Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: Flashblade on March 04, 2014, 03:07:49 pm
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This is just my opinion of course, after returning after a really long fs2 hiatus I came back to this and to Blue Planet WiH. There is some iconic music in here and by iconic I mean iconic to other franchises. Srsly guys the track of Dante's battle against Vergil from Devil May Cry 3? I hear this music and it completely pulls me out of Blue Planet and I am thinking of Devil May Cry and while the track is srsly awesome it just does not belong. I recognized some music form Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex as well. Same thing happens for me.
If you really want or have to leave all that in, the least you could do is for example credit Yoko Kanno for her music. That isn't really too much to ask if you take her work without permission. After all your composer did not create this and it should be made absolutely clear which are his tracks and which are not his.
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If you look in the credits you'll find proper attribution for all music tracks used in the production of Blue Planet.
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I'm gonna play the Devil's Advocate here: Even though all the tracks are properly attributed, it still feels wrong.
You are basically giving away those tracks to anyone who uses the (included) mod tools.
And then there is the fact that Fair Use does not completely cover the usage of them. (The value of Fair Use as a defense drops dramatically the more material you use. Bp has tons of.)
Now, don't get me wrong here, I love those tracks and the timing and the effort from the team in using them, but the more I have thought about them, the more it seems they should be pulled.
Tough that would put a lot on Belisarius's shoulders. And makes it so obvious why the V tracks played at random rather than by scripts that involve hundreds of tracks.
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Yeah, honestly BP's use of music goes far beyond fair use and is tantamount to piracy. I wouldn't mind, but the fact that the mods of this site (some of whom are BP team members!) will come down on you like a ton of bricks if you mention piracy approvingly on the boards makes it all seem hypocritically moralistic.
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We're always open for suggestions in that regard. What we are not open to is a blanket demand that we have to change them (unless, of course, you ARE a rights holder. Then we'll certainly change the tracks), especially when it is NOT accompanied by workable suggestions for replacements.
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Loving your policy that rights holders have to ask you in person to remove music when their copyrights are supposed to make that stipulation for you.
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Are you going to be constructive, or will you just continue to snark?
EDIT: Oh, and should we also pull TBP, Diaspora and WCS while we're at it? Or Wings of Dawn? Or any of the multitude of mods that have used third-party music?
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No. You should abolish your hardline anti-piracy stance on the forums.
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Is music on youtube piracy too?
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It's something we constantly worry about (and we're always playing with our music selection), but on legal grounds we view our work as basically the same as a YouTube fan mix under fair use.
Phantom, the BP team is not particularly related to HLP's stance on piracy.
Sorry to hear you found some of the tracks disruptive, Flashblade, but we make it absolutely clear which of our tracks we made and which we didn't, and we're in a fairly limited situation resource-wise.
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I'd be happy to chip in a track or two to help get BP off of dubious legal footing.
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You are basically giving away those tracks to anyone who uses the (included) mod tools.
Well, it's pretty much as easy to get a song from the VPs as it is to get it off of YouTube...
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I rather enjoyed all the music, no matter where is was 'pulled' from.
Sure, I recognise a lot of it. But for it, it is still BP. Same goes with the music from WoD
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Maybe I should start making music too and keep them free like some other guy do. I have no experience unfortunately.
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No. You should abolish your hardline anti-piracy stance on the forums.
So the solution to BP using music tracks is to... become more lax on theft? I think you have some wires crossed here. The fact that there is one exception on Hard Light (which is very clearly not being used for profit or financial gain) that already consistently looks for alternatives does not imply condoning piracy, nor should it.
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Be careful though people, talking about piracy by itself is a big flame bait anywhere on the internet. Don't go hardcore to either side.
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Loving your policy that rights holders have to ask you in person to remove music when their copyrights are supposed to make that stipulation for you.
That's how DMCA works, yes.
So the solution to BP using music tracks is to... become more lax on theft? I think you have some wires crossed here. The fact that there is one exception on Hard Light (which is very clearly not being used for profit or financial gain) that already consistently looks for alternatives does not imply condoning piracy, nor should it.
There's waaay more than one exception, especially where music is concerned. We just ignore the elephant as long as it isn't stepping on anybody.
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FWIW, as someone who hadn't heard most of these third-party tracks in their original context, I think BP uses them quite effectively. I recognized Icarus after it was pointed out on the forums, but that was the only one and as much as I liked DE:HR, I thought Axem's solemn, intense cutscene was a more memorable usage of the track.
Not to say that the music can't immediately wreck immersion; I just wanted to share my positive impression. And my nitpick that BP's sometimes a bit heavy on the metal. :P
attempting to jam enemy beam weapon targeting
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Handshake Successful, Target Locked, Beam Strike Imminent.
Thing is Battuta, does the Law consider it on the same grounds as a YT video? And isn't the law trying to purge that exploit? What worries me most is that given how far the deep end mods go around here, this could be a legitimate life-threat to this community.
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If somebody feels that he is pirating (ARRRR!) music by playing BP, he should adjust music volume to 0 and turn on some track from his own legaly purchased music.
But please don't try to make things more complicated for BP authors or for players who actually just play and greatly enjoy BP.
Thank you in advance.
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Pirates? I always think we are ninjas
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This is a silly and pointless discussion.
Look, guys, if you really think this is a problem and have some fully legal music tracks that you can offer as replacements, by all means, do so.
