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10 Royalty-Free Music Libraries for Film and Video

[]\Music is the heartbeat of any creative project. It sets the tone and captures the essence of a narrative. Whether you’re working on a spine-tingling suspense thriller, an adrenaline-pumping action sequence, a whimsical children’s animation, or an epic fantasy saga, finding the right soundtrack is essential. Luckily, SoundsCrate.com is host to hundreds of royalty-free songs and tracks to download, catering to various genres and moods. Each of these tracks were written and composed by industry professionals to ensure the the highest quality possible. Here are 10 categories to explore in our ever-growing song library.


Royalty-Free Suspense Music Tracks for Download

Suspense & Horror

Our Suspense Music collection includes eerie melodies and chilling tunes perfect for a creating spine-tingling atmosphere. These include eerie, droning orchestrations, as well as tracks perfectly suited to scoring horror movie scenes and trailers. These tracks keep audiences on the edge of their seats.


Western

The timeless sound of the American frontier is captured in our royalty-free Western Music collection. Incorporating elements from classic Western film scores alongside the grit of modern retellings. There’s a variety to the mood you can set with these downloadable tracks, from triumphant to dangerous.


Action

Elevate your action-packed scenes with our Action music collection. With these tracks you can add intensity to your chases, shootouts, and fight scenes. Download these powerful rhythms, electrifying beats & orchestrations to amplify the thrill of high-stakes moments.


Epic

For grand battles, epic journeys, and larger-than-life stories, nothing beats the grandeur of our Epic Music collection. This library caters to the genre with majestic orchestral arrangements, soaring choirs, and cinematic compositions that elevate the scope of any project. Perfect for cinematic set pieces in all settings.


Electronic

Our Electronic Music library provides a diverse range of beats, synths, and experimental sounds. Perfect for futuristic settings, tech-themed content, or anything that requires a contemporary edge. This collection is ideal for filmmakers and content creators alike.


Hip Hop

Our royalty-free Hip Hop music has a variety of uses and utility. Add a unique cool factor to your projects with laid-back beats and melodic synths. Use these in the background or use them as the centerpiece of your films and videos.


Corporate

Corporate projects demand music that is professional, uplifting, and motivational without overpowering the message. Our Corporate Music provides a blend of inspiring tunes, light melodies, and positive vibes. These tracks are ideal for presentations, commercials, and business-related content.


Children & Animated

Music tailored for children and animated content needs to be bright and cheerful with playful melodies. The Children & Animated Music category is filled with whimsical tunes, catchy rhythms, and delightful sounds. Perfect for all-ages content and cartoons.


Fantasy

Download tracks from our Fantasy Music collection to transport viewers to mystical realms. These tracks evoke wonder and imagination with enchanting melodies & orchestrations, and ethereal sounds. This is one of our favorite categories for magical scenes both past and present.


Funny

Our Funny Music library harkens back to the iconic comedies of the past.  These include whimsical compositions and quicky tunes for lightening the mood and complimenting comedic scenes. Its hard not to crack a smile while listening to these songs.


These are just a few of the libraries on SoundsCrate.com. All of the music on SoundsCrate is available for commercial and non-commercial use, with new music being added regularly. Users who sign up for a Free ProductionCrate account will be able to download 1/3 of the music on SoundsCrate, while Pro users get full access to the SoundsCrate music catalog, along with thousands of VFX, 3D Models, Sound Effects, Plugins, and more. Sign-up today!

15 Fantasy Tracks Available for Download

Download the Full Fantasy Album Here (Pro Users)

We’ve added 15 new Fantasy music tracks to the SoundsCrate library. These royalty-free tracks are perfect for spicing up your movie scenes and game worlds. Take your audience to other worlds with mysterious sounds and catchy melodies.

