This Is Halloween ~

Obstacle Or Opportunity, This Is Halloween ~
 

 Recently having completed a lengthy Samhain machinima project which entailed lots of research, The Song Of Amergin, A Samhain Story, I still had a VERY halloween type theme floating about in my mind.

After a few days of wondering what it could be, I finally pinned it down to be
Tim Burton's amazing song This is Halloween 
from his Nightmare Before Christmas animated film.

Jack Skellington The Pumpkin King

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, is a 1993 stop motion musical fantasy film directed by Henry Selick and produced/co-written by Tim Burton. Burton wrote a three-page poem titled The Nightmare Before Christmas when he was a Disney animator in the early-1980s. He took inspiration from television specials of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and the poem A Visit from St. Nicholas. It tells the story of Jack Skellington, a being from 'Halloween Town' who opens a portal to 'Christmas Town'. Danny Elfman wrote the film score and provided the singing voice of Jack, as well as other minor characters. Marilyn Manson also sang a version of the song 'This Is Halloween'.

Believing in the power of serendipity, that random explorations often bear unexpected fruit, I decided that it would be fun to make a short machinima film tribute of the song.
And that's where the first Obstacle stepped in.

Realizing the pitfalls of using copyright controlled and Digitally Fingerprinted music in my machinima, not least of these is that my video hosting accounts could be frozen, blocked and even deleted, but perhaps more thoughtfully the problem of using someone elses creation without their permission, I set about finding a copyright free or creative commons version of the song,
from the Internet Archive here

The Internet Archive

My endeavors rewarded, I found what I was looking for of sorts, I found the music performed by someone other than the Tim Burton-Danny Elfman team, and no it wasn't the excellent Marilyn Manson version either.
The only piece I found however had 'no' copyright permissions details ie the usual set of choices including Attribution But No Derivatives, or the preferred Attribution Derivatives Allowed, as well as others....
My way around this lack I thought was to just post a standard Creative Commons License Attribution Share Alike like this (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) below the film in the credits and hope that as the music recording had not been marked one way or the other, that this would satisfy the 'spy bots' that trawl the video hosting sites for copyright contraventions.

But this still left me another Obstacle, that it was 'just' the music.

Another trawl through the internet and I found plenty of lyrics lists for my chosen song, and whilst I was  concerned over the copyright permissions for the music, as many tribute versions of the song have already been performed in theaters as well as uploaded on you tube and etc, provided I give fair attribution and thanks, I think it will be clear and not appear as though I am claiming the lyrics as my own.
We could call this 'fair use' particularly as I have edited the words that I do use, that I do not sell my machinima films anywhere nor make any money from them in any way..

This Is Halloween

Performed by the Citizens of Halloween 

SHADOW  

Boys and girls of every age  

Wouldn't you like to see something strange?  

SIAMESE SHADOW  

Come with us and you will see  

This, our town of Halloween  

PUMPKIN PATCH CHORUS  

This is Halloween, this is Halloween  

Pumpkins scream in the dead of night  

GHOSTS  

This is Halloween, everybody make a scene  

Trick or treat till the neighbours gonna die of fright  

It's our town, 

everybody scream In this town of Halloween  

CREATURE UNDER BED 

I am the one hiding under your bed  

Teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red  

MAN UNDER THE STAIRS  

I am the one hiding under your stairs  

Fingers like snakes and spiders in my hair  

CORPSE CHORUS  

This is Halloween, this is Halloween  

Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! 

VAMPIRES  

In this town we call home  

Everyone hail to the pumpkin song  

MAYOR  

In this town, don't we love it now?  

Everybody's waiting for the next surprise  

CORPSE CHORUS  

Round that corner, 

man hiding in the trash can  

Something's waiting now to pounce, 

and how you'll scream  

HARLEOUIN DEMON, WEREWOLF, AND MELTING MAN  

Scream! 

This is Halloween  

Red 'n' black, slimy green  

WEREWOLF  

Aren't you scared?  

WITCHES  

Well, that's just fine  

Say it once, say it twice  

Take the chance and roll the dice  

Ride with the moon in the dead of night   

HANGING TREE  

Everybody scream, everybody scream 

HANGED MEN  

In our town of Halloween  

CLOWN  

I am the clown with the tear-away face  

Here in a flash and gone without a trace 

SECOND GHOUL  

I am the "who" when you call, "Who's there?"  

I am the wind blowing through your hair 

OOGIE BOOGIE SHADOW  

I am the shadow on the moon at night  

Filling your dreams to the brim with fright  

CORPSE CHORUS  

This is Halloween, this is Halloween  

Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! 

CHILD CORPSE TRIO  

Tender lumplings everywhere 

Life's no fun without a good scare  

PARENT CORPSES  

That's our job, but we're not mean 

in our town of Halloween  

CORPSE CHORUS  

In this town  

MAYOR  

Don't we love it now?  

MAYOR WITH CORPSE CHORUS  

Everyone's waiting for the next surprise  

CORPSE CHORUS  

Skeleton jack might catch you in the back  

And scream like a banshee  

Make you jump out of your skin  

This is Halloween, everyone scream  

Won't ya please make way for a very special guy  

Our man jack is king of the pumpkin patch  

Everyone hail to the Pumpkin King now 

EVERYONE  

This is Halloween, this is Halloween  

Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! Halloween!  

CORPSE CHILD TRIO  

In this town we call home Everyone hail to the pumpkin song  

EVERYONE  

La la-la la, Halloween! Halloween! 

Tim Burton, This Is Halloween.
  

Whilst this resolved one Obstacle, that of 'what' to sing, it left me with another, that of singing the lyrics, in a suitable voice style, and tempo, to fit the music.

My first four or five attempts were deffinitely dreadful, as it took a while to get into character, but they did improve. I was playing the downloaded mp3 soundfile on my computer into my headphones and singing into the attached microphone at the same time, perhaps bellowing is a better description than singing and I hope that the postman did not hover too long at our door as he would have been very surprised haha.

Anyway, I then found that the computer had excellently recorded ely re-record any that were too bad to use.

Finally, I had my completed song with music and excitedly I uploaded it to test the copyright issues and wether or not my video host would flag it as copyright contravention.

Which it did, 

about 3 minutes after the upload had been processed....the repeat plays of the soundfile but completely ommitted my voice efforts, another Obstacle.

So I had to re-sing the whole song, which I did another few times, poor neighbours.

These attempts revealed that my memory for timing and pace, as well as the characterisation of the voices used, were all pretty off.

Next solution, to play the music file in sections and sing-record each phrase directly after, which worked much better as I was able to edit the new voice files onto the music directly and immediately

Another Obstacle, and a threat to my whole account and backlog of uploaded videos...

Quickly I deleted the offending upload.

Not to be beaten however and after quite  few hours of messing about shouting the song at my microphone, I decided to try lateral thinking;

If the music itself is under copyright and creating problems,
Then remove the music.

Which I did, and then found that whilst not quite the same, because I had synched my singing to the original sound score and tempo, that the vocals nearly carried the piece well enough...

But not quite, and so with a few more more hours of tinkering with soundfiles downloaded from Royalty Free Creative Commons Attribution and Derrivative Allowed sources,
I completed my audio for my short tribute to this great work.

  This Is Halloween by celestialelff


So in each case, every Obstacle that I met on the path to the audio for 
This Is Halloween
has proved to be an Opportunity to create practical solutions that respect the original authors rights whilst still allowing myself to fulfill my mission.

Happy Halloween ~