Otherwise, bringing this up accomplishes nothing.
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Ok sry about the credit thing, you did do that actually. I wanted to make clear that I made no demands of you guys and that this was an opinion piece as stated in the first sentence.
As for ideas, I guess I would look for music that is a little more niche than from other tripple a games or a little more "generic". As I viewed your credits I noticed that I could have recognized a great many more tracks but didn't because the music just wasn't that memorable and I think that is a good road to travel all in all. If you take music from known sources don't use the super recognizable stuff. I do understand that this is quite subjective as well, best I have to offer I am afraid.
Like taking music from Hans Zimmer. The only problem with this is that, while all of his music basically sounds the same, his style is soo recognizable, so an unknown Hans Zimmer. :p
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I think the issue here is consent, not how well known the particular pieces are within BP's target demographic.
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Well if you look at it from that direction then there wouldn't be much choice and Bellisarius would really have to step up his game or find another contributor to the soundtrack or simply pull everything that is third party and replace it with fs2 music. I wouldn't mind that SOO much because FS2 music has well Freespace feel, but BP would loose a lot of its unique flavour. I doubt many would be okay with that.
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I'm not suggesting that they rip out the unoriginal music, and you're absolutely right that doing it on the up and up involves significantly more effort and/or money than using temp tracks. Ultimately though I think it's much better for the modders, the musicians, the end product, and the community. Like most things worth doing, it's just hard :(
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Music has to fit the mission, scenario and the very specific event it is used in, mission events and music often are synchronized to some degree. This is particularly noticeable in scripted parts of the missions, including but not limited to cutscenes. Dynamic events are handled by the game engine. Unless replacement music has nearly identical pacing it may be required to redesign these scripted parts of the missions, which may not be a trivial task. Replacing music is not as simple as just switching the audio file with another.
It has been mentioned already but BP team has only one composer, Belisarius. He's already doing his best to create new music for missions that are under development and to replace existing music with similar compositions of his own. There's only so much one man can do on his free time.
So this leaves the BP team with two options. Either use stock FS2 music which is simply insufficient, or scour the internet to find suitable music. Of course free-to-use music is preferred, but it comes to down what is suitable in the particular mission, scenario and event the mission designer wants to use the music in. It was the design decision from the beginning to bring movie-like atmosphere to WiH and that places rather strict requirements to music.
BP team has been aware of these legality issues from day one and continues to be aware of them. The BP team does not want to use any assets that are subject to DMCA notices, music or otherwise but sometimes you have to make best of the poor situation. Of course this leads to moments when you hear music you know well, perhaps too well even. Most people are not bothered by this and I am sorry to hear it bothers you. But if anything, that's a good reason to lend a helping hand.
If you can compose music, then by all means contribute by composing suitable replacements to copyrighted music. The BP team would be more than happy to use them, given they retain the pace and feel of the original.
If you can't compose, you can still help by finding free-to-use music that fits the same bill. Even though BP staffers have scoured the tubes to find such music, they can't very well spend entire days and weeks on that task alone, otherwise nothing else would ever get done.
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The only soundtrack that pulled me off as much as Flashblade was is Icarus from the starting cinematics of Tenebra. But that is a particular discussion long gone (and my only issue with it was the pulling off, not the copyright).
Phantom's attempts to sidetrack this into a copyrights issue is an annoying distraction IMHO*. I agree with the interpretation of "fair use" and the assets are sufficiently well protected under the vp files. If you know how to take them out of vp files you also know how to take files from youtube or other sites, etc. I am also sufficiently pleased by the BP team having been for years now (it's not only now they discuss this issue) how they much preferred to use only in-house soundtracks, but this is not a for-profits thing, there are really next to zero resources to pull a full independent soundtrack here - Belisarius was amazing in his tracks, but he is only one man!
*If I were a bit less generous here, I could think it was a bit of an attempt at mutiny in HLP in order to take down HLP's stance on piracy, rather than trying to solve BP's issues. This is not the way to go, IMHO.
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Out of curiosity, are there any plans to replace the menu track for BP AoA? That track sounded so fitting that I was surprised to find it wasn't composed for anything Freespace related. It was reminiscent of the intro track from FS2.
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*If I were a bit less generous here, I could think it was a bit of an attempt at mutiny in HLP in order to take down HLP's stance on piracy, rather than trying to solve BP's issues. This is not the way to go, IMHO.
HLP's copyright stance isn't going to be changed by one user, "mutiny" or not, so we can probably give PH the benefit of the doubt here. He's expressed his opinion, let's leave it at that.
In terms of the original posts topic, I think that it's always going to be difficult (nigh impossible) for campaign makers to find non-original tracks that none of their user base will recognize. That said, that is something for other FREDders to consider when selecting music - similar topics to this have come up many times in the past.
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I think there's a ****ton of freeware or otherwise more "obscure" music lurking in the internet nowadays, with bit internet sites willingly sharing them for free, etc., so the excuses are getting slimmer and slimmer for those problems to arise, although I agree this creates a need for the developers to get more knowledgeable about these venues, interesting soundtracks and other music bits that are, again, obscure.
I understand wholeheartedly the difficulties this press. If some track is obscure to a listener, good chance it is also to the developer! And the amount of time and patience one needs to have to wrestle through so much bull****ty music or just inappropriate for the purposes of the campaigns, etc. is just too much. Better to just plug "that amazing soundtrack that can't get out of my head, I fking must just put that in my gameeeee 1!!!1one!!".
