| Yes, on the indie side that is often the case. I've contributed music or specially composed music for many, many films where no one else was paid and I never had any expectation of that. If one needs to gain experience, that is how it is done! Even if you're not resume building though..it all depends on the situation. I take on non-paid projects all the time if it expands my horizons in some way or I'll learn something new, or get to collaborate with someone I really respect, or if I just really want to do it. In those situations, if it is not some new creative collaboration that you have an artistic stake in, then it is up to you to decide if the production is worthy enough for you to do it for credit only (because if the film looks really terrible, do you want to be associated with it forever?). I think one of my points was that IF if a production has a budget for other service providers, then the music is a portion of that budget. But yeah, 10% of nothing, is, er nothing! (Although I know many directors who spend almost nothing making a film, but still shell out thousands to obtain sync licenses because they want specific songs) This is where the "favored nations status" clause comes in useful. Then, if other musicians are compensated, you need to be as well. This topic needs its own website really...it is so vast and not really looping-specific! ---- an anecdote... I was in a situation very recently where a director wanted to use my music and had no budget. I said ok because it was a worthy project and gave them a free one year festival license. However, they wanted to sell DVDs (and there was 20 minutes of my music in there), but not pay me royalties. I said this would not be possible, and outlined a pretty standard and miniscule royalty rate, even making it easy for them so they would not have to pay royalties until AFTER they'd sold each batch of 1000 copies. Given the tiny amount of money I was pretty shocked when the director balked and replied "there are thousands of musicians out there who I can get music for free from. Why should I pay for yours?". I said, well, you're free NOT to use it then, and walked away. On Feb 13, 2008, at 10:53 AM, samba - wrote: "but would they not pay theirYes -they call it an internship,and offer credits. This is extremely common in the burgeoning Indie film world,and in the music biz in general.In the worst cases Interns who sign on to learn and get their foot in the door, develop contacts, take out trash,get coffee,do shit work, mundane stuff etc,and learn little about the biz. |