In the past few years, two major influences have altered the nature of the stock footage world: consolidation of the larger footage houses, and the growing impact of the Internet. While some say these changes will revolutionize the stock footage business, others say it will only lead to relatively minor changes in distribution, and business will go on more or less as usual. As happened in the mid-1990s with the still photo market, in the past few years major consolidation in the stock footage industry has produced major corporations, Getty Images and Sekani, from a previously more fragmented marketplace. Getty Images, headquartered in Seattle, started out consolidating still photo shops, and now has such major footage houses as Image Bank Film, specializing in high-end footage, Archive Films, which has mainly historical footage, and EyeWire Motion, which offers royalty-free images. Energy Film Library has been integrated into Image Bank.
Sekani, headquartered in New York, officially formed last fall after a series of mergers and has such footage houses as Film Bank, Action Sports Adventure, and Hot Shot Cool Cuts, among others under its umbrella. Sekani is partnered with still photo company Corbis, Seattle. "Our customers create, we facilitate," is the motto of Sekani, explains chief sales and marketing officer Larry Rebich. "We have a lot of depth [in clips and researchers] that enables us to do that."
Getty and Sekani representatives point to trends pushing the growth of the stock footage market similar to those that paved the way for growth in the still photo world a few years prior. Driving the change in the still photo business was the surge of desktop publishing (which created many new still photo users), the rise of the Internet (which provided distribution of stills), and the offering of royalty-free stills (which lowered the cost and difficulties in using stills for the average business). Analogous trends are happening in the world of stock footage, according to Sekani and Getty, which have led to consolidation. The increase in public and private broadband technology, which will eventually make it possible to distribute footage over the Internet, will cause similar growth to stock footage as the Internet did for still photos. Royalty free footage will cause significant growth, and new multimedia users are emerging daily. "The new generation that was weaned on MTV graphics style and the Internet are now moving into prominent positions in advertising, corporations and Web site development," explains Michael Galleli, Getty’s director of motion brands. "That’s similar to what desktop publishing did for stills."
Although the smaller footage houses concede that footage in the future may be used more and more for non-broadcast business, they also contend that the consolidation of the marketplace will not diminish business for the footage houses specializing in broadcast footage. "Consolidation that’s happened has actually been good for us," notes Michael Jungert, president of WPA Film Library, Orland Park, Ill., a company specializing in historic and newsreel footage, as well as musical collections. "Commercial production companies will always come to the smaller footage companies for the more rare, esoteric material."
CLIP SEARCH
As the promise heralded by computer companies that the Internet would revolutionize the world and the way business is conducted has been toned down in the last year since the crash of the dot-coms, stock footage companies—big and small—are now trying to gauge just how significant a role the Web will play in the future of the stock footage business.
Getty and Sekani see the rise in the capabilities of the Internet, which will allow customers to search, view, purchase and receive footage at any time, leading to dramatic changes in the nature of the stock footage business by offering customers instant access to its libraries. "It’s just too easy if you’re a creative professional," states Rebich. "If you’re working at an editing machine in the middle of the night and think about putting a sunrise shot in, well soon you’ll be able to go onto the Internet, search for that clip, buy it and take delivery of it. That’s going to be a real big deal."
Besides creating enormous libraries of footage, consolidation occurred in the stock footage industry, in large part, to handle the major investment required in new technologies including the Internet, as well as digitizing footage in high definition formats. "We saw the opportunity to bring these smaller companies together and get to a point where we were generating enough revenue that was needed to invest into new technologies and new ways of doing things," says Galleli.
Paula Lumbard, VP of royalty-free and acquisitions at Sekani, and former owner of Film Bank, which was acquired by Sekani in September ’99, explains that Film Bank could not have grown much without consolidating. "The reason why I decided to do it is that I saw the business becoming digital," says Lumbard, "and for Film Bank to go digital, it was going to require a significant influx of funds and people."
In addition to providing customers with instant access to footage, Web sites track in detail what kinds of material are being sought. With that information, a stock house can concentrate on building those areas of its libraries. "We’ve been tracking that for a long time," notes Galleli, "but with the Internet there are all sorts of raw data. Where are people are going on the site? How [much time are they] spending there? What kinds of clips [are they] looking for?"