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It's definitely a grey area (can understand those against using them), but I've never massively minded in cases like BP (and imagine the team safe in the end from Harvey Specter appearing... beyond his being fiction :lol:) because BP isn't making money from it. I will go and buy songs I hear and like anyhow (coz I'm sad like that :lol:) so always felt it's null point in my case. I do recall some of the songs (The 'Delenda Est' music for one) are remixes (done I assume by Darius who IIRC does music remixes, he did have some up on another site for a while but the site closed; a pity as they were darn good), and I assume (though don't know if) the law is different for those since you get so many musicians doing rehashes or remixes of songs without getting sued.
OTing slightly for a bit, i do think it a pity the industry is so protective (mostly due, I'd argue frankly, to those obsessed with getting anything they want for free, but I concede they're not solely to blame). I've always loved the idea of more deals where musicians allow tracks to be used in return for exposure; so like having BP use Icarus and then saying 'like this? Go say thanks to Mcann by buying this Album!'.
In fact I'd propose the best thing BP fans could do (beyond making BP some music, which I sadly can't do due to being cack at it :lol:) is go and do just the above. I know you can get Icarus (Deus Ex Soundtrack), the GiTS song ('Fish~Silent Cruise' by Yoko Kanno), and the Immediate Music songs ('Preliator' and 'Spiritus Khayyam', in album 'Epicon' under band name 'Globus') from iTunes at least since I own them (for like peanuts; £0.99p-isha song/ £9-ish an album usually), and I assume the others would be too if anyone knows the names/albums. Heck we might even get musicians interested in freeing songs if they see game/mod cameos driving sales instead of destroying them.
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What you get from mods is like, some ****ty ogg-compression-raped lossy version which is the way it is because it has to be distributed/loaded/played in-game and over the pew pew lasers and beam cannons you don't notice, much like youtube music is lossy but acceptable (for mobile purposes/just looking something up because someone was talking about it somewhere)
If you had any standards for music you wouldn't listen to those files outside of where you had to (ie. outside the game), since you know - you can get it lossless and whatnot, or at the very least at a higher bitrate. So really, it's more like you're getting the low-quality preview even if you extract the files - you still have to buy (or actually pirate) the 'real' version in the end.
Of course this is making some fairly easily satisfied assumptions - that people actually have standards for what quality of music they listen to but I can make that one fairly safely...right? (And if they didn't care they could just use a tape recorder or whatever recording device, and record it off whenever they hear it and play it back when they want to - how are you going to stop that?)
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That's the poorest argument ever droid. Just because it's a ****ty way to get your "pirated things", doesn't mean it becomes suddenly a valid one. I think I like T-Man's reasoning (and the whole BP team's) explanation better. After all, these are just fan works done and distributed for free that really have zero impact in the rest of the economy (well I'm not this naive, I do have an ideological nasty thought about this one, but let's just pretend for a second), and should be read exactly like that.
If the BP team were to suddenly start asking for money or whatsoever, then the soundtracks issue would even be the least of their problems.
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We all know people used to 'pirate' music (and movies) by bootlegging in concerts back then. Quality wasn't so important back then.
Again, if it is hard for you to find 'free' music, it is just as hard as any mod devs here. Still, you can still see tons of AMVs in Youtube today and the copyright holders just leave them be, with the exception of the few aggressive ones. It is safe to assume that the one the mods uses has the same license as youtube. Until there is such warnings, we should leave them be, especially Freespace mods aren't the only modded games around with fan made contents available. If that happens, the news should go widespread on the internet.
I am personally not satisfied with low quality music files (these nice speakers made me feel the difference). I always rip them from CDs at the highest possible quality.
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What you get from mods is like, some ****ty ogg-compression-raped lossy version which is the way it is because it has to be distributed/loaded/played in-game and over the pew pew lasers and beam cannons you don't notice, much like youtube music is lossy but acceptable (for mobile purposes/just looking something up because someone was talking about it somewhere)
Anyone know the bitrate of the music in BP offhand? Speaking personally, I haven't noticed anything in BP being "ogg-compression-raped" (don't have any of it in front of me to actually check, ATM)... for that matter, YouTube music being "lossy but acceptable" sounds like an outdated generalization, especially since the addition of HD video.
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Yeah seriously, maybe I'm not enough of an audiophile to notice but the BP music seems perfectly high-quality to me. Certainly enough that using it as an excuse to ignore copyright law is as flimsy as all the other rationalisations in this thread. Look, copyright law is utter bull****. What BP's doing is clearly ethically acceptable, and criminalising it is utterly ridiculous. But a lot of people on this site, including the powers that be, seem to hold this weird double standard, where they try to construct some moral line which legitimatises the behaviour of BP (and many other mods) under some spurious interpretation of 'fair use' while still condemning piracy of, say, FS2 as 'stealing' when the two are identical in any meaningful sense.
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If that is how you're feeling, you're barking up the wrong tree. BP doesn't make policies on HLP. I'm sure you already knew that, so why are you bringing it up here instead of barking it up in appropriate places?
