SXSW always brings together a bounty of groundbreaking films, musicians and technology to Austin. This year, the inventive electronic music artist Moby has also come to not only perform but to announce his latest project that supports independent filmmakers. In the cozy lounge of downtown Austin’s Four Seasons, we had a chance to talk with Moby about his experience with filmmaking, scoring music for independent films and his latest project MobyGratis, which gives filmmakers access to his music for use in their films – for free.

So you studied some filmmaking in college right?

Well, I went to SUNY Purchase, which is mainly a performing art school, but I went there to study philosophy. One of my best friends was part of the film program. SUNY Purchase was actually one the last film school’s to have an experimental film program. So you could graduate with a degree in Experimental Film, that’s what my friend did. So for a few years we just made these very surrealist inspired black and white 16 mm films shot on a Bolex and edited on a flatbed. Actually the first film we made was shot on Super 8 and edited with a little Super 8 editor.

You mean the reel-to-reel flatbeds?

It’s super tiny and you can’t actually preview any of the edits before hand… We were inspired by Un Chien Andalou and the surrealists, so we were just making these very obscure stream of consciousness films.

So was there ever a thought that you might head in a filmmaking direction before moving into music?

No. When I was growing up, my Mom was a pianist and a painter. So that made me become a guitar player and a photographer. I thought, “Ok. Piano and painting, my mom does that.” So I studied guitar and started doing photography when I was very young. Then when I was 19 or 20 my best friend started going to film school and so I thought, “That’s great, we’ll make films together.” but I never thought of myself as a filmmaker because I was always playing music since I was 9 years old.

That’s great that you had some experience playing around with experimental film.

This was long before video technology was viable, everyone I knew at film school used a Bolex. I think the Bolex is a remarkable piece of equipment, especially the one we had, it was a wind-up Bolex, so you could only shoot for 25 seconds at a time and it had no sound. So it forced you to really focus on the visual aspects of things. My Uncle was a photographer for the New York Times, so he used to give me his cast-off still cameras. So the nice thing about the Bolex you were just focused on the visual composition… sound was something you just tacked-on later on the flatbed.

Those Bolex cameras are a lot of fun to play with! There are still a few film schools out there that use them before moving on to the digital equipment.

If I were at film school now, I would love the fact that there are video cameras and Final Cut Pro, but the old school part of me really loves… the thing about a Bolex and flatbed is that it’s so rudimentary and manual. There’s just a few really simple variables, and I like when the filmmaking process is pared-down to that extent. That’s a good rite of passage to spend 36 hours straight in an editing room, in a basement of a film school, just surrounded by strips of films everywhere.

So tells us a bit about Moby Gratis. What made you want to offer up your music to help filmmakers?

Well, a few years ago I was having dinner with a few friends of mine who are all independent filmmakers. They were talking about how difficult it was to license music for movies – how expensive it is, how it was eating up all their budgets, how most of the record companies and publishing companies weren’t returning their calls. You know, what should be the easiest part of making a movie, which is putting music to it, or it should purely just be a function of creativity and not logistical bureaucracy. So then I thought to myself, “Why not start a website that gives music away for free to film students and indie filmmakers?” That’s pretty simply how it started.

But of course, in this world of entrepreneurialism, especially online entrepreneurialism, whenever I mentioned to anyone I wanted to start this site, most people’s thoughts were how I could monetize it, and do it commercially. I said, “No. I just want to make it really simple and just give music away.” When you have a simple idea that doesn’t involve a revenue stream, people are baffled by it. Even in a lot of the interviews I’ve done, people look at me like, “What’s the catch?” They almost see me like I’m a crack dealer… giving stuff away and charging for it later. I mean… if any of the music on the site is licensed commercially, people do have to pay a commercial license for it, but any money that’s generated goes to the Humane Society. That way I can never make a penny from this. It costs me quite a lot of money to run, but it’s my way of trying to give back to the film community.

Did you have any issues with record companies or agents about the project?

Well yeah. The thing is, I’m signed to EMI records, so everything I do with music has to be approved by them. So explaining this to them and getting their approval to do this was kind of a difficult process. Especially because the record business isn’t doing very well, so I guess they didn’t quite understand why they should approve of me giving music away for free, when they are doing everything in their power to keep the lights on. But luckily they ultimately acquiesced and let me do this. Almost like being indulgent parents letting their ward go off and do something.

It’s interesting because there’s been a lot of talk about how the internet is hurting the music industry and now there’s similar talk about the film industry. The internet is great because it’s leveling the playing field for filmmakers, but there’s also the digital distribution side of things and is that going to hurt the big Hollywood studios…

It’s interesting though, because the music business has been decimated by copyright piracy but – it’s a tricky thing for me to talk about because I’m signed to a label and what I might say in private would be different than what I would probably say in public – but it does seem like, at least as far as creativity is concerned, the diminished profitability of music has actually increased the creativity of it. Because a lot of people who might be attracted to the music business because they saw it as being profitable, have since gone on to do other things. Certainly the most profitable year the record companies ever had was in 1998, and it’s safe to say that was also was also kind of a low water mark for creativity in music. So as the music business has become less profitable better records have been made, because people are making records purely for the love of music than any desire to get rich. The film business – I love movies and I love being involved in the process – but when you’re talking about an industry that has such huge margins and is so wealthy, it’s hard to worry too much about their concerns about on-line distribution and whatever.

Right, but you do make a great point about how there’s this shift where it starts to become less about money and starts becoming more about the love of making art – which is amazing!

