Overview

This resource compiles public domain and Creative Commons materials that students may use when searching for music, images, footage, sound effects, or other media assets for productions and related projects.

Understanding public domain and Creative Commons licensing is important because productions must ensure that all third-party materials are being used legally and appropriately. Learning how to evaluate licensing terms, attribution requirements, and permitted usage helps students develop stronger professional practices related to copyright, rights clearance, and media sourcing within film production workflows.

Some Words of Caution

The Internet is a wonderful place for finding videos, images, motion graphics, clip art, music, and sound effects that can be used in your films.

Beware, however, that the Internet is also a terribly unreliable place and the burden of proof will fall on Producers to document that the production has the rights to use the materials, so that there’s a clear chain of title.

For works in the public domain, this can sometimes take a fair amount of research, as licensing information can be unclear, unreliable, or hard to track down. Any works published 95 years ago or earlier are now in the public domain. Any works published in the past 95 years should be assumed to be under copyright, unless otherwise confirmed. Be aware that new versions of works in the public domain — e.g., a New York Symphony Orchestra’s recent recording of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony — are copyrighted. In other words, while you could perform the composition yourself and be alright, you couldn’t use the New York Symphony Orchestra’s recording without clearing it first.

For Creative Commons work, some license types (such as “NoDerivs” and “ShareAlike”) are not compatible with the work we do. Productions are only permitted to use work licensed as “Attribution” or “Attribution-NonCommercial”.