Music and Film pairings (a thread for sharing)

[Ryan Gallagher]

A thread for music lovers and projectionists, with an ear towards walkin playlists.

Not sure how many put the extra research/effort into a good number of their walkin playlists, or even have walkin music these days that they can control?
But if you are like me and do, feel free to share here if they exist on a platform from which you can share.

My most recent effort, research mode, cause I haven't seen this one myself: Dominated by other tracks from the "real" band that was cast as the movie band. Based on where music research led me, I'm gonna like this film.

1987 Streets of Fire (17 Tracks, 1h10m Playlist)
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3E...1727c570834618

Enjoy!

[Frank Cox]

I have several playlists (mp3 files) that I use for various movies that I think are appropriate, ranging from Henry Mancini to Nine Inch Nails. Superhero movie themes, James Bond themes, Halloween sound effects...

One of my regular customers has fun trying to guess why I'm playing a particular set of songs before a movie that he's come to. One that I'm sure he remembers is when I played the music from The Spy Who Shagged Me before one of the Spider-Man movies. I told him there was a good reason, he finally gave up and had to ask me. "Because he's a swinger, baby!"

I've played the Arrogant Worms Christmas Turkey album before appropriate Christmas movies (Bad Mom's and so forth). Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds before alien invasion movies. Pretty much whatever pops into my head and seems like a good idea at the time.

And sometimes I just play random stuff, which drives the guy I mentioned above crazy.

[Marcel Birgelen]

If you adjust the music in the room to the movie playing, you'll get instant karma super points from me.

I still don't understand those studios. They spend tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in order to produce and market a movie, but putting in some extra efforts to create something I'd call an "experience pack" containing some music, animations and other digital gimmickry that exhibitors can use to dress their presentation is apparently too much of an ask...

[Martin McCaffery]

The distributor of the Velvet Underground documentary a couple of years ago did send out an mp4 file of VU covers and originals that they asked be played as walk in music. We don't play walk in music ( because we don't want to deal with ASCAP/BMI), but made an exception for this. Got no feedback whatsoever from the audience. But, hey, free VU music.

[Ryan Gallagher]

As a dominantly live event venue we maintain a ASCAP/BMI for this reason cause most of our shows involve walkin music etc. So generally covered there, but definitely a concern if you are trying to play 100% by the rules, and perhaps a reason studios don't do it for the minimal venues that could accommodate.

We do HOUR doors, which is crazy, but it means I get to have more fun, cause the only ones who experience the entirety of it are the ushers and a couple of die-hard early birds. Ushers and house managers are usually the only ones who comment on em. It's as much for me as it is for the folks that hear the last 15 minutes of it.

Spotify at least gives you a total time in hours and minutes (wish they'd add seconds), I usually try to start em on time to have the last song finish as we are dimming houselights for an ontime start with the planned final song. Or if I'm being lazy I use the cue features in a longer playlist and somewhat manually drive the last few songs of an otherwise shuffled playlist.

Here were my previous two for our other 70mm screenings this season, recently my final song has often been somewhat of a hype song, or an intentionally separating change come down song, and often a era shift from the rest of the playlist, if I can decided on a relevant one.

1956 The Searchers 70mm (21 tracks, 1h06m)
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0A...5f127319f44497


1968 2001: A Space Odyssey 70mm (13 tracks, 1h06m)
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/64...3e9a28689a4f08

Those who are sharp will notice all mine are shared in a similar format to my spotify profile, some more polished/thought-out than others. For ASCAP/BMI reasons I actually don't play them out from my personal account, I copy them to our work spotify, but they often get deleted from there (shared login).

[Ryan Gallagher]

Etiquette question, I've generally avoided the ACTUAL tracks/songs in the soundtrack/score of the film they are about to watch, covers tend to be fair game though, as are tracks from the other franchise films. At least one of our projectionists does not use that rule of thumb and sticks the whole soundtrack in among other stuff on shuffle. Should I correct them. Is there a correct?

For me, I would rather all those sensory nostalgia emotions well up DURING the feature when the song hits, and not pre-expose them. Feels a bit heavy heanded. But that's just me.

Other DON'TS they learned the hard way, don't just play someone else's massive playlist unless you are confident it does not have anything inappropriate, or at least turn off the explicit playback feature in spotify for kids shows, though even that will not catch everything cause it's not all labeled correctly. I think that is when they started including more of the soundtracks, cause it's a "safe" option.

Billboard top 100 from the year of the film is a decent cheat if you are being lazy, but genre/vibe mismatches will abound.

[Frank Cox]

The Canadian equivalent of ASCAP/BMI is called SOCAN.

I asked them if I could just not play music before and after the movies so I could avoid having to pay them.

The answer was no, and the reason provided still boggles my mind.

The movies themselves contain music!

I find it amazing that the movie companies don't have the public performance rights to the music in their own movies (especially when the music company is the same company in many movies), but that's apparently the case under Canadian law.

[Marcel Birgelen]

It's similar over here. Actually, it apparently differs per movie and how the music in the movie has been licensed. Same if you want to organize live performances or rent out the place for other activities that potentially involve music. So, because it's not worth the hassle figuring that out, most venues I know, pay a lump sum to the local music licensing maffia. If you want to play music in the lobby or a bar area, you'd need it anyway. Heck, even if you're using commercial music in your waiting queue, you need a special license for that.