Stock footage companies have a reputation for saving the day. Recently FootageBank HD, Venice, Calif. was called upon by effects house Rhythm & Hues Studios, Los Angeles, and Waylon, St. Louis, to provide HD footage of penguins to composite into a desert setting for a Budweiser spot slated to launch in a few weeks. Because of the digital cropping and layering that would be needed, it was imperative that the footage be in HD. And needless to say, it would have been difficult for the agency to travel to the Antarctic to shoot the footage itself. After previewing hours of HD penguin footage, a total of 10 shots were used, some repeatedly.
And BBDO NY turned to Munich-headquartered Framepool when the agency needed footage of an ostrich closing in on the camera for a Mountain Dew spot involving two kids poking fun at Chuck Norris. The agency needed the footage ASAP–the commercial was airing in two days. Framepool fulfilled the agency’s request and had the master to them within a half hour, helping the client to meet its deadline.
But these days, instead of being unsung heroes, stock footage companies are positioning themselves as creative partners to help advertising professionals leverage the potential of traditional as well as new media formats, which demand quick turnaround and cost efficiency. To better serve the evolving needs of the new media content provider, not only are the creative juices flowing at footage shops, they’re stepping up their quality, offering more narrative material to work with, developing new pricing models and paying close attention to safeguarding their clients’ use of content.
“The traditional 30 or 60-second commercial is still intact, but there are so many other ways to communicate and we are servicing all of those. It’s lit a fire under everyone in terms of quality first and foremost,” says Skip D’Amico, director, motion, at Seattle-headquartered Corbis.
“Stock conjures up images of dusty boxes and if I could do anything it would be to eliminate that once and for all. In most creatives, stock footage conjures up the wrong image. It has nothing to do with the current content.”
He says his big thrust for this year is to provide more of a context in the company’s offerings. “So when you view a Corbis reel there is more of a narrative thread, more context, versus a series of generic clips that give you some insight into the depth of the catalog. I know that creatives respond to stories. If there is more of a narrative, it pulls you in–there is something to sink your teeth in.”
Likewise, to give production professionals greater ability to tell a story, Denver. Colo.-based Thought Equity Motion has made some changes to its website to provide better access and use of content in a more intuitive manner that encourages creative innovation. The new “Shot Reels” feature allows production professionals to view multiple camera angles and shot types for a single scene. The ability to access more than just one clip means that production professionals have access to each shot associated with a production.
The company has also added a feature that enables professional filmmakers, independent directors and production enthusiasts to upload motion content to the Thought Equity Motion site and receive payment based on the content’s use and popularity. If a producer has footage that meets a need in Thought Equity Motion’s library, the company will represent that content.
The company is also providing the filmmakers with access to its extensive library of watermarked footage–free of charge–to encourage the creative process and development of new content and new media productions. Thought Equity Motion will pay royalties to producers whose content is licensed by Thought Equity Motion customers.
“Thought Equity Motion is excited to empower editors, producers and filmmakers to access and utilize the more than $1.5 billion in production value available for licensing at thoughtequity.com,” says CEO Kevin Schaff. “By offering footage for the development of content and the means to feature and distribute that content, we are completing the circle of commerce and opening a new revenue stream for the creative community.”
Having programmatic content as opposed to “staged” has made for a “cool idea generator” and drawn very strong interest from the marketplace, according to Kristi Manning, director, West Coast sales, BBC Motion Gallery, which has offices worldwide.
The company licenses footage from programming such as news and current affairs (e.g.. Panorama, The Money Program), natural history (e.g.. Natural World, Wildlife on One, Trials of Life) and award-winning documentaries (e.g.. Horizon, Human Body).
“Clips from programs for example have a more narrative feel and completely different perspective. The situations are more staged in content shot for stock. So in addition to the types of categories you would normally expect from a stock footage house, we also have this enormous library of content that is practically custom-made for mobile and the web,” Manning says.
Recently AKQA, San Francisco, licensed CBS news footage from BBC for an online campaign for Microsoft’s XBOX, and COLLE + McVoy, Minneapolis licensed footage of a moose for a Minnesota State Lottery viral web video.
