Movies and Live Music

[Thom]

I watched the Sunday Morning Show and there was a piece about Symphony Orchestras playing the soundtracks with the movies. They reported that when they did this the audience is as much as 50% first time attendees! Maybe someone else thought of this before, but someone should come up with a way to sync the Concert Band arrangements with edited scenes from the movies. I think it could actually be a possible moneymaker, for whoever creates the edited scenes and for Community Concerts Bands, School Bands, et cetera.

[AndrewMeronek]

One really obvious film for a concert band performance is Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. The score is already basically a concert band with some auxiliaries.

[Thom]

I am just thinking of the medleys most community/school bands already play. My idea is to have some movie/computer person edit scenes to fit the time frame of the arranged medleys of songs, with a count down for the conductor. Most of these pieces are only about 5 to 15 minutes long. I am not talking about actually syncing the entire movie's music, I think that would be too much for community/school bands.

[AtomicClock]

I suspect this would not fall under "fair use". Or, your band's lawyer should be ready with their argument. I doubt the copyright holders have any mechanism in place to sell permission, other than maybe a complete public performance, which I presume is expensive.

[JohnL]

Clearing rights for something like that would be a lot of work, particularly for medleys that have songs from multiple films. You never know when the copyright police are going to show up.

One possibility would be for a publisher to offer music plus clip video as a package.

I would also be a more than a little concerned about the ability of the typical community ensemble (and the typical community ensemble conductor) to be able to deal with the rigid timing necessary.

[Thom]

It was just a thought. Maybe the publishers of the music could offer something to go along with the music? My "Pet Peeve" is that most of these community bands have fees or donations from the musicians. It feels like we are paying for the privilege of a very small audience.

[JohnL]

My "Pet Peeve" is that most of these community bands have fees or donations from the musicians. It feels like we are paying for the privilege of a very small audience.

You're paying to cover the expenses so you can have a ensemble to play in. Used to be, a lot of community ensembles received ongoing support from the city. Not just funding, but free access to city-owned facilities for rehearsal space and storage of music and equipment, city vehicles for transporting equipment, and (maybe most importantly) coverage under the city's liability insurance. A lot of that has diminished or vanished entirely over the years. Somewhere along the line, performance rights became an issue, so now we send a check to the Association of Concert Bands every year to pay for a blanket performance license.

EDIT: I suppose I should also mention that the groups I play in that charge dues also have a policy of not turning people away just because they can't afford the dues.

[BGuttman]

In the era before Talking Pictures, movie screenings would feature either a pianist or even a small ensemble often referred to as a Theater Orchestra. I put together one such ensemble for my orchestra. We fielded 1st and 2nd Violin, Viola, Cello, String Bass, Flute, Clarinet, 2 Trumpets, Trombone, and Percussion. Modeled after the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra.

I attended a screening of a Charlie Chaplain film with a professional Theater Orchestra that was really a treat.

Nice thing about Silent Films is that they are Public Domain, and sometimes arranged scores are available.

[Doug Elliott]

I think that's a fantastic idea. It would be great for communtiy groups (and others) to be forced to deal with precise timing.
Create an audience for live music that previously didn't exist. Some publisher should get on it.

[sf105]

I love the idea of accompanying silent movies, especially now we're up to 1929 for public domain (which includes the Buster Keaton classics). There's probably a university department out there trying to recover the scores that the studios sent out with the prints.

Doing a full movie without strings however would be very hard on a wind band.

P.S. years ago visited a friend who had access to some super-8 prints of silent movies. We ran some with the local classical radio station in the background. Worked surprisingly well.

[Burgerbob]

The packages that orchestras use are big money rentals. They'llale their money on it, I'm not sure a community group would.

[JohnL]

I think that's a fantastic idea. It would be great for communtiy groups (and others) to be forced to deal with precise timing.

Are you one of those people who watches auto racing for the crashes?

[harrisonreed]

Orchestras have been doing this for years now. "Cineconcerts" made this popular with the Harry Potter films, and they started with Gladiator back in 2013. It might date back even further than that.

I think that the orchestras have to pay quite a lot to get the rights to show the film, and have to rent the scores which are also expensive. Most of this is all licensed through Cineconcerts and Film Concerts Live, so you can't just "DIY".

[Nomsis]

In the community band I play we did it twice in the last few years, we played the music and some scenes were running on the canvas. Not completely sure if and how much we payed for this. I just remember that the LED-Screen we rented and which was huge did cost lots of money. I've seen some other wind bands in my area doing it as well sometimes. I'm located in Germany though, no idea if that matters.

[Doug Elliott]

I think that's a fantastic idea. It would be great for communtiy groups (and others) to be forced to deal with precise timing.

Are you one of those people who watches auto racing for the crashes?

No, I just drive around DC after a light snow.
Like we're having tonight and tomorrow.

[JohnL]

Are you one of those people who watches auto racing for the crashes?

No, I just drive around DC after a light snow.
Like we're having tonight and tomorrow.

I figured it was something like that.

[BGuttman]

I forgot to mention before. Berklee College in Boston has a Film Scoring course (major?). Our conductor was a professor in this program and one day he brought his students in with scores and some movie clips. The students went "on the box" and conducted our orchestra reading their accompaniments to the projected film. Was a real treat for all involved. I'm sorry we only got to do this once.

[tbdana]

When I started playing again 18 months ago, the first thing I did was join a community band, and that band's first concert was playing music live while a movie played on screen. But it wasn't modern. It was a silent movie, and we played whatever the conductor thought would fit the action. It was cheap, as we didn't have to rent expensive scores, and it was wildly popular. We sold out the place for two shows in one night.

That's not Star Trek, but it's something a community band might do that drew a big audience.

[Thom]

When I started playing again 18 months ago, the first thing I did was join a community band, and that band's first concert was playing music live while a movie played on screen. But it wasn't modern. It was a silent movie, and we played whatever the conductor thought would fit the action. It was cheap, as we didn't have to rent expensive scores, and it was wildly popular. We sold out the place for two shows in one night.

That's not Star Trek, but it's something a community band might do that drew a big audience.

Great idea! I will pass that idea on to our board.