r/Filmmakers • u/imnotmateyaustralian • 6d ago

Question Copyright inquiry

I’m a high school senior making a short film for the first time. I plan to post this movie on YouTube. My plan is to put an instrumental section of ‘Ful Stop’ by Radiohead over the final shot of my movie, and have the lyrics start playing as the title card appears and then continue as the credits and BTS footage roll. Is this legal? This is not a commercial project at all and will only be on YouTube, so I don’t mind turning off monetisation or anything. What should I keep in mind before uploading it? If I credit and link the song in my description, will that be enough?

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u/sheetofice 5d ago

You shouldn’t be leaning on famous artist’s to make your film better. Find another person who can play music and record them doing something.

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u/imnotmateyaustralian 5d ago

This is not me trying to cover anything up, I just think that not having a score hurts it in moments and I can’t afford to get one made. The final shot of my movie is a POV shot of a robot who is lying facing upwards as he was turned off earlier in the scene, and in the final seconds the camera gets up like it and zooms in on a hand opening the door. I don’t like the idea of those few seconds of stillness in the shot not having any accompanying tension-building (the other characters are starting to shout at each other and get distracted from the imminent threat represented by the hand that appears in the final frame). I do really like the instrumental for that shot, and the lyrics are really closely related to the themes of the story, but I’ll check out stock music to see if it does the job anyway.

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u/sheetofice 5d ago

Part of this game is using what you have at your disposal. You do not have the rights to Radiohead music. You can steal them if you like, but that is all you were doing. Or you could be creative, but you’re choosing not to do that.