Australia: movie soundtrack a ripoff?
 

so I am not paying much attention to the tv during a commercial when I hear this "Pirates of the Caribbean" sounding music, only to find out it is an ad for the upcoming movie called Australia. TV being what it is, I was easily afforded countless more opportunities to view this commercial. I swear it sounds like a total rip of Pirates. I mean same notes just re-arranged, almost same melody structure as well.

If anything I think it offers some insight to how good the movie might be.

dude, music in a commercial probably isn't even in the movie or on the soundtrack.

it may very well BE music associated with PoTC

I'm going to go out on a limb and say in this case, this is the music for the movie.

could be. still doesn't mean it was a ripoff of PoTC.

I agree. I thought it was a commercial for the new PoTC when I saw the commercial.

Have you seen it? Methinks, no. So watch it before you say that.

nope, I have Tivo, and couldn't give 2 shits about Australia the movie nor the PoTC soundtrack.

Here's the way it works:

A studio hires a composer for a film. The composer is generally paid anywhere between $250,000 to $4 million per film (for blockbusters). This fee includes the hiring and recording of the musicians, copyist, orchestrator, etc.

It's called Work-For-Hire and the studio owns the music. The writer receives 50% of the performance income that's earned from television and radio but not from movie theater showing in the U.S.

So, since the studio owns the music to each and every film they produce, they're free to re-use the music anyway they see fit. Often times, you'll hear music cues from other movies used in television commercials for upcoming movies because it saves the studio money.

Since a movie trailer is edited and cut much differently than a film, there may not be music available from the film to use in the commercial. At that point, the option is to go to an outside production house that specializes in movie trailers, but the minimal cost is about $100k per trailer. So the most effective way is to find something in the existing catalog.

In addition to saving money by not hiring an outside company to score the trailer, the studio actually earns money on the Publisher's share (the other 50%) of performance royalty income.

Could be the same composer too... All of John Williams' stuff sounds the same at times.

It's not.

And I already provided the explanation.

I said the exact same thing to the missus.

Rip-off with just enough changes so they don't get sued. :D

No, it's not a rip-off.

It's a cue from one of the PotC movies.

Didn't you read my post?

I did.... just commenting on what it felt like. :D

That's pretty interesting though... did not know that that is how it worked.

Yeah, most people don't.

Personally, I would not have chosen that cue or anything that could have associated with PotC, just for that reason.

Or maybe they did it to attract attention to a movie that most American's wouldn't care about.

the reviews for the movies so far have been down under