Cue Sheets: Who does them in buyouts?

[dubaifox]

Hi:

We wrote music for a 10 part animation series a few years ago.

It was a complete and total "work for hire, you never have any rights to this music again even in outer space from now until the end of time as we know it" type of contract.

We got an email from them today asking if we could help them with the cue sheets. It was a lot of music! A big job!

Are we supposed to provide these??

[Msilver84]

Normally, the music supervisor or who ever was handling the licensing does this. They aren't difficult, but they should have been done in the first place. Just provide themwith the cue, title name, time, and use. The publishing info they will have to fill in since you no longer own the rights. Here's a sample.

http://www.ascap.com/musicbiz/cue_sh...leCueSheet.pdf

[dubaifox]

Originally Posted by Msilver84

They aren't difficult,

They aren't difficult...but with a ten part series with maybe 20 - 30 cues per episode...that is a lot of somebody's time.

Are we supposed to provide that?

I thought that was their responsibility, since they own the music, and any revenue that will come from it.

[robcap]

We have seen this a couple of times. The post house and or the producers are responsible for the cue sheets in this case - it is almost always part of the delivery spec and hence the producer's responsibility. We are currently working on an animated series that has the same deal. We are the post house, and the producers told me that they in combination with myself will take care of the cue sheets as they bought the rights for the music.
In my opinion, not your problem at all! Unless you somehow agreed previously to provide cue sheets.
If you so decide to provide information as described by Msilver below you are being gracious. Providing time cues is the largest part of the labour if they sometimes edited your music in someway.

Hope this helps!

[Msilver84]

Originally Posted by dubaifox

They aren't difficult...but with a ten part series with maybe 20 - 30 cues per episode...that is a lot of somebody's time.

Are we supposed to provide that?

I thought that was their responsibility, since they own the music, and any revenue that will come from it.

Yes it is. It will take a lot of time if it's a series. Since you have no ownership of the music it is not your responsibility, your only reason for helping them would be to keep the contact alive and not burn a bridge. The music editor/ music supervisor who synced everything knows the timing and parts used better than you would. Maybe they could not reach them.

[sailor]

If you just recorded the cues and handed the material over to the editor or mixer to place in the show, then that person should help with the cue sheet -- you won't have accurate placement and timing information.

If you also did the post mix on the show, then it's possible for you to generate the info. You can extract cue sheet info from your sessions (Pro Tools does this, maybe others do as well). It's not difficult, but a little time consuming to format it properly. For 10 episodes, that will be a fair amount of busy work. I think it would be reasonable to charge a little something for the time, if it wasn't agreed at the outset that you'd have to provide a cue sheet for them....especially as the request is coming years after the fact.

[minister]

Cue Sheets are the responsibility of the Production entity that signed the contract with the Network or Distributor. It is NOT your responsibility. If they ask you to do them, you can, but I would charge for it. We do them for the shows we work on, but we charge. They are not terribly difficult, just need the text of the session -- the the TC location and titles of Cues -- and a few hours. Knowledge of Excel is a help.

[drBill]

Like it's been said, it's the producers responsibility. I've never seen a post house that was held responsible for this unless they were spotting and syncing the music at the house. If there is a music editor, he/she us normally responsible for making them.

Most composers I know (including myself) get actively involved. Unless you want mistakes, incompetance and (sometimes) fraud, get those started yourself and then hand them in to the producer. We even go to the point of submitting them to BMI/ASCAP ourselves. Often they seem to get "lost in the shuffle...."

I can't see anyone not willing to fill out their own cue sheets. It simple and it's how you MAKE MONEY on the backside. Do it, and you will get a nice check from BMI/ASCAP at some point.

[philper]

I seem to end up doing them for the shows I work on--I have the mix project w/ the final TC positions and durations etc and the composer and editor don't. I usually get the list started w/ start TC addresses and durations, and then let the producer or the composer fill in the rest since I usually don't have cue title and publisher info.

Philip Perkins

[dubaifox]

Thanks for all of the replies.

It confirmed what I thought, and I sent a very gentle email back suggesting they ask the production house that did the mix.

[SurveillanceP]

working in post house, music cue sheets take me less than a minute each.

-export session info as text

-open in excel

-delete uneeded rows

that said, if you don't name your stuff correctly then they can't do it regardless.

if the regions come in named as "xx 111 no drums" etc then things get pretty pointless for us. happenned today. had to throw it back to the composer.

[mfranken]

If you have a lot of these to do you can use EdiChart to clean up the Pro Tools text export and create a total usage of each base region in alphabetical order with durations in TC and seconds.

Example output: (note there are TABs between each field that don't show too well here)

TOTALS:
REGION NAME # DURN TC TOTAL SEC
END BEAT DRUM ROLL 2 00:00:07:12 7.48
Hit drum rollwav.wav 2 00:00:10:03 10.12
MC_Action_AA_007.wav 2 00:00:48:00 48.00
MC_action_DW201.aif 2 00:03:01:22 181.88
MC_AUD-Victory_AA_044.wav 1 00:00:30:17 30.68
MC_audserious_dww220.wav 1 00:00:29:11 29.44


You can then load this export into Excel to add add your extra information. EdiChart is used mainly to print dubbing charts but this feature was added to it's "Export Text" function in the last update for this very purpose.

Regards,

Mark