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"Happy Birthday" not public domain

moonshieldmedia

moonshieldmedia

I just found out that you need to purchase the rights for your actors to sing Happy Birthday in your film.

This is a huge bummer since it's kind of an important scene in my film.

Can anyone think of examples of movies where they got around it? Does it still count if your characters are terrible at keeping a melody? :)
 
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Make up your own lyrics & melody, like many restaurants do.

There's also a generic creative commons birthday song that is quite catchy. I don't recall the name of it, but I do recall the public domain nature of it being the actual lyrics of the final (and optional) verse.
 
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Haha, love that Futurama clip.

I think doing a different birthday song works for comedy and restaurants, but in a dramatic film it will ring untrue to the audience.

One option I'm thinking of is making the scene a little more abstract, like you can see the family's lips moving as they sing, but the sound is ambient/quiet as my lead actress stares into her candles...

Or I might have to just bite the bullet and pay up :/
 
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