The film* introduces the viewer to a handful of the artists who use samples in their work (members of Public Enemy, De La Soul, etc), a couple artists whose music is regularly sampled (Clyde Stubblefield and George Clinton), as well as a selection of record execs, copyright lawyers, and academics.
Cinematography is often poor, as one might expect when someone takes the roles of producer/director/editor/cinematographer, as Franzen does. Very few can effectively handle all of these roles at one time, especially not an “auteur” making his first documentary. Budget for documentary filmmaking often allows for merely adequate cinematography but I feel that something shown on PBS should be shot professionally. They had the money to clear lots of the music,** why not get a real cameraman? To be fair, some of the interviews do look good and the Clyde Stubblefield drumming sequence is well-lit.
As opposed to the camerawork, I was very happy with the effective, appropriate editing. The directors consider it “collage-heavy” and I agree to this assessment, as it weaves in and out of various shots, interviews, and subjects. I hate montage but I do like this collage approach as applied here, particularly as it parallels the pastiche of many sample-heavy songs. My favorite edited sequence might be when Stubblefield hammers out the beat to "Funky Drummer," the most sampled beat in hip-hop. Audio weaves his live acoustic beat with various songs that use the "Funky Drummer" sample while split-screen shows Stubblefield drumming and the appropriate music videos cycle through. It’s an excellent example of how foundational some samples, this one in particular, are to a given song or an entire genre.
While I'm talking about editing, it's also notable that one of the film's subjects, the music and video collage-duo Electric Method, are credited for “Audiovisual Remix Sequences.” I can think of one excellent sequence near the end of the film that clearly echoes their work. This sequence effectively gives viewers a good understanding about how "found samples" can create interesting, original art.
On the PBS show site, the directors claim that, "The position Copyright Criminals takes is not as simple as good or bad." But the truth is that the film doesn't actually take any kind of position on the issue. The film presents the problems with musical sampling and the interview subjects give a certain amount of their perspectives about sampling but we're never presented with any kind of alternative to these issues.
The film doesn't include enough information on copyright law itself. The directors recognize this but say that such information wouldn't be interesting, "It would be nice to include more information about copyright law, but we often found that the technical details tended to be dry and far less dynamic." This is a somewhat reasonable argument to a certain point. I do take some exception though, because the onus is upon the filmmakers to make the issues of copyright law interesting. Personally, I think that the intricacies of copyright law would be fascinating. But as a result of their view, we are not presented with a fundamental understanding of copyright and related issues in a documentary that centers around this issue. Copyright Criminals barely touches on fair use.
The documentary works very well as a chronicle of musical sampling history but I can't get wholly behind it because it stops short of any kind of resolution. We hear both sides of the issue (though it seems heavily slanted towards sample piracy) and the conclusion is that we're at an imperfect moment in which artists don't have freedom to sample the music they otherwise might.
I feel the filmmakers should have included a line of questioning about what could be done to appropriately give the artists the freedom they want. This documentary could have been truly foundational if it made the attempt an answer to the issue that could reasonably suit all parties. Find a way to use what the sampling artist wants while at the same time adequately compensating the original artist. As it stands I hear it as a whole lot of whining when artists complain about their creative process being cramped but then give no solution to this problem.
This doesn't mean that I have any problem with musical sampling. I consider it an important musical form and it is important that it has been adequately chronicled. But I do think that some concession needs to be made to the sampled artist, it's only fair. At the same time, musicians have to go through certain sources to clear the samples they want to use. This first causes a problem with cost, but there are some who will never clear their music for sampling. For example, the Beatles don't let you clear samples for their songs but you are free to cover their song. A line used a few times in Copyright Criminals is that it's more expensive to use two bars of a song than it is to cover the whole song.
But rather than even asking how this can be changed, all we see and hear is people complaining about it. To really cut to the bone we need to take this a step further. While this documentary was admirable in its ability to bring out artists like Stubblefield, Clinton, Public Enemy, and the Beastie Boys, the audience needs to be taken to someplace new for this to go from "good and worthwhile" to "great and transcendent."
In the end it's little more than "Behind the Music: Sampling."
Final rating: Certainly worthy of your time but not transcendent by any means. I could probably give a second burrito if they gave us some argument or some original thought to take away. Rather, it’s a fairly well-executed summary of established ideas. It’s entertaining and informational but not foundational. One Burrito.
*I actually don't like the term "the film" unless something is actually made on film. This was shot on video, but the term "video" has a different connotation than intended. "The work" doesn't quite fit either. So I'll use "film" until I figure out something better. If you have any ideas, feel free to share them.
** "Our documentary budget enabled us to be able to remunerate many copyright owners for more significant uses of their work." - from PBS website
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