Music in shorts??

[notbyalongshot]

If you a doing like a 5 minute short film just for fun or for film school and not plan on making money from it, could you use a commercial song, like The Beatles,or do you still have to obtain rights tothe song even if the short is just for fun.

 

[Red Prince]

You still have to obtain the rights. It is the copyright, not the sellright. So, any time you want to copy a song, you have to get the owner's permissions. They might let you do it for free for the type of project you are describing, but there is no guarantee they will.

In the US, there are some specific exceptions based on the fair-use doctrine, but what you are describing does not sound like something that would fall under those exceptions.

 

[MarkG]

Well, if you're never going to show it to anyone else, you might theoretically need the rights, but in reality no-one is likely to care. If you're making it for your film school and film festivals, you can often negotiate a cheap rights deal which will only allow it to be shown in such situations; if you then, say, had a TV company want to show your short you'd need to renegotiate the rights. Any serious festivals will normally want proof that you have rights to the music before they show your movie.

Personally I always found it too much hassle and got a composer to create original music.