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Yeah seriously, maybe I'm not enough of an audiophile to notice but the BP music seems perfectly high-quality to me. Certainly enough that using it as an excuse to ignore copyright law is as flimsy as all the other rationalisations in this thread. Look, copyright law is utter bull****. What BP's doing is clearly ethically acceptable, and criminalising it is utterly ridiculous. But a lot of people on this site, including the powers that be, seem to hold this weird double standard, where they try to construct some moral line which legitimatises the behaviour of BP (and many other mods) under some spurious interpretation of 'fair use' while still condemning piracy of, say, FS2 as 'stealing' when the two are identical in any meaningful sense.
Yeah, right, "spurious".
Here's the dividing line: If you straight-up link to an unlicensed download? That's prohibited. If you use some copyrighted material as part of a greater, transformative work? That's not. You equating the use of some tracks as part of a mod with someone just spewing links to an album torrent, that's the spurious thing in this thread.
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Well... I'd agree the lines aren't that well blackednwhited.
Because your new definition "If you use some copyrighted material as part of a greater, transformative work" is not only bull****, it would allow for instance for BP to be released for free and without any need to buy FS2 in the first place. Like, say, Diaspora.
Thing is, it has been long established that this should not be the case. That all mods or campaigns that use FS2 assets and IP (story, etc.) should be obligated to work as "mods" of FS2, and not as standalones. So either the policy goes or your definition goes.
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In addition to Belisarius' work, Darius is incredibly talented at remixes, and in an ideal world we'd probably be able to replace all our outside content with his remixes of that content. But as Candide demonstrates...
And yes, we're pushing to make BP standalone like Diaspora. I don't think any existing policy has spoken to this at all - Inferno has been planned as a standalone for years.
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As far as I was aware, you would not let people who didn't install FS2 download and be able to play BP. So I was incorrect in that interpretation?
Look, I don't mind these copyright shenanigans, I just want to understand better where the community is headed. I much rather read or listen people state clearly "We know we are swimming in strange, muddied waters in these decisions, but given our constraints, this is the best thing we can do and thus we will do it", which to me is clear as day and is perfectly workable with, than just trying to rationalize inconsistencies away with some ad hoc shallow and fundamentally incoherent handwaving.
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So either the policy goes or your definition goes.
Neither.
You see, what is publicly posted on these forums or any other website hosted on hard-light.net is responsibility of HLP admins. Taking a stance in not supporting piracy or any other action that is unlawful in most countries and enforcing it as far as content on hard-light.net is concerned is common sense. However, it may have escaped your attention that mod downloads are not hosted on hard-light.net. BP downloads for instance are hosted on freespacemods.net and possibly somewhere else, but not on hard-light.net. Thus why should HLP enforce their policies on content that's not hosted on hard-light.net?
It would be different matter if BP staffers would be posting stuff like "Get War of Angels by downloading <insert link here>" and such. There is no copyrighted material on blueplanet.hard-light.net.
The only thing that would be even close to above is the credits listing Battuta posted for AoA and WiH, but it doesn't specifically tell you to do anything nor does it link to anything.
In any case, this is wrong topic for this subject. This is about what music to use in BP, not about debating HLP policies and copyright.
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As far as I was aware, you would not let people who didn't install FS2 download and be able to play BP. So I was incorrect in that interpretation?
Look, I don't mind these copyright shenanigans, I just want to understand better where the community is headed. I much rather read or listen people state clearly "We know we are swimming in strange, muddied waters in these decisions, but given our constraints, this is the best thing we can do and thus we will do it", which to me is clear as day and is perfectly workable with, than just trying to rationalize inconsistencies away with some ad hoc shallow and fundamentally incoherent handwaving.
I don't understand who you're addressing here. This is the BP board and what you're saying is basically BP's policy. We have no control over HLP's policy as a whole.
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Fury, that is a good distinction I was not making and I think it is proper.
Despite all that, it is akin to say "The Freespace 2 torrent is not hosted in HLP, therefore it's not a problem for us, despite we linking to the torrent, making huge comment threads under the link posts, telling everyone to dowload it and how to install it, etc."
I am aware of The_E's black and white marker. It seems a bit arbitrary to me for it is based merely on some specific common sense that is far from being encoded in the law or its spirit... but I guess the problems there are with the laws, not HLP.
@Battuta, well then I misread your intentions.
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And now that the copyright/piracy discussion seems to be winding down (hopefully), I would like to address the first (and imho meatier) half of OP's comment.
The BP devs have noted that if there are specific songs that we do not like and have a replacement for, they would happily swap them out. So why don't we start by mentioning a few that break us out of the BP/WiH suspension of disbelief? Then we the community and the devs have a starting point for finding out what should/can be replaced with what.
Like OP, I did not find Vergil's battle appropriate. The song itself is very good, but it did not lend to me sitting in a space ship fighting for my life.
I also had a slight problem with one of the songs from Advent Children. I think it takes place during the fight with Bahamut in the movie... In the mission I recall the music starting up as our wing began afterburning toward the enemy, which was fine except it the song transitioned into the actual fight way before I got there. I may have to watch Quantum Delta/replay a bunch to remember exactly what bothered me about it.
Other songs that rubbed people the wrong way during their playthroughs?
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On the other hand, I found the use of Preliator in Delenda Est perfect. You guys must have timed Levi's incredulous response to Simms or something because if you didn't, that was one of the most powerful coincidences I have ever come across.
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(And if they didn't care they could just use a tape recorder or whatever recording device, and record it off whenever they hear it and play it back when they want to - how are you going to stop that?)
