Jeffool.com

George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is a classic, defining an iconic monster in our culture, and with it a genre: the zombie story. Also, it’s in the public domain. Anyone can copy it, distribute it, and use it to make new works.

Several years ago Nine Inch Nails released Ghosts I-IV, a collection of music largely devoid of vocals. It was released under a Creative Commons license (BY-NC-SA).

I’ve re-scored the film with this album, and removed 36 minutes of footage, in a one hour fanedit that I’m calling Ghosts of the Living Dead.

Purposefully made using legally distributable media, you are free to download and distribute this as you see fit as no money is made.

Some notes on YouTube storage: A company named “SND” claims to own Night of the Living Dead in France. As no one owns the copyright, I don’t see how anyone could sublicense/sell the copyright in France, so I’m disputing this copyright claim on YouTube.

While copyright claims are made to the music (by Audiam, on behalf of The Null Corporation/Trent Reznor), they do not block my usage of the content anywhere. As I have not monetized my YouTube upload, it should perfectly fulfill the CC license requirements under which the audio was released. But due to this claim, I’m unable to properly mark the audio as a Creative Common work on YouTube. I guess YouTube doesn’t think something can be copyrighted and available under a CC license.

The idea for this? Years ago I actively watched many fanedits, and among them was the fantastic Conan: Man of War from someone called “The Man Behind the Mask”. It was Conan with almost all of the audio from the film removed, and scored with the metal band Manowar. It was pretty crazy, but pretty damn great. I not only enjoyed watching it, I subsequently enjoyed having it on in the background; the perfect idle viewing when I was doing something else. Kickass music and a fun film synced wonderfully. What’s not to love?