I think it isn't legal for two reasons:

1) you are using the "music"/"sound" without the logo (I'm pretty sure it is meant to be together

2) the piece isn't being made by THX standards

Most probably you will need a license to use it anyway. If it is
something the client wants then it is their responsability as well
I'd say (which perhaps could be written down with a signature
to cover and legal action against you). But if you want a more
definitive answer on that, make a thread in our Taking Care of Business
forum. Some people in there are a lot more qualified than me
to answer such questions.

Clients wishes are always a difficult thing. I don't do video work
for clients (yet), but have to deal with them in my professional
work (building websites) quite often. We always write a
specification about what is going to be build and how. The client
has to sign this. Within reason we will allow people to deter from
the spec, but only up to a point. If there are too many changes
they either are going to pay (which happens usually, or the
changes just simply don't get in) or the project is cancelled (never
had that happen).

Ryan,

First I'm very impressed. Your sound is good your lighting is good and the piece is cut together well. I thought it was a little long, but I assume your client wrote the script.

I was particularly impressed with the closing scene where your host is standing by the bus. She is obviously in the shadow of the bus but lit up perfectly. Did you use HMI lights for this?

If I were you I would find a cheap stock sound effect to replace the open or create one yourself using a sweep and some reverb(maybe make it go the other way: high to low) then offer it to the client. "You could purchase this from my SFX library for only $20." If they say they would rather go with the sound stolen from THX, then you should smile, with a gleam in your eye that says I love working for you guys, and ask kindly if they would mind having their lawyer write you an indemnity.

Maybe I'm over reacting.

Re: legality fo THX soundbite
 

The movie was very nice. It was very good at communicating the plethora of ways that Fife has incorporated technology. And good for them. The only improvement I can think of is with content: I would like to see how students in Fife are doing academically compared to that district before the introduction of all that technology and compared to surrounding districts and national averages--is the integrated technology really helping them?

But overall, very well done.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ryan Morris :
... The argument is that the THX sound was within fair use because it was so short and used without the THX logo. Anyone have a concrete answer? ...-->>>

(I apologize if the tone is aggressive, please don’t read/take it that way)

Yes, it’s illegal. The TXH logo/sound is a copyright of THX, Ltd. They allow cinemas, multimedia creators, hardware manufacturers, etc. to use that logo/sound as an indication that the product has passed THX certification. Your video, from what I understand, did not. Just using part of their copyright makes it no less illegal.

Fair use is incredibly misunderstood. Fair use, in my not professional understanding (disclaimer-this ain’t legal advice coming from a lawyer), allows you to show the THX logo/sound if you are, for example, making a documentary about the movie process and certification standards. Fair use allows you to quote from a book when writing a review or critical paper on that book. Fair use does not allow you to use the THX sound as part of a logo.

Quite frankly, schools need to pay more attention to the law (most of them, after all, are public institutions and if they get sued, the taxpayers pay and less money will go towards education). Stuff like this and especially theater departments--way too many film their productions without paying the appropriate licensing fee and that’s if they even pay for the permission to perform that play or musical.

Yes, copyright is broken. Yes, the RIAA is making a foul out of themselves by suing their customers. But copyright is the law.

Trailers for a video I'm working on...
 

Here are two short promos for a video I'm creating for some friends down in Naples Florida. Nothing special or anything but I'm learning I guess...

The first one....
http://www.bmxbums.com/videos/naplestrailer.wmv
http://www.bmxbums.com/videos/naplestrailer.mov

The second one...
http://www.bmxbums.com/videos/naplestrailer2.wmv
http://www.bmxbums.com/videos/naplestrailer2.mov

Like? Dislike? What can I do to improve? The cheesy "film" effect in the first one is horrible. It was my first time playing around with the Cinelook plugin. Although I wasn't really aiming for anything to be extremely genuine looking. Just something different that I've never played with before.

Liked it at first I thought Oh! How original the faded look and all was that it. BAM you hit me with some good music, very good biking and I did like the cuts from your point of view.

Meaning I should have just watched it and see what the outcome would be and not say I’ve seen it.

I liked the crossover, but the music was a bit too much for my
taste. Overal it's nice work. The worst part where the slow
motion pieces. Those jittered all over the place and looked very
bad in my opinion. Rest was fine.

The slow motion....Yes it is horrible. I never noticed it untill I already uploaded the clips onto my server. What happened was somehow my export settings were set to deinterlace everything. I fixed it a couple days ago but now my server keeps timing out when I try to upload the fixed version. Try the wmv versions if you can. I don't think they were deinterlaced. Thanks for the feedback.

show-reel De Dag
 

www.wimm.be/showreel

This is a trailer I made last week. All the images you'll see are shot with an XL1S. Editing was done with FC4 on my G4 dual 1.25 G.

Last year I made 16 documentaries for a commercial belgian television. Due to the succes of the serie I have to make another 20 documentaries, starring international stars this time.

The start of this new serie will begin in march.

Enjoy watching this show-reel.

I liked the reel. You had some good images and shots in it.
However, I didn't like the voice and I thought a lot of his lines
shouldn't be in there, like:

"amazing camera work"
"breathtaking images"
"and shots you've never seen before"

That's something you should show the audience, not
tell the audience in my humble opinion. That's also the
advice you hear a lot for screen/scriptwriting.

Let the pictures and sound/music talk for themselves! Also, I
think you should've sticked to calling it a Trailer and not show-
reel. A showreel is a short video that you show to people who
are interested in your work. A trailer is meant to create interest
in a product (in this case the show) instead of someone's work.

Anyway, I liked the pictures!

XL1 (not XL1S) on Animal Planet
 

For anybody interested, the show "Mad Mike and Mark" tonight on Animal Planet is entirely originated on vintage Canon DV. It's all about photographing lions, elephants and cheetahs in the African wilderness. Enjoy,

This is currently also playing here in Japan. Just goes to show you don't need the biggest and latest to get good shots.

Couple new shorts
 

Hey everyone, I haven't been to the site in a long time - due to a computer crash losing the favorite forever - but luckily I've stumbled back upon ya'll.

We have a few new shorts at www.american-ocean.com since I've been here. "It Happened One Ass..." a short that should be cautiously shown, please - please, oh please - heed the disclaimer. We also did a little commercial parody with "Blue Dog's - The Test"... check 'em out but don't let your milk get spilled.

Yeah, we know we're not the most visually stimulating film makers out there, it's hard enough to get actors to come out of the woodwork for free, let alone a crew that knows what they're doing! I know some of ya know what I mean...

One Ass wasn't my kind of movie. I thought the commercial
was better, especially the last part with the "nice client". Heh.

I do think audio is your weakest link for sure. I had to krank open
my sound to almost full with all of the stuff I watched. Also
on a lot of shorts (especially One Ass) it looks washed out and
if there is little contrast (if somebody put some veil over the lens
or so). I saw this in The Italian trailer in a couple of places as
well while the rest there looked a lot better.

Thanks for your reaction Rob.


As you noticed my english is not that good, so thanks for making me clear the difference between a show-reel and a trailer.


Bye!

I spent three weeks videoing in Africa, unbelievable,