Music Blog: Copyright Problems

     Hello Cambridge! We have been working on getting the music that we want for the film. We want to get Everything in its Right Place by Radiohead, specifically for the beginning noises that builds fear and unease. We messaged everyone we could find related to Radiohead. We emailed the account that their Twitter page linked to for copyright issues. We also directly messaged every member on Instagram and Twitter asking for help getting the rights to the song. We weren't really expecting to get a response, but surprisingly, Colin Greenwood messaged us saying that he would try his best to help us. We were very optimistic that we would be able to get the song that we wanted! However, Colin Greenwood started asking for more information about our project. We obliged, but one night we took a while to respond to his message, and he messaged us the next day saying "hello little baby!" This is obviously very concerning and made us think he was a pedophile. We stopped responding after that, and he was later banned from Instagram and replaced with a different person. Hopefully, this was just some impersonator instead of the real Colin, because I really hope that no member of Radiohead is a pedophile. 

    After this, we have not gotten any more messages from anyone Radiohead affiliated, so we were not confident that we would be able to get the rights. We started looking for noncopyrighted music that builds anticipation, and we started by looking at classical music. I looked up "scary" classical songs and looked to Chopin for fast, creepy piano music. Chopin proved to be ineffective, as much of his music was more beautiful than haunting. I also listened to the Four Seasons by Vivaldi, and I found that one of the winter pieces was fairly haunting. My Google search yielded Night on Bald Mountain, Danse Macabre, and Dream Of a Witches Sabbath. I added this to our playlist of songs we were considering using for the project. The following day, I listened to the songs again, and decided against Danse Macabre. This song feels too much like a song played at a Halloween dance party and not enough like an actually scary song. Of the two remaining, I preferred Dream Of a Witches Sabbath, because their were clear places to start and a clear musical climaxes that we could end the story on. I had everyone else listen to the piece, and they had some reservations about using it, so we put it as a backup if we couldn't find another song we all liked. As a long shot, we decided to message Ethel Cain to use her song Ptolemaea, since there is a loud scream at the end that we felt fit well. To our surprise, her legal team messaged us back the same day, only a few hours later, giving us permission to use it. So, thanks to the wonderful work of Ethel Cain's legal team, we will be using Ptolomaea by Ethel Cain for our project.