My idea is to combine old films from archive.org etc that is public domain and mash it together to make a music video for my friend.

Any thoughts on how legal this is?

The first film I came across has this license.... https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

Many thanks,
Brian.

I was inspired by this music video where they seem to have matched the beat of the dancers to the new songs beat. - http://youtu.be/PVv_pVsTXyQ

When archive.org says public domain, it probably is, but the stuff is going to be really old. Mostly silent film. But that's great. I recently used some footage from The Great Train Robbery (ca 1908). Be aware that copyright laws in different countries can be vastly different from each other. The fact that you are just making this for "a friend" gives you a lot of leeway, especially if no public performance is planned.

Well, it would go up on Youtube etc as one of his official videos.

Might be easier to make a brand new video and leave this archive footage idea alone.

Might be easier to make a brand new video and leave this archive footage idea alone.

Like it or not, that's usually the case.

The problem with creative commons things is you can't copyright your work. If it gets really good, you can't certify you hold the copyright for TV or cable broadcast.

BE SURE TO GIVE CREDIT as required, both in your movie credits and on the youtube page. If you don't then you have violated the terms of the use, and you could be sued.

I used creative commons music on one of my pictures and was violated by youtube after the artist later decided to "license" the rights himself. I won the copyright through a protest, but it was pain.

Kind of neat idea, but to be used with care.

Best of luck.

Tim

Ask a grad student to take on copyright research as a project. Library science (school of information) or law school.