[Ilana Ellis]

Hi Scott,

My big 3 are Pond5, Dissolve and Story & Heart.
A relatively new one, Filmsupply (sister site of The Music Bed, which I use a lot), is great because it actually features footage from known filmmakers and shooters, like Philip Bloom, for instance. I haven’t yet used it, but a lot of the footage looks beautiful.

Pond5 definitely has the best selection and prices, and I often go there first. They also pay the content producers more – I think 50% – so that’s cool. They also have an extensive array of Public Domain (totally free) footage, as well as templates, photo, 3D models and digital backlots which are really interesting!

Dissolve has a really nice interface, search engine and wonderful curation and research services in which you can chat with a rep about your project, and they will jump on board for free and come up with playlists of videos which may work for you. It’s really helpful, since they know their collections better than we do! Sometimes, by the way, I’ll find a clip on Dissolve and copy-paste the clip’s title into Pond5, and find it there for a better price. Dissolve also has a lot of vintage footage, and a full selection of stock photo.

Story and Heart is a truly unique site. Rather than just organizing footage by keyword and producer, their clips are uploaded in groups called “stories,” which are visually cohesive, often from the same exact location and shoot day. You can really use this site to create a journey in your piece. Their search engine also let’s you refine your results by color and energy level too. They’re pricey, but once you see what they offer, you’ll understand why. Very fancy.

I hope this helps. I’ve been using a lot a stock in the past couple years, so I’m well acquainted.

[Ilana Ellis]

Sorry I’m not able to offer a solution, but I do have a question.
You said you were able to achieve a basic blurring of the background with Garbage Matte. It just tried Garbage Matte for the first time and could not see how to blur the background, only how to blacken it. Could you tell me exactly how you did it?

Thanks so much,
Ilana

-Ilana Ellis
https://ilanaellisfilm.tumblr.com/

[Ilana Ellis]

Yes that’s it!

I loaded the bad clips from the timeline into the Viewer (by double-clicking it). Then in the “motion” tab I slid the “aspect ratio” bar to “0” from “-33.33” where it was set to. First I tried setting the 4 settings above that (in “motion” tab) to 0 but that yielded a completely blacked-out frame. So I undid until they went back to their settings.

Thanks a lot for your prompt and useful help. Do you know why it defaulted to that -33.33 setting?

[Ilana Ellis]

Well done tutorial.

What is the significance of copying over the lastclip.txt file? I did not do this.
When I loaded my P2 files into Avid MC there was no problem. Now I followed your directions for importing to Final Cut Express and I received the error message: “Interiors, Bethpage, speechless” (the name of my folder) contains unsupported media or has an invalid directory structure. Please choose a folder whose directory structure matches supported media.
I receive this error with any folder I try to import. Does this have to do with not having copied over the lastclip.txt file?
Any advice?

Thank you,
Ilana