Momentshowing

Music with Lucas

A couple weeks ago I posted a video using a Cat Power song...which I used without permission. Since we've been trying to push the concept of Creative Commons, I got called out on the mat. So my friend, Lucas Gonze, made an original sound track for the video.

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Lucas wrote a good post about the potential for collaboration between music and video makers.

"Soundtracks for videoblogs are an ideal application of blog music. In both cases the media has to be fast, cheap, conversational and copyleft. This is an instance of remixing outside of the mashup genre, and an instance of redistribution outside of filesharing."

CC Mixter would be a great place for people to put out requests for collaborations. This goes beyond the idea of a mashup...and starts entering the way that commercial media is created. People with different talents work together to create something none of them could do alone. Once "bloggy" creators start reaching out to each other in this way...watch out!

CC Salon: April 17

I'm going to be speaking at the next CC Salon this wednesday night at 7pm In San Francisco. All the info is here.

"CC Salon is a free, casual monthly get-together focused on conversation, presentations, and performances from people or groups who are developing projects that relate to open content and/or software."

Come out and geek out.

How to search for Creative Commons media

Lately I've been running up against the issue of finding good Creative Commons licensed media to use in my own projects: music, photos, video. While the concept of CC media is great, the practice is still evolving. Creative Commons is simply a license you can out on your own published work that makes clear how other people can use it without asking your permission. This is the way we build a reasonable sharing culture. Mike and Jon are the heroes over at CC.

We just launched a new search tool at SpinXpress that lets us search for CC-licensed media to use in our own work. Check it out.

So let's say you want to find some video of a nuclear explosion that you can cut up to use in your video. You want the choice of using it commercially. Just choose the fields...and you get back permalinks and descriptions of each piece of available media. You can also see Previews right in the page.

You can even get a specific URL to a search for sharing. Here's an example. I know Rudy and Casey have been using it to find CC-licensed photos in Flickr to use in their work.

Music is still a challenge to find by keywords, but it's a challenge we got to take on if we want to get off the "illegal use of copyright" train.

VIDEO: Riding a Train in India

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Ryanne and I spent a month in India. We took a 48 hour train ride from Mumbai (aka Bombay) up north to Dharamshala, where the Dalai Lama lives with a community of exiled Tibetans.  I always want to avoid making a place like India seem exotic, but the way their urban and rural life has collided really makes for an intense experience. The concept of privacy is non-existent, and organized chaos is the rule of the street. India is both exciting and tiring to deal with. Watch for the cows.

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VIDEO: Kent Bye on speaking out

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I first met Kent Bye in October of 2005. He was in town to talk about his new project that was going to collaboratively break down how the media helped ignite the Iraq war. I was really excited about how articulate he was in his descriptions of the news media. We were all just beginning to figure out where videoblogging fit into the ecology. This conversation on a Manhattan street captured our thinking.

Fast forward 18 months later. Kent and I both happened to moved to the Bay Area. I'm making software that helps creators work on large video projects remotely...basically allowing videobloggers to work on group projects like the big media does. Kent received a $50,000 grant to work on the Echo Chamber Project. We weren't joking around.

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VIDEO: Mirror

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We were going to eat somewhere with friends. Ryanne used my camera as a mirror. She's so pretty and funny.

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The Music Dilemma

After posting my video today for Videoblogging Week 2007, commenters pointed out that I used a commercial song that I had no rights to use. Most people would be like 'who cares?'..but in this case, it's important. We just had a big event this past Saturday where Jon and Colette spoke about Creative Commons. If we videobloggers want respect from commercial companies (ie dont steal our stuff!)...we must respect existing copyright law. This means don't use commercial music without permission.

You can see Colette's great email below. She lays out the law.
I just wanted to use a song I liked. No big surprise it was commercial since it's the music that's all around us. But if we are to build a new way to make media online, we got to pioneer these new independent artists that are offering Creative Commons music. Maybe eventually commercial artists will see that it's okay to allow their musci to be used for personal creations.

So time to get off the commercial media nipple once and for all.
I should have known better. Ryanne has been making her own music with Soundtrack Pro for a year now.
I'm going to reedit the video with a CC-licensed song. Jon suggested FreeMusic. I could even use this page at SpinXpress that I've helped develop. If you have a suggestion...leave a comment.

VIDEO: Crazy_Arms

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UPDATE: Both Ryanne and Schlomo correctly pointed put in the comments that I'm using a copyrighted song in this video (Cat Power). I feel like an idiot since we just put on superhappyvloghouse with an emphasis on Creative Commons. I have now taken off my CC license off this video. I'm emailing the CC people to see how they feel about using a copyright'ed song in a personal video. Jeez...i just like the music and want to be creative! These are the breaks.

VIDEO: Chickens

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Watch Ryanne and I feed our left-over pasta to chickens. We just recently moved into a new aparment with Verdi about 20 minutes outside San Francisco. I guess you'd call it an "intentional community". It's a cool, weird place that the punk in me is still real skeptical of. But I got to admit it's beautiful.

Tag: videobloggingweek2007

VIDEO: My New Lip

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This is what a prosthetic lip would look like. It's the 4th annual Videoblogging Week. A video a day for seven days. A whole community of madness. Check out the past years here. So go ahead and make a video. Shit, look what I made. Tag it videobloggingweek2007 so people can find it.