"Can you use our song?" It is one of the first questions couples ask, and the true answer is more complicated than yes or no, so most videographers give a short version and move on. We would rather explain it properly, because once you understand how music in a wedding film works, you will understand why the films you love sound the way they do, and what you can do to make yours sound like you.
We are filmmakers rather than lawyers, so this is how it works in practice, from where we stand. But it is how it works.
The song your band plays at your first dance is in your film. The recording of it by the original artist usually cannot be.
Why the chart song is a problem
To lay a commercial recording under a film, the person making the film needs permission from whoever owns the recording and whoever owns the song, and those are usually two different companies. That permission is called a sync licence. It is how television and cinema do it, and it is priced for television and cinema. For a single wedding film, the cost, if the label will even answer the email, would be more than the film. So no honest wedding videographer in Ireland is licensing chart music track by track, and the ones who say they are using it "for personal use" are relying on nobody noticing.
And somebody does notice, because the noticing is automatic. Upload a film with an unlicensed recording under it to YouTube, Instagram, Facebook or Vimeo, and the platform's software identifies the track within minutes. Depending on the label's settings, the audio is muted, the video is blocked in some countries, or the whole thing is taken down. Couples find this out when they try to share the film with their family, and it is a horrible way to find out.
What videographers actually use
Licensed music libraries. These are catalogues of songs by real, working artists, often very good ones, who have chosen to license their music for film in exchange for a subscription fee paid by people like us. The licence covers the film being made, shared, and uploaded anywhere, for good. The music in every film on our films page came from one of these libraries, and if you have ever thought "I don't know that song but it's lovely", that is why.
The craft is in the choosing. We listen to a great deal of music, and we spend more time picking the two or three pieces for a film than most people would guess. When couples tell us the artists they love, we go looking for the same feel: the same tempo, the same instruments, the same kind of build. Órla and James told us afterwards that "the music choices ye made" were one of the things they loved most, and they had never heard any of it before.
What you can have, and it's a lot
Everything that actually happened on the day is yours. When the band plays your song for the first dance, that performance is part of the event, and it goes in the film exactly as the room heard it. The singer in the church. Your uncle's band at the afters. The song you walked in to, as it sounded in that room with those people. These are usually the most moving pieces of music in a wedding film anyway, because they are yours in a way a recording never was, and because the sound of a room full of people singing the chorus of your first dance is something no studio version can give you.
So tell us the songs that matter, and tell us early. Knowing a first dance is coming means three cameras and a feed from the desk. One we didn't know about gets whatever we happened to have pointed at the floor.
The practical version
- Ask any videographer whether their music is licensed. The answer should be a quick yes and the name of a library. If it's a shrug, your film may be one upload away from being muted.
- Tell us your artists, not your tracks. "We love Hozier and The National" gives us far more to work with than a specific song we can't use.
- Brief your band. Tell them which songs matter and roughly when. Tell us too. Between us we'll make sure they're captured properly.
- If you want your exact song, put it in the day. Have it played live, have the singer do it at the ceremony, walk in to it. Then it's in the film because it was in the room.
The films couples come back to are almost never the ones with the famous song under them. They are the ones where the sound of the day is intact: the vows in your own voices, the band, the room. We would rather build a film around that than around a recording that belongs to somebody else. And it turns out that is also the version you're allowed to share.
With warmth,