Manning feels it is equally important to have a staff that is passionate about footage and cares deeply about the content. “You need to be as passionate about the creativity as your customer, as well as imaginative enough to help them fulfill their vision,” she says.
More for less
Manning says another reason BBC is experiencing growth comes down to dollars and cents. “As advertisers need to spread their marketing and promotional dollars across a broadening spectrum of channels, they are looking for economical production choices, and with the amazing selection of great licensable footage available today, that is often a smart way to save some money without compromising the creative. The company offers flexible pricing ranging from RM to RF for smaller budget web commercials and broadband/mobile campaigns.”
Paula Lumbard, president of FootageBank, HD, is also creating price ranges to accommodate alternative media. “When it’s in the broadband world as opposed to broadcast, that deserves its own pricing structure reflecting that it has a vast availability, but potentially has limited access. You just don’t know. We are creating pricing structures to accommodate that–which are less money to be more user-friendly and to acknowledge that there are all these new forms of using media that require looking at how you charge for it.”
She says she regularly supplies footage to Golden Era Productions of Los Angeles, a division of the Church of Scientology International that was formed to produce religious training and dissemination films. “They have a closed circuit broadband network, a model we will begin to see more and more,” she says, making reference to the BudTV.com network. “These new “networks” may initially have a smaller viewership in numbers thereby requiring a new pricing model on our end. Here we are able to give our clients new rates that are lower than traditional broadcast rates and fit the smaller in network budgets.”
FootageBank HD also recently provided several shots that were digitally composited into a multi-screen Sony Electronics spot out of Cente Service Corp., Los Angeles. The spot appeared on national television in Japan, on the Sony website and in Sony dealerships.
Lumbard notes that the advertising community as a whole is continuing to grow more accepting of high definition. “This is our fifth year and when we started, the advertising world was using HD the least,” she says.
Artbeats’ CEO Phil Bates’ prediction for 2007 is that footage providers will see an increased demand in HD. The Myrtle Creek, Ore.-based royalty free stock footage provider, which specializes in fire and aerial content, introduced 40 new collections last year and all but one were HD.
Indicative of the uptrend in HD is Lumbard’s opening of an office in New York to better serve the advertising industry. She is renting office space at PostWorks, New York, which is a full-service postproduction facility. She hired Karen Santiago to manage that office because of her experience at two other stock footage companies and her roots in the rights and clearances business.
“The nice thing there is she really understands clearance issues. As new media has arrived, rights and clearance become more of an issue because we are communicating images around the world where one may not have done that before,” she says.
To address the intellectual property issue, Thought Equity has started to put its entire staff through extensive training so they are more than content experts in terms of accessibility–they are also providing the right information so licensors can make the best business decisions.
Last year, Corbis did all the music and footage clearances for Hallmark’s “Say it With Music Card” TV and online campaign out of Leo Burnett, Chicago and they are working on a new spot for the client as well.
Corbis cleared 15 celebrities for them so the team and editors would have a lot of choices. In the end, Corbis supplied them with the footage that they needed of Ray Charles, Louis Armstrong, Willie Nelson and the Beach Boys, and they handled the clearance of the personality rights of the celebrities as well as the overlying song. “That was very much the agency using us as a one-stop shop. They are able to create and produce and move forward while we do the background for them,” says Gina Ragusa, director, rights and music clearances.
Curtis Bowden, VP, rights services and motion, points out that the footage they find is not always part of Corbis’ motion library. It may be footage from someplace else. “The idea is that the client doesn’t have to call one, two, three or four sources. They call one and we’ll do the whole thing for them,” Ragusa says.
D’Amico adds that the one thing stock footage houses don’t want to be is a threat to someone’s creative interests. “We are just there to support it when we can. Everyone is under extreme pressure to deliver more for less. It’s our obligation to have those solutions available…We’re pursuing a more creatively driven road to upgrade the quality of material that’s available across the board so there’s no longer that differentiation between custom-made material and so-called stock. It maybe was relevant five years ago, but the line is getting more and more blurred everyday,” D’Amico says.