Yeah no, how about 3.5 mm audio cable, headphones out port to line in port, load Audacity, profit! And if you have good FM reception it works for radio, too! :drevil:
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As with most elements of HLP's policies, there is room for flexibility and interpretation in the way we approach the posting/use of copyrighted works inside and outside the context of FS mods. In this case, as with many others, the sin doth lie in the intent.
In my non-professional opinion, the use of copyrighted game music in another game mod, for profit or not, is probably not legally defensible as fair use. However, the copyright owners have not caused a fuss, and the material is used in a separate work, and is used exclusively in support of a FS mod, which is the exact kind of activity that HLP supports. So while the use of said music may technically violate the general anti-piracy stance, we turn a blind eye in cases such as this for the good of the modding community and FS as a whole. Of course, if the original owner were to complain and/or issue a take-down notice, things would quickly change.
Compare that scenario with the general posting of, for example, a torrent for an album. The torrent adds nothing to the FS community or modding scene, so we would come down hard on it.
I can see how some people would see this as a double standard, and maybe it is, but I think it's a double standard that gives the community the best balance possible, and prioritizes the things that are important to us.
Please note, however, that all that is my personal opinion and interpretation of our rules and precedents. This hasn't been discussed behind the scenes as far as I know, so don't take this as any kind of official HLP stance. It's simply how I approach the issue as a mod.
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Compare that scenario with the general posting of, for example, a torrent for an album. The torrent adds nothing to the FS community or modding scene, so we would come down hard on it.
But a torrent for FS2? Or better still: the necessary FS2 content to run FSOpen? Being able to, effectively, distribute all our mods as standalone would be a major boon for the community, but it's considered unacceptable for copyright reasons.
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Obtaining FS2 is cheap and easy. When it wasn't, HLPs stance was very dofferent. And we should support the creators of our favorite game (disliked though Interplay may be, they still allowed FS to get off the ground, and for that we should be grateful to them). It's much harder to get the dozens of individual tracks, convert them to a usable format and make all the other changes campaign makers may have made. Thirdly, the music is a relatively small part of the mod, while the FS asset base still represents a significant chunk. Finally, and on a more personal opinion type note, I don't think it's too much to expect people to buy a game of they want to play a mod for that game.
It's also not in the community's interest to get on interplay, GoG or (perhaps ultimately) Valve's bad side.
Final answer on that topic then - we will not be allowing FS torrents any time soon. If you're unhappy about that, I'm sorry, but that stance is a solid one.
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And now that the copyright/piracy discussion seems to be winding down (hopefully), I would like to address the first (and imho meatier) half of OP's comment.
The BP devs have noted that if there are specific songs that we do not like and have a replacement for, they would happily swap them out. So why don't we start by mentioning a few that break us out of the BP/WiH suspension of disbelief? Then we the community and the devs have a starting point for finding out what should/can be replaced with what.
Like OP, I did not find Vergil's battle appropriate. The song itself is very good, but it did not lend to me sitting in a space ship fighting for my life.
I also had a slight problem with one of the songs from Advent Children. I think it takes place during the fight with Bahamut in the movie... In the mission I recall the music starting up as our wing began afterburning toward the enemy, which was fine except it the song transitioned into the actual fight way before I got there. I may have to watch Quantum Delta/replay a bunch to remember exactly what bothered me about it.
Other songs that rubbed people the wrong way during their playthroughs?
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On the other hand, I found the use of Preliator in Delenda Est perfect. You guys must have timed Levi's incredulous response to Simms or something because if you didn't, that was one of the most powerful coincidences I have ever come across.
Yes that was what my posting really was about, copyright not so much.
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Blue Planet is not a commercial project, but a free fanmade mod. I dont see any copyright issues here. Copyright generally only applies to commercial use of the works, Blue Planet is free non-profit project and thus covered under fair use.
And BP music is awesome, I would hate to see any part of it go.
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Blue Planet is not a commercial project, but a free fanmade mod. I dont see any copyright issues here. Copyright generally only applies to commercial use of the works, Blue Planet is free non-profit project and thus covered under fair use.
That's entirely wrong.
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ey im a fan doz that mean i can torrent anythin i like coz im not into makin profit see?
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To clarify, the "copyright is only for commercial works" idea is a complete misconception. Making money from someone else's IP is the surest way to get sued, but just because you don't make money directly from the derived work doesn't mean you're in the clear.
Like if Scientology (a non-profit charitable organization) wants to remix your song into an inspirational pump-up jam for their recruiting video (that they make no money off of), they still have to pay you, or you can elect to withhold the rights and make them find another song. Even educational organizations have to pay royalties if they want to use non-public domain music, though of course musicians can and do grant permission to use their stuff for free.
Fair use for music involves using brief snippets for the purposes of doing a review or teaching or stuff like that. Using music that was written to enhance a video gaming experience for the purpose of enhancing your video game is probably not covered.
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I think that the use of whole unaltered tracks is less defensible under Fair Use (though I would still speak for it) but that the use of remixes and chopped up/rearranged music is more so.
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Using a sample of a master recording (even chopped up in a remix) means that (in the US) you have to pay both a mechanical royalty (generally to the publisher) for the compositional content of the piece you've sampled and a separate royalty (generally to the record label) for using the recording itself. Other countries have different ways of handling royalties, and I don't know if any western countries allow you to distribute derived works for free if you aren't making money. I definitely couldn't ironically drop the chorus of an Eagles tune into one of my compositions and give it away as a promo though, as much fun as that would be. I mean, I could, but I'd have to first make an agreement with the Eagles' publisher and record label and then pay the appropriate royalties every time someone downloaded the promo.
