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Need REAL Stock Footage Resource
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[Todd Terry] “iStock is indeed owned by Getty”
And, I believe both are owned by either Microsoft or, more likely, Bill Gates privately.
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I’ve also had lots of success with Shutterstock https://footage.shutterstock.com/
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This is a rant – so bear with.
I do a lot of voiceover work. At on the casting services I’m connected with – day after day after day I see the same thing. Someone looking for a voice talent – and to explain the “tonality” they’re looking for – they post an ad. Typically an APPLE ad.
Here – I want someone who can sound like this… then they link to the Brian Cranston “pencil” ad.
Or the Richard Dreyfus 1997 Think Different Ad.
Or something similar.I want to scream at them.
I want to tell them that the “tonality” (whatever the hell that means) has as little to do with the impact of the ad as the format it was shot on. (They do know that the iPad ad was actually SHOT on iDevices, – right?)
I want to scream at them that it’s NEVER one thing. Never JUST the images – or the music – or the voiceover – or the quality of the product itself – or the timing of the campaign – or the strength of the media buy – or how successfully that product or service dovetails with the wants and desires of the customers the manufacturer is attempting to reach.
It’s EVERYTHING.
It’s ALL of those things coming together to mesh beautifully – and compel us to buy something and therefore drive profits.
And whenever it happens – you can be absolutely sure of one thing.
Immediately after that campaign succeeds there will be a zillion clients who are absolutely DESPERATE to rip off PARTS of the successful effort believing that if they can achieve that “tonality” of the voiceover – or the “realness” of the photography – then their work will be *or at least LOOK) more “successful” as well.
But, of course, they won’t have the time and money to do ANY of the hard work that went into the first successful project.. Not to write as graceful a script. Not to hire a quality shooter. Not to engage the proper talent. Not to learn to direct them well, Nor spend the back-end time and money relentlessly pursuing what made the original so successful.
They’ll want to spend 1/1000th of the money – and they’ll expect that copying the look or sound as well as they can will help them stand out and achieve competitive success.
What astonishes me is that they somehow feel that copying great creativity will, in turn, make their work “more creative.” Huh? Doesn’t copying something BY DEFINITION make the resulting work LESS “creative?”
BTW, this is NOT about Ned, whom I know to be a solid pro who understands all of this already – and who (like all of us) is simply trying to do for his clients the best he possibly can within the limitations they impose.
But I’m a voiceover guy who sees a small slice of the crap that chasing this kind of brilliance breeds. And I suspect it’s precisely the same for the stock photographers out there. The market screams for more “REAL” for sure. BUT – not ACTUAL “real.” and certainly not ugly real, or ill focused real, or slurred words real or overexposed real or – but for an artfully nearly flawless “REAL” that looks like it took NO effort – when in fact it took MORE effort than the stock photos that were rejected as being “too stock looking.”
I believe there’s a “making of” video on the web about the iPad “day in the life” video. It reveals a bit of what it took to make those simple “slice of life” videos in the linked spot.
They burned through mountains of cash around the globe and had to sort through a zillion rejects to find precisely the best shots in order to make it look that “real.”
And so it goes.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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The broadcast shows I work on now are 93% stock footage. 2% interviews, and maybe 4-5% footage we shot in locations. WE have to suffer through the same mess of bad actors, over actors…simply put…actors. And yes, to get the REAL thing, means Getty, or Corbis…and they are not cheap.
We did mention that, right?
BTW, this is the funniest piece of stock footage I have ever seen…on Pond5. It is supposed to be a gavel, but is really a chisel driven into a black PVC pipe, hitting a PVC pipe end cap. And interestingly enough…I saw this same shot used on air…
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
“Don’t let chiselers get away with it: take ’em to court!” LOL
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Sorry. Couldn’t help it.
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Hey Matt, that was great! Haven’t seen it in awhile.
As to Shutterstock, same story: Search Office Workers, etc., and it’s all models pantomiming. Blue collar not much better.
