Right now we’re smack in the middle of this transition of moving from analog to digital in motion pictures," says Matthew White, VP of the film library at National Geographic Television & Film (NGT&F), Washington, D.C. "Everybody is tooling up, and many people have a different feel for the elephant."
White’s remarks sum up the situation that stock footage companies find themselves in as they move into the digital world of high definition and Web site servicing. "Everybody in this business is in the same boat," notes Rick Wysocki, VP of motion brands at Sekani, New York, a stock footage firm that comprises libraries such as Hot Shots, Action Sports Adventure, and Second Line Search, all in New York, and Film Bank, Los Angeles. (Sekani will be renamed Corbis Motion in September.) "You have to be prepared for everything, but you don’t want to get too far ahead of the curve."
The old and the new both play important roles in today’s stock footage world. Customers of footage houses use celluloid, HD, 3/4-inch tapes, and FTP sites, so stock houses want to be able to provide customers with whatever format they want. Companies continue to send out images on reels (per customer request), but they’re also utilizing the Internet and preparing for the switch to high definition.
Mark Trost, president of F.I.L.M. Archives, New York, asks his shooters, for the most part, to capture material in HD, 35mm or Super 16mm, which all have 16:9 frame proportions. (Since 35mm and Super16mm have the same proportions as HD, it’s easy to convert the celluloid formats to HD.) "I have made strong recommendations that there’s no point in shooting regular 16mm anymore," states Trost, "because while in the short run we might be able to do something, five years from now, if you want to sell it as a contemporary shot, no one will be able to use it."
Stock houses are also converting their standing collections to the HD format. "We have recognized over the past months a very significant increase in the number of requests [for HD-ready material] in the median entertainment segment of the business," says Wysocki. "People who are producing feature films, but more specifically television programs. Virtually all of them now want to be certain that we can get back to the original negative because they need 16:9 aspect ratio."
Trost says that F.I.L.M. Archives transfers older footage to digital formats only upon request from a client. By contrast, Wysocki says that Sekani is transferring material proactively, as well as by customer demand. "We believe that by next fall season—a year from now—everything is going to be posted in hi-def," he states. "A large library like ours has to approach [conversion to HD] in parallel tracks.
"Not only do we have to re-transfer the material to hi-def format on request," he continues, "but we have to proactively go into the library, identify our highest value material, and have that ready to go."
While stock houses are seeing an increase in requests for HD materials, not many of them are coming from the advertising business. "We do a lot of business with advertising agencies," notes Wysocki. "Generally speaking, they’re not asking for hi-def now. But I have a funny feeling when [agencies do start requesting HD], it’s going to arrive very quickly. Once advertisers see that a lot of their programming is available with wide screen, they’re going to want the commercials to be the same way."
Lewis Blackwell, senior VP/creative direction Getty Images, London—the company is headquartered in Seattle—also says that his company’s decision to convert Getty’s standing collection to HD was a proactive move. Additionally, the company, which has several stock houses under its umbrella, is beginning to shoot some new footage in HD. "We’ve been transferring film source material to hi-def masters since ’99," says Blackwell. "However, we do still shoot on film because some of our customers do demand that.
"Customers want shots at the standard they want them at," he continues. "Some of them are very happy with hi-def; some of them, maybe not. Some of them get confused by the different standards that are out there. What you really need to do is make sure that everybody knows that you have stuff that works at whatever level they’re working at."
New Business
"I think we are the first HD stock company," states Paula Lumbard, who launched FootageBank, Venice, Calif., in May. Most of FootageBank’s archive was filmed with HD cameras, while the remainder of the material is HD-ready.
Significantly, new footage coming into to the collection is mostly being shot on HD cameras, in either the 24p or 1080i format; however some material is still shot in 35mm film. Lumbard notes that documentary and nature footage tends to be shot in 1080i, while location material is usually captured in 24p.
"What we’re finding—and this is why I opened the company—is that more and more television programming is converting to HD, and they’re shooting in 24p," says Lumbard. "Every week we hear about a new show that is converting to 24p. The reason for that is that 24p cuts perfectly with 35mm because it runs at the same frame rate."
When is footage captured in 35mm as opposed to HD? "We know that the commercial client may still prefer to get back to the negative, whereas a television client will take the HD element," explains Lumbard. "I’m finding that feature filmmakers and television producers are more experienced with 24p, than say, commercial producers. We want to have some [35mm] material for [commercial producers] if they still want to get back to their own IP [interpositive negative] and do their own conversion." (FootageBank works with The Moving Image Lab, New York, when the stock house wants to convert material to HD.)
In the spring, the National Geographic Film Library, a division of the aforementioned NGT&F, began to work with Minneapolis-based post house Hi-Wire to convert its existing archives to the HD format, as well as its new films. "We’re trying to make sure we can connect with the different needs of our clients," notes White. "We’re really letting them direct us in terms of where some of our technology work is heading. The high-definition [conversion project] was in response to that. Right now, we’re finding that a good deal of our customers are starting to come to us for digital files to be moved out to an FTP that they can then take and work into their programs, so we do that, too."
Online Stock
The Internet is also starting to play a bigger role in the stock footage world. While stock houses are not yet able to deliver production quality footage via the Internet because the files are still too large and slow, most companies have Web sites that feature low resolution viewing samples, and some are able to e-mail Quicktime films of archival material. .
Stock companies note that despite Web access to images, some customers still request reels. "It’s a mixture," says White. "Until more people are familiar with the tools that we have, they probably are going to be defaulting to calling us to conduct a lot of the research. But as they get used to these digital archives, I think they’ll start to do a lot more work themselves. The only reason I’m saying that is based on what we’ve seen in the [still] photo world. I think we’ll see that same type of adoption in the digital moving image world as well."
"I think [a Web site] is a good viewing medium to get an idea of the range of content that you might have, but when it comes to actually getting a particular shot, people get sent a tape," adds Blackwell of Getty Image. "That’s where business takes place.
"Getty Images is very much a digital business," he continues. "We’ve taken our whole stills business into a digital realm and our [still image] Web site is very busy. … I have no doubt that what we’re going to see with motion is what we’ve seen with stills over the past five years. I think we’re at the point where a sea change is about to happen in motion, but we’re not quite there yet."h