Royalties are usually paid at a flat per minute rate (so any time someone downloads your song that uses the sample, you pay 3 cents in royalties). If you make your own cover version of a song that doesn't use another party's master recording, then you only have to pay the mechanical royalty to the composer/publisher (in the US).
e: As a side note, this is why stock (royalty-free) music is a thing. Long live generic rock drum loop b.
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Whatever the legal reality there is a culture of remix and sampling out there that thrives on the ability to work without paying royalties. If the law were enforced strictly I have no doubt this culture could be brought to heel, but I think that would be a real loss.
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I certainly wouldn't argue with that. I'm just concerned that as you grow, at some point you will cross a threshold where it will start to make sense for rights holders to come after you. If BP goes standalone and blows up (which it certainly has the potential to IMO) and you get 500,000 downloads, your not-licensed music suddenly becomes a liability. If you happened to live in the UK (1st place I saw numbers for), the minimum royalty rate for a permanent download is 4 pence per download (going down to 2 pence per track if you have a bunch of them bundled together). If you had 10 of these sample-using tracks in your download (and using the bare minimum cost), you would then be on the hook for 100,000 pounds.
Granted I don't actually know how these numbers work out and I undoubtedly did it wrong, but the point remains that royalties are big money. There are good reasons why artists like Weird Al and all the professionals who use samples work out deals with rights holders before release. Those reasons are named Dolla, Dolla, and Biiiiills.
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I don't really have an opinion on this subject, but I will say that there is at least one track on WIH Act 2 (War of Angels) which is being used specifically in spite of the explicit wishes of the copyright holders.
That is very annoying considering it is used far better in WIH than it has been in any comparable project, but still.
Personally I don't think they will throw up a fuss.
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No, if they've explicitly asked that it never be used this way we'll pull it. We've done so in the past in similar situations.
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So does this mean I should put my plan to use RULES OF NATURE as the final stage of a sequential boss battle on the back-burner? :P
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So does this mean I should put my plan to use RULES OF NATURE as the final stage of a sequential boss battle on the back-burner? :P
That Album is the first game soundtrack CD that found it's way into my regular music library :) Awesome all around hehe.
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No, if they've explicitly asked that it never be used this way we'll pull it. We've done so in the past in similar situations.
It's up on the website, but I will actually mod Blue Planet to keep it in game because I prefer it being used as is.
Besides I suspect they'd be quite proud of what you've done with it. People do find ways to monetize other peoples content (particularly on youtube) but in the case of Blue Planet, I think this falls into a very, very specific subset of uses which is effectively impossible to monetize. I mean if I take my own work on Shetland alone, I reckon I've done a good twenty days work unpaid at least.
Just an annoying little aside. I wouldn't pull it, personally. I would ask them directly if you can use it and given the size and scale of the project - combined with videos of the playthroughs of this magnificent mod - I imagine they would acquiesce.
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Probably best to get in touch if possible, and if they have discussed it specifically; I know Two Steps have had a lot of success thanks to fans (in fact IIRC it was fan requests that made them start up albums in the first place, they used to be business only) so they may not mind entirely as Rheyah says. However, if one of their customers had bought the right to use that song yet then saw Blue Planet using it they might get uppity with Two Steps, which would not be good. Best to have a deal of some kind in place if possible.
You could mention incidentally that I and my family are huge fans of their music from iTunes yet hadn't even heard of Pathogen (nor their website/youtube with all the others for that matter) until this morning, so you've at least in our case just given them free advertisement! :lol: Definitely buying those near future! :yes:
And if worse comes to the worse... how much are song rights anyhow? (a friend once looked up one song I liked and the company apparently asked for £200-ish) Fan donation drive anyone?
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Song rights prices differ from place to place, but one site that I use is around AUD1.85 per track for home/student usage (up to AUD135 for commercial/corporate productions).
Music usage is an ongoing discussion topic among us as the reach of the mod increases. What's looking most likely is future releases toning down this "grey area" use of music and phasing in royalty-free or properly licensed tracks.
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Song rights prices differ from place to place, but one site that I use is around AUD1.85 per track for home/student usage (up to AUD135 for commercial/corporate productions).
Woah, didn't realise it could be that low (heck for business deal-level terms even the 135 ain't bad; was that Per Anum or one-off?); and you guys might be able to get near the lower-end deals as BP is not-for-profit. What you've done with the songs you have are so fantastic for their missions that I'd be a shame to ever have to loose them.
If the option is there, I would donate happily. Suspect others would too. (especially if it's as low as £1-2 a track; good god a pint is worth more than that :lol:)
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To clarify, the "copyright is only for commercial works" idea is a complete misconception. Making money from someone else's IP is the surest way to get sued, but just because you don't make money directly from the derived work doesn't mean you're in the clear.
To clarify further, using someone else's IP for money is a felony, using it for free is a civil suit.
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This is just my opinion of course, after returning after a really long fs2 hiatus I came back to this and to Blue Planet WiH. There is some iconic music in here and by iconic I mean iconic to other franchises. Srsly guys the track of Dante's battle against Vergil from Devil May Cry 3? I hear this music and it completely pulls me out of Blue Planet and I am thinking of Devil May Cry and while the track is srsly awesome it just does not belong. I recognized some music form Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex as well. Same thing happens for me.
