensed sounds. Browse, download and share sounds.

How could you use the site to build your own sound library?
- Can add in your production. They have all different types of quality. Based on file size, comments, description.


Property Rights and Copyright (cont’d)
- If you ask permission from a person/company to use their material then you must be prepared to pay for it.
- A great deal of time is spent refining sounds and the sound designers, Foley artists and effects editors who invest that time should receive the appropriate remuneration when their work is used.
- The most important thing to remember when using any media related material in your production is to make sure that you have written permission from the owner of the material, and a contract has been signed that evidences this.

(Piracy lead to boringness.) Piracy is a double edge sword.

If a sound effect has been created by someone it is their property and they have a right to an appropriate form of revenue when their materials are used by third parties.