Soundtrack composer Alexandre Desplat

Composer Alexandre Desplat has a number of films running at the Cannes Film Festival 2012, notably “Moonrise Kingdom” and “Rust & Bone”. He has been called a worthy successor to the French masters of film music such as Delerue, Duhamel, Jarre and Legrand. His scores for “Read my Lips/Sur me slèvres” and “The Prophet” directed by Jacques Audiard established his credibility in French Cinema. He then went on to score “The Girl with the Pearl Earring”, “Birth” and “Syriana”.

His innovative voice launched Desplat as one of the most active European composers in Hollywood. He won a Cesar and the Berlinale Silver bear for his score to “The Beat my Heart Skipped” in 2006, the Golden Globe 2007 for “The Painted Veil” and received 3 nominations at the Oscars in 2007 for “The Queen”, in 2008 for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and in 2009 for “The Fantastic Mr. Fox”.

Desplat will be hosting a masterclass, dubbed “A Personal History of Film Music”, at 2.30pm in the Theatre Bunuel on May 19, 2012.

“People are scared,” he said during the conference, pointing to the difficulty ECSA had in obtaining information from composers about the issue. He also noted that some composers have now started seeing payments for the rights, although it looks as though this comes from the overall budget anyway.

ECSA held an interesting press conference to bring the issue to light, highlighting the imbalance of a composer negotiating with the likes of mega-broadcasters such as BSkyB, ProSabien and RTL Group. Jean-Marie Moreau, one of Europe’s foremost songwriters, also pointed to the practice of record companies grabbing rights for composing for performers. “The problem we are facing is how to define a publisher,” he said. “What is their job today?” Composer Chris Smith said more bluntly, “This is not market forces, this is abuse of a dominant position” in the round table. “But this is happening because musicians will not say ‘no’,” he added. “One of the important things about organisations like ECSA is that they can say ‘no’ on behalf of composer that feel that they can’t.”

ECSA defends and promotes the rights of authors of music at the national, European and international level. More details here.

After notable international successes with films such as “Asterix & Obelix at the Olympics” and “Mesrine”, “The Artist” has been beating records for La Petite Reine in the number of nominations – and notably for music. A triple award winner at the Golden Globes, “The Artist” has now been nominated in ten categories at the Oscars, Césars and picked up awards at the Baftas. The interest has caused the movie to be re-released in Belgium, notably.

Strictly Confidential is pursuing its activities in cinema by collaborating with SAVAGE FILMS, the independent Belgian film company founded by Bart Van Langendonck in 2007. Savage Films already has a number of films and documentaries in its catalogue, notably “Rundskop”, aka “Bullhead”, which is Belgium’s nominee for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. This is only the sixth Belgian film to be nominated in the category.

VITALIC, who Strictly Confidential represents as a publisher, composed the original music of the Italian film “La Leggenda di Kaspar Hauser”. The film will be released in February 2012, following an avant-première at the Rotterdam festival.

Strictly Confidental

SESAC is privately owned and home to a number of high-profile songwriters such as Bob Dylan. One of the difficulties of selling it is that its natural partners, such as major labels, would have difficulty arguing that there isn’t a conflict of interest in representing both their commercial interest and those of rights holders. Warner has reportedly expressed interest.

But given that there is a growing trend towards integration at the level of PROs across the globe, would this not be the time for  a large body such as Germany’s Gema, Japan’s Jasrac or France’s Sacem to pitch? It would certainly benefit the flow of information and rights in both directions – a key issue in the sector.

In an unusual move but interesting move, three Nordic rights collecting societies – KODA, TONO and TEOSTO – announced at Midem 2012 that they are joining forces to share the back-end for their IT services. The goal is to reduce processing costs while meeting the needs of their respective members.

Since 2008, Denmark’s KODA and Norway’s TONO have been working together to develop shared IT systems. Now Finland’s TEOSTO has announced it will join the effort. Together, the three organizations intend to expand and accelerate the plans for developing common back-end systems.