Deliberately ignoring the semi-OT piracy debate - what's more jarring for me is when super-recognizable trailer music is used mid-game. Icarus has been mentioned before, but I'd also include Freedom Fighters and Lacrimosa. Lacrimosa in particular had reached such saturation in the whole 'overblown trailer music' memsapce - almost as much as Requiem for a Tower - that in the mid-00s this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYIm79iNTDk) happened. It was an immersion-breaking moment for me when that played - I was tempted to crack up, thinking of H2KAM, in the midst of what should have been a dramatic moment.
In general, trailer music doesn't belong in the middle of a video game/film/television show. There are examples of music going the reverse direction, but I can't name a time (outside of parody) when a director/producer said "OMG, we should use this music from a trailer I heard to really drive home how EPIC this scene is!"
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Everyone is jarred by different music. People tend to react so positively to the use of Freedom Fighters/Lacrimosa in particular that I have no idea how we'd ever pull them without a minor revolt.
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I recall seeing a trailer for the movie "Master and Commander", and realize that I was hearing music from "Pirates of the Caribbean", and also watching a trailer for the Mark Whalberg-led "Planet of the Apes" and hearing music from "Independence Day"
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Now the fad is using Sunshine's soundtrack theme in trailers. I'm sad about that, I thought that was a (somewhat) private popjoy of mine and now it's fully hypermainstreamed.
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I liked the use of freedom fighter/lacrimosa....
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I associate Icarus far more with BP than I ever did with DX: HR. In fact, I was actually kinda surprised it was from DX: HR because that game made such poor use of it that I barely noticed it. To me, it's a BP track through and through, and I'd still use it even if it was removed from official releases.
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That's actually kinda sad... and I think one of the reasons people might take issue with the *ahem* 'O'ST. By your post, BP pretty much
appropriated annexed that track.
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Not BP's fault DX:HR made such poor use of the track. They had the opportunity.
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They paid for the song to the composer. Let that sink in. It's theirs to use as they see fit. Bp... well...
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They're free to ask us to remove it if they care. They haven't so far. Until they do, there's no reason to get rid of it.
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Icarus is available to every YouTube channel, amateur dance mix, Tumblr fanvid, and romantic cyborg mix tape that's seen fit to take it, play it, bend it, chop it up, or rebuild it from the ground up. We did the same.
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I would like to try and bring this to a final close if possible, as I don't want it to drag on and on needlessly. There's three options on the table;
1. Keep things as are and risk problems down the line.
2. Remove the unlicensed music and replace it with free-to-use alternatives (which sounds like it's Darius' plan). Perhaps the people who are arguing against the tracks would be kind enough to help look for or compose some fitting alternatives (perhaps working with Belisarius), as it is them wishing the tracks removed?
3. Get in touch with the license owners and get the tracks licensed (this may be a problem in the case of Two Steps, as they can't license for free anymore forcing a commercial license). Again, perhaps the people arguing against the tracks would be kind enough to help by (as I offered) getting their wallets out, as it was they wishing the tracks licensed?
(Pardon rudeness/bluntness. I can't help notice that many of the people who are suddenly getting at BP over this (despite, if I recall in an earlier post, the original thread starter not wishing to) seem to be (as it always seem to be these days) HLP 'members' who to my knowledge have actually never contributed anything to any part of the community except complaining at or demanding things from those that actually do contribute (If I'm wrong there though, fair enough). An old motto; "Be the change you want to see!". If you are fans, help the BP Team out here please, instead of just criticising them.)
(EDIT: Okay... maaaybe a little too ranty of me and should've been said better, but shall leave it up in the name of honesty.)
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Your post is sensible IMO T-Man, I also think unreasonable to ask the BP team to even consider the option of substituting tracks for two main reasons, one that which Battuta alluded to, it will ease some fans, it will irate others (so why bother?), two it's just too much work and in some cases almost impossible (the Icarus scene is synchronized with its soundtrack for example, and so is Freedom Fighters).
I think this discussion is nevertheless very useful for it brings to the table a question that we as members of a wider society should think about, namely what constitutes copyright, intelectual property, fair use, their limits, common sense, etc., and as members of a modding forum, what kind of standards should we uphold, what is reasonable or not, etc.
In the case of BP well, it's hard. The ambitions of the bp crew were immense, and it's hard to emotionally convey all the mind states without borrowing the very best that is out there. I have a curious fact to share. You do know that in Tenebra we get in Universal Truth the 2001 soundtrack Requiem (youtube link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgqI32JX_jY), and it is the perfect track at the perfect spot. What you might not know is that Kubrick himself used this music without permission from its author, Ly Ligeti (who then went on to successfully sue him and eventually settled).
So this is a very old conversation indeed.
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The discussion has basically been 'closed' since the beginning, in that the team is aware of the issue and we are constantly thinking about music choices and copyright risk. We're going to keep doing what we've been doing - seeking out alternatives when realistic and invoking Fair Use to the extent that we can.
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That's great but for future scenarios, is there really a point in invoking Fair Use? Darius's remixes are fantastic, and I'm sure he can make anything from Jamendo, CCMixter, Incometech, etc. without drawing unnecesary controversy every release cycle.
