I would love to hear people's thoughts on audio mock ups. We seen them all of the time, especially at the Demo Derbies and such and the general thought is as long as you clearly notate that it's a mock up and for demonstative purposes only, you're mostly okay. What about some of you more seasoned devs out there?

Have you ever seen someone get a C&D letter related to an audio mock up? During my free time, I love to write mock up stuff but have generally refrained from posting it directly to my website just as a percaution.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this!

Thanks,

Nate

Can you explain a bit more by what you mean by an audio mock up? Do you mean remixes and arrangements?

Good question - what I mean is ripping the audio out of a pre-existing trailer or game and replacing it with what you'd do as part of your demo. Like your audio reimagined or like what I did with this Inception trailer:

http://vimeo.com/18705820

It's done quite a bit but when asked if it's legal or not there's always hesitation. It's always explained to me that "well, technically it's not legal but...." and then I've heard stories of photographers (or artists in general) going after people for somewhat similar issues but not audio. I just find that interesting and was wondering if others had any experiences/input.

Ohhhh okay, that makes a bit more sense. Well, you're right, it is sort of a grey area; Personally, I've only received positive feedback. For example, the audio director at Klei Entertainment even commented on my Don't Starve reel and gave me some feedback on my compositions.

The reason for that is most game studios are generally open to people doing let's plays and walkthroughs of their games on Youtube because it is free publicity to them. The grey area is that there are some studios that don't allow these types of videos, mainly because of Youtube monetization; Nintendo is an example. I wouldn't be able to do a Nintendo game in my series because they have been going after people in the past for showing Nintendo-trademarked content and earning money off of it. You would most likely be able to display if for free, however.

For film, however, it could be a different story, I'm not sure. With these mock ups, we as composers own our music. We don't own the footage that we compose over or are simply inspired by. Going along with the game guidelines, you should be fine using the footage with your music on a portfolio, just don't go selling both of them together on a DVD or something claiming that you do in fact own the footage. Sure, if you happen to make a kick-ass song and want to sell it without the video, you are more than welcome to because it's yours. In my experience (even as a web designer), going along with your photography statement, the reason that photographers go after designers and Youtube slideshow creators is because they never received appropriate credit.

If I were you, I would post it because a.) you did a great job on it, and b.) what's the worst that could happen? They won't sue you for showing it. If anything, they will simply ask you to remove it. Just be sure to state that the video does not belong to you, which you did.

I do it all the time but for sound design only.

I don't make any money out of it tho, it's just to show as a part of my demo(s).

For me if everything was logical (which is not really with law), winning money with this would probably be illegal because you show a video that you don't own. I have seen some youtubers get what they call strikes for using 10 sec of a video game clip as a background (sound + video) when they talk, so putting a whole trailer is most likely illegal even if you redo a part of it.

To be more precise I think what's happening is : it's illegal for sure but some company tolerate it for the sake of advertisement.

Well in order for a strike to happen on Youtube, the content holder has to file a claim against your video. Again, most often, this happens because people will post spoilers of the game or film. What that does is deters people from wanting to play/watch that game or film (respectively).

A trailer should be fine honestly. If you are worried about something controversial, just ask the film studio. A simple email would definitely suffice, they are usually pretty lenient with that.

The reason I won't usually ask (I mean I know I should, but again, that grey area), is because I see my stuff as fair use: http://youtube.com/yt/copyright/fair-use.html Simply because I use it solely for educational and demonstrative purposes essentially. Sure, I'd like to maybe release some CD's of my work in the future, but I surely won't be using the footage I used for inspiration within those CD's - just the music.