Hi Bill: I think everything is derivative. I’ve been doing this for so long I’ve seen many styles and trends come and go. One thing Apple started was a Scandinavian Design clean look, white background, simplicity. Ala Crate & Barrel, who were my longest running client until the Germans bought them, but I digress… I shoot and sometimes produce training videos and Apple is the standard, including the screen grab software and also the age range of the voice. It’s mimicry, jumping on the band wagon but there’s the old expression: You Can’t Argue With Success”.
When I first saw Bill’s rant (at a red light) I thought it was someone flaming me, reacting to my Craigslist ad from a few days ago asking for a VO talent who is an Actor, not a Voice of God, but then I saw it was from Creative Cow and not CL (phew!) and then the light turned green. I have a stable of VO Peeps, perhaps a dozen males and five or so females that I ask the clients to choose from. They actually enjoy that task. I tell them to give me their 1st, 2nd & 3rd choice. Naturally only the ones in their price range are sent. Since all my peeps are Voices of God with Velvet Pipes, because I specialize in straight corporate and my documentaries tend to be of the fund raising genre where I need the Voice of Dripping Sincerity, I knew the players on my bench would not satisfy my client who sent me Richard Dreyfus to emulate. Also, they have only $400 for the narrator of their one minute video.
As you can imagine, 90%, even though my CL ad says I do NOT want a traditional narrator, that I need someone who sounds like he is a “real” character actor, perhaps from a working class background meaning: a Regular Joe, the raspy voice of a former Plant Superintendent, a Fellow Fireman, Someone With Gravitas, A Lower Register, etc., even though the ad states what I need, naturally pros feel they can reach for that and I get a tsunami of inappropriate responses and the samples that sound like the Voice of God trying to be a Regular Joe.
But! Then one VO guy from California, and if you PM me I will give you his contact info, this guy sounds like a Peter Coyote type, that was exactly what I had in mind but have a problem finding here. He was kind enough to lay down two paragraphs, which was about half the script. So I put some perfect music under it and I downloaded watermarked placeholders from the various stock places. I cut together a very nice sequence and sent it as a teaser to the client. I was extremely frustrated by my inability to find a couple of shots that weren’t phoney looking model types and that’s when I posted.
So…it’s been 24 hours and I haven’t heard if I got the gig but…I think I found a new niche market. If I do get this gig for a 1 minute, home page, 100% stock footage, Apple imitator, poetic image piece, I think I can shop it around and do this for lots of companies. It’s not meant to sell a client’s services or products per se, rather it’s to establish a vibe as to who they are and hopefully the visitor will click through, drill down and request a contact. The reason I am loving this idea is you can create these videos without leaving the house! Without shaving! Stay in your sweats all day! With a narrator and 20 stock shots averaging $100 each, you can stay under the budget pain point of medium size companies. You can appeal to the ego of the owner/founder/CEO. They appreciate this genre even if we know it’s derivative. After all, it’s new to them!
BTW, I got this inquiry from sending my brochure to the president of this company. Then the Director of Marketing emailed me saying the prez gave my brochure to him saying they want to do something like the Apple spot they sent me, which they probably saw watching the Super Bowl. I responded that if I live to 100 I will never achieve that level of greatness and they replied: Relax, we will do it with stock.
I may be onto something. Stay tuned.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com -
I now cringe if a project has more than two stock shots….way too much up in the air that you can’t control. Always a compromise. For $3000 I don’t think we would get 20 shots in a day unless they were in the same space without a big company move, but I agree that using primarily stock to the tune of 20 shots is a bad idea all around to sell a brand.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com -
Ahhh! This is what I mean. I am going to try to cultivate a 100% stock style video and market for home pages:
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com
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I think https://www.b-rollstock.com is offering better deals with their concept of B-roll packages. These include 4-7 HD/4K royalty free video clips (different angles and types of shots) for the price of one clip in any of the major stock video footage websites.
They also offer amazing royalty rates for their contributors, up to 70%. I don’t think anyone on the market offers such earnings rate.
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