I'm just being a devil's advocate while supporting royalty-free and free music. I understand that it's a grey area, but I don't think the BP team would get into any legal trouble. On the other hand, I can foresee no future complaints about the music when BP stops using commercial music while still getting exceptional praise because of Darius, Belisarius et al's talents.
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As has been alluded to throughout the thread, the reason that this music gets used at all is because neither Darius nor Belisarius have unlimited time to produce music for BP.
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That is understandable. My argument is that instead of using commercial music in the future, BP can use royalty-free or free music to substitute when time is limited.
The one assumption I'm making is that for every commercial music that is being considered, there is an equally good/better royalty-free alternative easily available on the internet.
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That is a wrong assumption.
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It probably is wrong, because y'all wouldn't use commercial music otherwise, right? But I had to throw that out there just for future reference when another one of these threads appear.
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Yeah, you'll be hard pressed to find a stock drop-in replacement for any track that has had a scene cut around it. The normal process is to make your rough cut using the temp track, then show that to the composer and get your custom soundtrack demo created, then reedit with that music, then make needed changes to the music and record it, then re-edit everything together with the final music doing lots and lots of passes.
Some directors do get attached to certain temp tracks and just end up using them, but all the talk of "nothing will ever replace the unique epicness of using this exact bombastic hollywood trailer at this exact moment" is pretty silly IMO. You can always make a better match by starting from scratch. Obviously the exception is when the director actually wants to invoke the audience's previous experience with a well known piece of music, but I don't think that's what the BP team is going for.
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So what would happen if I were to hit the 'pause' button in the middle of one of these sequences?
Yes I realize I could just test this myself, but I'm also curious whether the devs know / have considered it
Edit: As an aside, the only "borrowed" musiks I had heard before were "Vortal Combat" (which I didn't pick up on), "Aqua Vitae" (which was fitting), and "Rise" which is the only one that felt out-of-place. Well no, "Endgame" felt out of place too, but I think that was intended.
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So what would happen if I were to hit the 'pause' button in the middle of one of these sequences?
Yes I realize I could just test this myself, but I'm also curious whether the devs know / have considered it
My experiences with pausing in the Vassago's Dirge intro say - the music gets horribly desynchronised. It's something I'd like to investigate further and hopefully fix (at some point...)
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Yeah, you'll be hard pressed to find a stock drop-in replacement for any track that has had a scene cut around it...
Yes, it only applies to previously used tracks. For future ones, there's no reason to base it on tracks that aren't free.
... the talk of "nothing will ever replace the unique epicness of using this exact bombastic hollywood trailer at this exact moment" is pretty silly IMO. You can always make a better match by starting from scratch.
Indeed, which has been my point!
After reading what swashmebuckle wrote, I don't think there's anything wrong with my assumptions after all. If non-free music was not sought after in the first place, there could be so many free music alternatives that can fit a situation better.
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I think it's just a resource management / bang for your buck situation. There is limited time to scour the internet for royalty-free music and limited money to hire musicians, and working within those limitations has led to the current situation. Music from other games or film trailers is near at hand, checks the boxes for what the missions demand, and is of a high enough quality that it won't distract from what they're trying to do. Is it worth delaying a release for an indefinite amount of time or laying down a healthy chunk of money in order to get around these issues?
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I said this earlier and I'll say it again, it's really frustrating to harvest the internet for free soundtrack / music / soundbytes, etc. 99.9% of it is either trash, irrelevant, not-so-good, nothing-to-do-with-it-at-all stuff. It's a really hard thing in itself. Just because it is "free" and "out there" doesn't mean the cataloguing nature of the internet is already in such a state that allows anyone to retrieve valuable assets right now. I think we are still far from that point in 2014.
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Just want to drop in and say, I wholly approve of the use of bombastic overdone trailer music in BP. "Real" movie/game music just isn't epic enough IMO. I like my entertainment maximalist, kthx.
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ey im a fan doz that mean i can torrent anythin i like coz im not into makin profit see?
You Dutch? If so, then yes, basically.
Anyway, I liked the music. Icarus did pull me back to DX:HR and what a great game that was, so it made me space out on like half the intro movie. Had to restart it. But keep on doing what you're doing. It's great.
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Just want to drop in and say, I wholly approve of the use of bombastic overdone trailer music in BP. "Real" movie/game music just isn't epic enough IMO. I like my entertainment maximalist, kthx.
Just saw this, sorry for the late reply.
The interesting thing for me is that the trailer music that people associate with epicness is actually very minimalistic--it can be accurately described with a very very small amount of information (assuming an adequate musical vocabulary). Sometimes that's what a director might want for a big moment. An actual maximalist approach to the music in scenes of srs epicness has the potential to distract the viewer and detract from the overall experience if not handled well. On the other hand, it can also blow the roof off the place and melt the overwhelmed audience's brains into puddles of rapturous/despondent goo, which is something that trailer tunes can only dream of.
I am not trying to knock on this sort of music at all--it is the way it is for very good reasons, and it does its job very well. It sits in the foreground and has minimal informational content by design. It's there to be talked (and/or yelled) over, and the audience is supposed to be busy constructing the plot of the movie from and being enticed by the aesthetic appeal of the film clips while it is playing. It is very handy, but the fact that it has so little to do outside of setting the tone means it's pretty close to stock by nature, so I would argue that given the ambition and skill of the BP team, sticking with trailer music indefinitely would be selling their creation short.
TL/DR: Trailer music can be big, but maximalist entertainment it ain't.