[Blake Bowden]

I compiled a small 15 minute video and used various music in it. It was basically some video shot when I was in high school. Well, it's 10 years later and we have a reunion coming up so I edited the film, put it on tape and dvd..blah blah. I was thinking about selling copies for $20 a pop and have all the money (minus the cost of tapes and dvd's) given to the video production classes at the school. Just want give something back I suppose. Hopefully that would buy some new equipment for the school and/or software. What are the steps that need to be taken to cover my butt as far as royality fees for music? How do you go about contacting the various music companies or whomever to explain the situation and work out a REASONABLE fee. Is it a one time fee, or do you pay for each copy you make? Anyone ever done that before? Also...a couple of other questions:

#1. Have you ever had your work copyrighted? Was it a difficult and long process? I would like to exclusively own the work that I created. It's nothing fancy, but it's mine.

#2. In regards to making copies on DVD's. I'd really hate to burn tons of DVD's on my mac. Could I just make a master and have a duplication house make them? Would they be iDVD compatible? I heard that I would need to create a DVD using DVD Studio Pro. I'am really happy with the results I got from iDVD and wouldn't want to hassle or change things around with it.

Thanks for any help you guys can provide. Maybe I can get the school to change over to mac instead of PC/Premiere combos they're using

[noisefloor]

You're unlikely to get permission to use any real music, your best bet is probably to find some library music with preset fees (or even the buy it and it's youre stuff). Hopefully won't be prohibitive, some music would probably cost more than you'll make on the whole project.

Copyright is a piece of cake, just fill out a form and send it with a copy of the video, costs about $25. Just do a search online for the US copyright office.