Having that market research means nothing if it cannot be used, believes Rebich. "Every day our clients are coming up with new ways to illustrate their stories," he explains. "What we’re doing is anticipating the different ways they can do that. Having some size in the marketplace not only allows you to anticipate those needs—you can actually go out and act on it."
ONLINE
Over the last few years, Getty has been building the infrastructure that allows it to present images and footage over the Internet, and currently has over 100,000 clips ready for viewing on its Web page. Sekani currently has 10,000 clips on its Web site, and plans to launch two new sites next month. One will increase the amount of traditional stock footage available online, and the other will be a royalty-free site. In the next few years, with broadband technology providing faster Internet capabilities, it is expected that footage will be delivered directly over the Internet to a user.
"A small group of customers are completely comfortable with searching our Web site, and will just call us and order the footage they’ve picked out," Galleli explains. "A large group of our customers start on the Web, but then call us and request additional footage on a cassette, and make a purchase after viewing the tape. Then there’s a small collection of customers that have been slower to use the Web, and are still very much in the analog approach and just call us for a cassette. Whether it’s online or offline, we’re trying to provide the best possible service. But down the line the stock footage business will evolve into more and more of an Internet-based research business. We feel that it’s important to lead our customers into this next phase of the business. It’s not going to happen overnight, but it will happen."
REACTION
The smaller companies say that while the Internet is a useful tool, and that some level of commerce can be performed on it—especially in distributing via broadband—the majority of business will always be conducted the old-fashioned way, with researchers finding the footage for the customers. Most of those houses doubt whether ad agencies or commercial production companies will want to search for their own footage. "The Web site is a great place for people to get a feel for what you have, but most of the time you’re not going to find exactly what you’re looking for," explains Mark Trost, president of F.I.L.M. Archives, New York, which has about half of its footage searchable on its Web site. "Rather than wade through a bunch of clips, it’s easier to have a researcher put together a reel. We have a fair amount of clients that don’t like getting pushed to the Web," notes Trost. "[The Internet is] good maybe for the independent producer or the desktop publisher, but not for people with real money and tight deadlines. Particularly with advertising agencies that have more money than time, they want you to do the grunt work for them."
Trost illustrates his point by pointing to footage his company provided for a recent Budweiser spot called "Wrecking Ball" via DDB Chicago, and directed by Kuntz& Maguire—a.k.a. Tom Kuntz and Mike Maguire—of bicoastal/international Propaganda Films. "They came asking for contemporary wrecking ball shots. We showed them some contemporary stuff, but also showed them footage from the ’60s. It had gone a little red from age but we transferred it, tweaked the color and made it look modern. If you have some PA searching for footage, are they even going to think to look at older stuff?"
Susan Nickerson, owner of Nickerson Research, Los Angeles, an independent footage research company, sees the benefits of both the large online footage search engines and the smaller footage companies. "With the smaller vendors, I’m usually talking to people that know their collection better than I could ever know it, and it’s more personal. I can get on the phone with them and I know they’ll send me everything they have," says Nickerson. "With the larger companies the Web sites are helpful because I can go online and come up with search words that somebody else may not think of. Not that you can’t depend on the researchers at the larger companies, [it’s just that] you can’t possibly know everything they have in their libraries. The Web sites are also really helpful to coordinate things with clients because we can all see the same clip online."
ROYALTY-FREE
Most footage houses, large and small, have begun to offer royalty-free footage to attract new users, especially the non-broadcast, multimedia business. Some envision that royalty-free footage will become enormously popular and will eventually be useful and cost-effective for commercials. "I think what we are going to see is a blurring of the line between royalty-free and traditional licensing, and I do think it will become used in commercial productions," predicts Rebich. "The difference between royalty-free and traditional is really going to be a difference in licensing, not quality or content."
Others say that royalty-free footage will never take off among commercial production companies because spots will always use footage that is uncommon. "I’m not a big royalty-free fan," admits Trost, although F.I.L.M. Archives is putting some royalty-free footage onto Footage.net, an online clearinghouse. "It’s good for non-broadcast guys looking for generic images, but even those images are going to date real quick."
