Christmas,
the most wonderful time of the year,
with the most festive movies of the year.
But not all Christmas movies are created equally.
On one side you have the theatrical studio Christmas movie.
We're talking your Elf’s, we're talking your Home Alone’s,
your The Santa Clauses.
These films aren't blockbusters per-se,
their budgets are often medium to small.
But they're significant when compared to the micro-budget
Christmas movies that our moms have grown to love
Like Time for Him to Come Home for Christmas
or Time for Me to Come Home for Christmas
or Time for You to Come Home for Christmas
Or Time for Us to Come Home for Christmas
or A Cookie Cutter Christmas.
Okay, that last one was a departure, I know.
But I lumped it in because I actually spoke to the guy
who made the music for it.
Hey, I'm Russ Howard and I am a film composer
Almost every day on Hallmark
during Christmas season, there's a good chance
if you turn on the TV, then you'll run into some of my music.
I called him up to talk about
how all the Christmas movies we know and love,
and the ones we might not know yet, sound Christmas-y.
Like many things, those decisions start with money.
While studio film budgets are in this range,
Hallmark movies are generally made for $2 million and under. Although...
I think most of them are shot for
maybe like $400,000 to $500,000 and less.
When it comes to music,
only a small percentage of the overall budget
is allocated for it.
Traditionally, it's about 3% to 5%.
3% being more the average,
And then if it's a very song heavy movie
that would push it up to that 5%.
Let's take Elf as an example.
It cost roughly $33 million to make.
5% of that is just over $1.6 million —
more than the whole budget of some Hallmark films.
So they were able to afford a scene like this
where Zooey Deschanel and Will Ferrell sing a popular song
(singing) I really can't stay
Which...I can’t actually play more than that here for fear
of getting flagged for copyright infringement
But, anyways.
songs like that one cost a pretty penny.
and just how much is a pretty penny?
Well, I emailed a bunch of music supervisors
to try and find out, and one got back to me.
Lexy Brewer.
She mostly works on the cable TV side of things
And via email she told me that
the traditional Christmas songs
we know and love tend to cost somewhere
in the ballpark of $25,000 per side
‘Per side’ is important to note here,
because when you want to license a song for a movie, there's
actually two sides to every clearance.
Like, let's say you wanted to play Christmas (Baby
Please Come Home) in your movie.
Russ: I don't know if I know that one exactly
Ed: You definitely do, it’s the one that’s like
(singing) Christmas, the snows coming down!
Russ: Oh yes, of course.
AHEM -- Editor's Note to Michael Bublé,
Darlene Love, and anyone else who sings the song
Please don't sue us for doing that.
The first fee you have to pay is for the composition of the song:
using those notes in that order
$25,000 or thereabouts goes to the music publisher.
The second fee depends on what those notes in that order sound like
You could have the original recording
[snippet of the original Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) recording plays]
or the cover by Michael Bublé,
[snippet of the Michael Bublé’s Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) recording plays]
Either way, you need to square up for at least another $25,000
But depending on the song, the artist might want more
and then the overall cost increases.
Lexy explained with this example of Mariah Carey.
If she wanted twice as much as the traditional rate on her side,
then the other side would likely match, doubling the total fee.
Of course, these are all loose numbers.
These kinds of deals generally aren't made public.
And Lexy works on the TV side of things.
She didn't know the numbers specifically,
but she said that streaming
and theatrical fees are likely more expensive.
So that might not be exactly
what Mariah or other artists might charge, which is why
You would hear other artists covering Beatles songs a lot of times
[snippet of Here Comes The Sun, by The Beatles, but performed by a group that is very much not The Beatles]
because they could pay
for the right to use the song,
but not for the right to use The Beatles
Not licensing music ahead of time
can get you into some sticky situations
like Russ was telling me
about this one time where a rough cut for a film
that he was working on for Hallmark
had a scene where characters sang Rudolph
the Red-Nosed Reindeer,
you know, I get to be the bucket of cold
ice water on their Christmas dreams and say,
Hey guys, like these songs
very well could cost more
than the movie budget, you know, to license.
They ended up cutting that scene from the film.
But if they would have known what songs do
and don't have copyright,
there's a way that they could have made
a similar scene for free
A lot of the Christmas songs
we love are not what we call public domain.
Public domain,
or in other words, free from copyright.
It's the reason that you hear this song in so many movies.
[snippets of Trepak: Russian Dance from The Nutcracker in every Christmas movie you’ve ever seen in your entire life)
When it comes to public domain in the U.S.,
every piece of creative work made
before 1928 is totally open for anyone to use.
Anything created after that, for the most part,
is A-OK 70 years after the creator dies.
So this song you're hearing right now,
it was written by Tchaikovsky for The Nutcracker in
1892, public domain.
What's great about the public domain Christmas songs
is it's this like shared cultural experience that we all have.
These cost nothing,
and are Christmas as heck.
They're used in movies big
[jazzy version of Jingle Bells from Iron Man 3]
and small.
[Whimsical version of Deck The Halls from My Christmas Guide]
And because they're open to the public,
composers like Russ can recompose bits and pieces
with no worries about having to pay a huge fee,
or even worse, getting sued.
The trick is recomposing them
to fit the mood of a particular scene.
if I was going to take like Joy to the World
[plays Joy to the World on the piano]
and then I wanted to
make it maybe a little more moody,
I would maybe, [plays moody version of Joy to the World on piano]
My job is like, how do I take that,
and, make it work to a scene?
This is Deck the Halls fit for a baking montage.
[Deck the Halls, fit for a baking montage]
But for me, the most interesting rearrangements
of these classic songs are the more warped ones.
Russ was able to make sinister versions of songs
we know and love for the Christmas slasher
It's a Wonderful Knife.
[Russ’ sinister version of Joy to the World plays]
Joy to the world
in like, kind of like an evil version.
Did you detune the bells too? Yes.
Yes! Yeah, they're they're a little bit detuned.
So they sound a little bit off.
[plays the detuned bells on the piano, and they do indeed sound just a little bit off]
There are many ways
to rearrange the classic songs we all know and love,
but sometimes the cheat code to the Christmas sound
can boil down to a simple instrument.
Tinkling bells [plays Jingle Bells on the tinkling bells]
and then, of course [plays the sound of sleigh bells]
But it seems like, no matter how you get there
the most effective way to spread Christmas cheer
is public domain Christmas songs
for all to hear
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