These Fantasy tracks are available for ProductionCrate Pro members. Pro users also gain access to the entire ProductionCrate library. Enhance your projects by downloading this collection today

VFX Pro Joseph Lawson Talks about the Visual Effects in ‘On Fire’

Joseph Lawson has been in the field of Visual Effects for over 20 years, with credits on iconic movies and shows like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Star Trek: Enterprise, and many films from The Asylum (the Sharknado series). The father-son team at Lawson Digital Arts bring us their latest work with On Fire (dir. Peter Facinelli & Nick Lyon), a thriller inspired by true events about a family escaping from a raging forest fire. With the movie in theaters nationwide, we sat down with Joseph to talk about visual effects.

P: Congrats on On Fire‘s reception! We’re looking forward to seeing it on the big screen.
J: Thanks so much! We’re proud to be part of On Fire using ProductionCrate elements as part of our VFX toolkit!


P: The VFX team for On Fire was relatively small for a feature-length, natural disaster movie; What kind of challenges did this present? Were there any benefits?
J: My son and I are probably the only father-son VFX team I know of in the world.  We have a lot of experience tag-teaming and working with each others strengths to make shows like On Fire come together.   We’re also hyper organized which helps us do a lot more than average. Tons of lower budget film experiences has taught us how to leverage budgets to make things look like more than the budget by the time folks experience them. As a director myself it’s possible to know what helps organically tell the film-maker’s story in a way that integrates visually without being too much VFX flashy. Ideally most folks won’t always realize we’re there at all. The biggest challenge was going from what was a project with 150 planned to 389 delivered shots.  A lot of fire effects planned for on set came to us out of genuine safety concerns. Fortunately we have a robust internal pipeline and organizational setup using ShotGrid that enables us to do a project of this scope.  The producers also gave us a generous amount of time to do the work.  The benefit of our two-person team (with some tracking/matte help from Joseph’s friend Elijah Morrow) is we have the visual shorthand and shared respect to trust each other with any task.


P: What made you want to pursue visual effects? What was your gateway to working professionally?

J: When I was 12 living in Okinawa I was a huge Star Trek fan. Some friends and I did Super 8mm short films so I knew I wanted to be a director. Doing our special effects got me hooked on that. Silent Running, Space:1999 and Star Wars, of course, confirmed my life goals. After a career in broadcasting radio and television including commercials with effects and being a weather announcer, I started a graphics business that did animation in Montana using LightWave 3D. I married my darling Kelly then got a job on Roughneck’s: The Starship Troopers Chronicles at the legendary Foundation Imaging (Babylon 5, Hypernauts).  This brought us to Valencia, California where we raised our son and daughter while I worked for various studios over almost two decades.  That included everything from The Global Asylum as VFX supervisor for seven years (and directing five of their movies) to Rhythm & Hues plus Digital Domain and so many great places and projects. With over 200 IMDB listings and growing it’s hard to give them all individual proper credit due.


P: What do you consider the biggest sea change in the time that you’ve worked as a VFX Artist/Supervisor?
J: There have been so many changes but one huge one is the availability of tools to a wide range of artist.  The hardware has gotten faster and cheaper, the software more capable and the availability of tools like ProductionCrate that provide elements and more to we creators quickly via internet makes it possible for us to create from anywhere there’s adequate speedy connection like our place here on the North Coast of Oregon.  And it’s all only getting better for those with tools, talent and desire to create.


P: What made Blender & After Effects the ideal tools for creating the VFX in On Fire?
J: Blender has become a perfect tool for freelance and boutique shops looking for a wide range of ever growing/improving capabilities.  We still leverage other software like LightWave when needed.  After Effects has always worked well for us and since we have so much experience; So many presets and plug-ins, it’s hard to change.  With AE’s color capabilities coming of age during On Fire we were able to integrate elements better than ever before.


P: Were there any lessons learned while working on a project like On Fire? Were there any unexpected hurdles?
J: Every show has its unique challenges, and for On Fire it was having to integrate so much fire into practical footage that was initially planned for live on set. We couldn’t do that because the forest floor was tinder-dry, forcing us to do even the smaller fire work in post.  That was also the biggest unexpected hurdle along with a lot of invisible effects like clocks, monitor screens, crew paint outs.  It was a long post period for a reason!