Right, because in the late 90’s, the major labels and Clear Channel had a stranglehold on the music business and they managed to stifle all the creativity and music became just a commodity – it became very generic. I think now there’s so much more diversity and more eclecticism – also there’s so many ways now that the artist or filmmaker or the musician to create something to bypass the traditional gatekeepers. You know, you can make a movie and the truth is, you don’t really need to worry as much about conventional distribution networks as much as you used to. You can reach people directly and I think that’s really empowering.

On the MobyGratis site, there’s a large variety of music with varying styles that really give filmmakers a lot of options for use in their films!

The idea was to create music that filmmakers could actually use. You know, there’s not much a point in putting up pop songs up there. So whenever I put songs up there I always try to think from the perspective of a filmmaker. There’s stuff up there that’s quite up front but then there’s a lot of quiet background music [too] and I’m going to keep adding more and more to it. But hopefully any filmmaker, if they have a scene and can’t quite think of what to put there, they will be able to find something. Ultimately I want to make something that has a great utility for the filmmakers. I don’t what it to be an ego project or vanity project, it’s supposed to, on a very functional level, serve the needs of the filmmakers.

Are there a lot of the clips pulled together from a personal archive or did you develop original pieces for MobyGratis?

It’s about half and half. I have my own small studio on the lower east side, and I go in there and write lots of music, most which never makes it on to a record or never gets heard. A lot of the music that I make that never makes it onto a record is more atmospheric and more experimental, so I saw the site as being a good vehicle for some of those compositions. But half of the things up there are things that I wrote specifically for the site. It’s also really fun for me. Trying to envision some potential use for something and then giving myself creative carte blanche to try and satisfy that.

Have you seen any examples of films that used the music from MobyGratis yet?

We’ve had 3 or 4 thousand uses. It’s available internationally and so these uses are from film schools in Singapore, film schools in Germany – from filmmakers everywhere. It’s just there for them to use. At present I’ve only seen a few of the uses… I actually think at present MobyGratis is a little too restrictive. People need to apply for every use and I don’t like that aspect of it, that’s something that was imposed upon me. I just wanted to have the music up there free for anyone who wants to use it and trust in the honor system. When we were setting it up, someone wanted to have in the licensing agreement language stating that every filmmaker would have to give a copy of the movie but I don’t want to put any more burden on the filmmakers.

It’s funny, a lot of the ethos behind this site comes from me talking to my friends who are filmmakers and watching them go through the process of making a film and seeing how difficult it is. As you know, almost every aspect in making a movie is difficult. Finding money, finding talent, finding locations, everything is really a pain in the neck, so I wanted this to be the one thing that is easy. I wanted to make it as painless and simple as possible. So that’s why a lot of filmmakers haven’t sent in clips, because they don’t have to.

Also, filmmaking is such a weird process. My friend Lucy made this documentary called Blind Sight about going up the Himalayas with blind Tibetan kids. They shot it years ago, and then they had screenings a year and a half ago and now they’re just finally releasing it. So someone could be taking music from MobyGratis now and I know full well that their film’s not going to be done for another two years. My hat is off to anyone who endeavors to make a film, because it’s just such a long laborious difficult process. I mean ultimately very gratifying and creatively rewarding, but whew… when I watch what my friends go through to make a movies, it makes me understand Fitzcarraldo better. You know the Werner Herzog movie? Where they decide to drag a boat over a mountain rather than sail around it? That’s kind of a nice metaphor for filmmaking.

You recently scored the film Southland Tales. How did that process go for you?

Southland Tales is interesting because I started talking to Richard Kelly as he was writing the script. So a lot of the music was actually written before they even started shooting. Normally in the world of big budget films, the music is the very last thing they do. They shoot, they edit, they put in their temp score and then they hand it off to the composer like a week before it’s supposed to be in theatres and say, “Here write the music.” So this was the exact opposite, where the music came into being in conjunction with the script. I read the script, and it made no sense to me, I had no idea what it was going to look like, but I knew aesthetically what Richard Kelly was going for. So I wrote some things based on that.

Now that you’ve experience the movie score side of things, do you think you’d like to do more of it?

You know, I have no interest in doing conventional scoring – doing generic orchestral score – because from my perspective, it all sounds the same. I admire the people who can do good orchestral score, because it’s quite a good skill, but I can’t tell it apart. There’s happy score, there’s sad score, there’s dramatic score and there’s scary score. I listen to it and I really don’t understand why they commission unique orchestral score for all of these movies, because I can’t tell the scores apart. If I was Warner Brothers, I’d just have ten pieces of happy score and ten pieces of sad score and just give them to your filmmaker and say, “Ok. Here’s the scene… your hero’s wife is dying of cancer and throw in the sad score.”

Are there any films that come to mind where you found their use of music to be really interesting or unique?

There’s some iconic films that have used music flawlessly, of course Blade Runner and The Godfather stand out as really interesting unique score and a really interesting unique approach to using music. The best movie lately from my perspective, as far as sound design and score is Inland Empire by David Lynch. Some of the source music he used I wasn’t so keen on, but the stuff that he generated himself was really spectacular because it was so unconventional. I mean there’s something simple and emotionally satisfying about score that reinforces in a very simple way what’s going on onscreen, but there’s something so much more creatively, intellectually, spiritually gratifying about creating a score that actually creates an interesting contrast with what’s happening on screen. That’s what interests me the most. Just like happy score when something happy is going on onscreen. It is sometimes fun to turn off your brain and let the score do the work but [it’s even more interesting] when it challenges you – when it creates a contrast or juxtaposition that you weren’t expecting.

Where do you see things going with MobyGratis in the future?

Right now I am running everything myself. It’s running as a non-profit, well, it’s being run as a loss-of-profit. I mean, it's actually a little pricier to run then I thought. There are lots of ways to move forward: one way is to keep it the way it is… another way is involving more musicians …I don’t know. Right now it’s just a simple place to download music.