“We hope to improve our services, and our aim is to continue to be the natural and attractive partner for all music rights holders in Finland. This requires modern and up-to-date IT systems that are capable of meeting the needs of TEOSTO’s members and customers,” says TEOSTO CEO Katri Sipilä. “Joining the TONO-KODA partnership is a natural step for us to ensure that we can continue to offer the best service possible”.

The three organizations aim to work together to develop a common system for distribution, member services and other IT-systems. They will also look into options for connecting the back-end to a works database.

“This means getting more bang for the buck,” says KODA CEO Anders Lassen. “Working closely together with like-minded sister societies is the logical thing to do in order to save costs and ensuring that we continue to have top-of-the-line systems in a rapidly changing world.”

Important role of collection societies

The organizations aim to sign a Letter of Intent within a few months and subsequently begin building a common organization to handle its development.

“TONO believes the national collecting societies will have a very important role to play in the years to come: We know the local market and can ensure unsurpassed value for rights holders. But we also need to be able to provide this service at a competitive cost. The only right choice is to join forces with other societies with whom we share common goals and processes,” says TONO CEO Cato Strøm.

There can be little doubt that collection societies are very similar operations, and therefore could easily share development and/or running costs for large sections of their work. This initiative is the first of its kind that we know of.

On the TV front, music supervisors for NBCUniversal were overwhelmed by the response to one pitch they posted when over 2,000 tracks flooded their inbox. With a choice like that, they eventually found what they were looking for. But supervisor Alicen Schneider had this to say about the incoming music pitches: “a large number of the postings contained more songs than were feasible to review given the sheer number that awaited us and were also from genres that a little research would have shown are not right for any of our current shows (gospel, children’s songs, novelty….).”

The message is clear. Don’t waste the supervisors’ time. They are not going to change the brief due to the fact that you didn’t adhere to it! It doesn’t work that way round! One Pitch session is still open: agency Grey is looking for music for a worldwide campaign for a pain-killer. Check the details here. Deadline January 25. Midem will be held between January 28 and 31.

ASC is a fund associated and managed by the two founders of Atlantic Screen Music, former Pathe Entertainment FD Simon Fawcett and Tim Hollier, who built the world’s biggest independent film music publisher Filmtrax PLC.

“We have the funds to invest in great projects and in Cannes we are ready to strike deals,” says Hollier, “It is so important in a tough economic climate that film receives this support and we are a unique company with a hugely experienced team. Our administration of music rights is second to none and clients have the assurance that we are a one-stop shop, keeping them in touch with earnings from around the globe, rather than in a single territory.

“What we want from Cannes is to find new and exciting projects. I’ve worked on some incredible films in my career and the joy is looking for that project that can become a classic and be part peoples’ lives all over the world. Music is such an important part of that, it is a passion for us.”

Tim Hollier

Tim@Atlanticscreengroup.com

+44(0) 7836 782 495

These questions – and hopefully more – will be debated at a major conference organised by Music 4.5 in central London on June 9, 2011. For details, visit Music 4.5.

Two in-depth case studies of how it has worked for Last.fm and PureSolo will be presented and discussed.

The Music 4.5 Content & Music Licensing Workshop will take place at eOffice in Broadwick Street, on Wednesday 9th of March from 14.00 to 18.00, followed by networking drinks for all participants. Prices from £105 + VAT.

Speakers include:

Cliff Fluet, Lewis Silkin

Tom Fredrikse, Clintons

Eric Mackay, CELAS

Joanna McNally, PRS for Music

Simon Moran, Last.fm

John Thirkell, PureSolo

For details, visit Music 4.5

The idea is certainly good from a logical point of view, and one I recently put to a popular TV series. Why let good music lie dormant when it could be earning money? But a question that bothers me is who will be earning? Was not lots of this music composed “for hire”?

Continue reading on Examiner.com: Berklee students open doors to Paramount’s archives – Boston Movie News | Examiner.com and The Crimson.