P: Which shot/sequence are you most excited for people to see?
J: The family fire chase sequence is pretty scary cool narrative and works.  A lot of my sons 100 percent CG shots are fantastic throughout the movie. I’m so proud of the artist he’s grown to be since starting almost a decade ago at age 14. That’s all him! He has an astounding future!


P: Did working on shots set mostly at night present any unique obstacles?
J: It actually made our job easier, especially because Chris Wilks and his stunt/effects team (along with the amazing lighting crew) set up some fantastic light sources to dramatically tell the director Nick Lyon’s and writer Ron Peer’s story.  We added the fires where needed and motivated by them. The main challenge it caused was tracking and lots of roto.  TONS of roto.  The lady on fire sequence was one of the toughest for both yet most of it integrates well.  Scary stuff.

P: What are your favorite VFX shots/sequences that you didn’t work on?
J: My favorite sequence Joseph worked on were some CG point-of-view shots during a family driving sequence.  The burning buildings and trees are all CG with a mix of fire and spark elements including ProductionCrate selling it.

P: Who are the masters you looked-up to and learned from?
J: Of course, we all stand on the shoulders of giants and my inspirations are decidedly old school names.  So many hardworking TV and movie artists but especially Ray Harryhausen, Douglas Trumbull, Brian Johnson, Greg Jein, and John Dykstra’s whole ILM team from Star Wars. Then computer pioneer and later friends Ron Thornton, Adam Mojo Leibowitz, Mark Kochinski, Glenn Campbell and SO many other great coworkers who always inspired me with how much better they were and gracious to all me to learn from.  Too many great folks to list here.  I continue to be humbled and learn from them all even now.

P: Most movie audiences only see the end product and not what it used to look like; what are some common VFX responsibilities that most viewers wouldn’t even think about that need to be done?
J: Pre-visualization, shot choreography and design, database set-up and organization and shot progress/delivery tracking, plate downloads, preview and final uploads, thumbnail captures, timeline scrubbing, bidding, prep, tracking, roto, invisible/clean up effects, deciding on elements, prepping things like frame rates, outputs and color space in compositing, plug-in management, constantly learning new software updates and plug-ins, working with clients, zoom calls, invoices, taxes, our own IT work, storage and disk space management, keeping up on hardware and software… and much more like having a family life!


P: Do you have any wisdom for aspiring visual effects artists?
J: Learn your craft.  Love your chosen field.  Follow your passion with all your heart.  Appreciate what time and resources you have to do the best you can for any given project then forgive yourself enough so as to learn what to do better next time.  Build friendships.  Be reliable.  Under-promise, over deliver, be fair and be pleasant enough that people WANT to work with you again.  Have fun!  Otherwise why are we in this at all?

P: How/where/when can people support On Fire?
J: On Fire is in theatres nationwide! We’re proud to have helped the fantastic teams of artists and actors who gave their art, talents and passion honoring first responders and acknowledging the toll of real world tragedy with this heartfelt emotional family story. 

Download Crate’s Text Message Generator for FREE

Sign in for FREE Download 
Windows & Mac

Register for a Free or Pro Account Here.
Digital text messages have rapidly become a fundamental part of our entertainment, featuring in popular shows like Sherlock and Spider-Man: Homecoming. Characters effectively convey crucial information to audiences through text messages. However, this process often proves tedious for motion graphics artists.

That’s why we’re excited to introduce our FREE After Effects extension, Crate’s Text Messages. This tool simplifies the creation of animated text message graphics in After Effects. To begin, log in to your ProductionCrate account and download the installer for Mac or Windows from the product page.

Once installed, customize both incoming and outgoing messages, including specifying sender details, starting times, and selecting from preset app styles or crafting your own. If you encounter issues or wish to start anew, simply utilize the reset button.

Once you click “generate,” the exchange transforms into multiple After Effects compositions. These compositions provide you with extensive controls for further customization.

Crate’s Text Message Generator

If you have not disabled your expression error settings, you may see a warning banner the first time you run the extension. You can uncheck this option in After Effects Preferences -> Scripting & Expressions.

Should you encounter any issues when using this script, contact us at support@productioncrate.com

15 Feel-Good Tracks Available for Download

Download the Full Album Here (Pro Users)

We have released a collection of 15 new Feel-Good tracks on SoundsCrate that are sure to put a smile on your face. This collection offers an array of styles, from orchestral to retro and modern. Add these tracks to your projects for an upbeat and uplifting touch. All of these tracks, as well as the rest of our Feel-Good music collection, is available for all Pro users.

Download The VFX Starter Pack – 1


FootageCrate is offering an amazing free bundle of video effects.

 

Step 1: Register and Sign in to a free account

Step 2: Click Here to Download

Step 3: Unzip the downloaded folders!

Step 4: Share with anyone who wants to get started with VFX

 



VFX can be a daunting field to get into, but FootageCrate makes it easy. Even if you have no prior experience, you can learn the basics in minutes.
Compositing in VFX involves combining multiple images, frames or renders. This process can range from complex compositions with hundreds of various elements and render passes, to simple overlays of one rendered element on top of your video. Below we have an example of 3 separately layers composited together. We have the background, the subject and the VFX element.

Basic VFX compositing

To help you get started, FootageCrate is offering the VFX Starter Pack 1, a collection of 50 pre-made visual effects. This pack is nearly 3GB worth of video effects content. These elements are high-quality and created by professional CGI artists. Packs 2 and 3 are planned for 2023.

This downloadable collection of 50 Free VFX features assets from the following libraries

Explosion VFX
Magic VFX
Fire and Spark VFX
Motion Graphics
Transition Effects
SciFi VFX
Muzzle Flash VFX

And several more. These are all available from FootageCrate’s free library, and even include several 4K assets ordinarily limited to user’s with a Pro Subscription.

The effects come with RGB+A, or Red, Green Blue, and Alpha channels.  All effects containing transparency are ProRes 4444 Files. A few of the files are H.264. Framerates vary from 30fps to 60fps. The Alpha channel controls the transparency in an image or video. These effects come with a transparent background, allowing you to easily drag and drop them onto your footage.

Download Debris and Destruction VFX
If you’re looking for free VFX software, ProductionCrate recommends Hitfilm Free or DaVinci Resolve. The 50 Free Effects Pack is compatible with iMovie, After Effects, Premiere, Filmora, Final Cut, DaVinci, Hitfilm and all major editing software.

If you’re looking for even more VFX content, find thousands of Free Video Effects here. You can download all of these with a Free VFX Account, limited to five downloads a day. If you want even more content, access 50 daily downloads from the entire ProductionCrate library with a Pro Account.

interview with professional vfx artist david blaker

Want more free content? Any item not marked with a star from these production libraries is free to download.

RenderCrate has Hundreds of Free 3D Models

SoundsCrate has thousands of music and sound effects Free to Download

If you have any questions, email the ProductionCrate team at Support@ProductionCrate.com.

Download ProductionCrate’s Free Extension

Organise your assets, instantly.

 

Say goodbye to messy folders. This free browser extension automatically sorts your ProductionCrate downloads into categorised folders.

Download ProductionCrate Connect

Step 1

Install the free extension in a few clicks.

Download ProductionCrate Connect

Step 2

Download your ProductionCrate assets.

Download ProductionCrate Connect

Step 3

Enjoy automatically organised file management for your assets.

 

 

Need any help? Contact us through Support@ProductionCrate.com

Preview Videos Feature Update

We’re always looking for ways to improve your workflow and speed up your process.

Time is a valuable thing, especially with deadlines. One of our users had the fantastic idea of adding Navigation Arrows to our Video Previews on FootageCrate. These allow you to browse search results or bundles a lot faster and more efficiently than before.

Browsing our massive library just got better, enjoy!

The Preview Arrows are on the left and right (See above) for all Video Previews. Simple search or select the category of content you want to browse, select any effect for the preview window and start searching.