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Spotlight On... Stock Footage
By Elina Shatkin & Evan Wagowski
Jan 8, 2004, 13:43

It wasn’t that long ago when the market for stock footage was barely a blip on the industry radar. Melody St. John, the president and co-founder of Video Tape Library (VTL), recalls that back in 1984, a year after she founded her company, she called Post magazine to place a classified ad. Post had to create a stock footage category just for VTL. Today, many entertainment industry trade magazines will dedicate special sections, even entire issues, to stock footage.

If you’ve ever seen a movie, television show, or commercial—chances are you’ve seen stock footage—probably without ever knowing it. But that’s the idea: to provide images that seamlessly integrate with existing footage. Peter Klein, the general manager of Best Shot Stock Footage, said that for the recent Austin Powers Goldmember movie, his company provided a stock shot of Tokyo downtown traffic. “That film was made in Hollywood,” he said. “They never went to Japan.”

Some of the networks are even getting into the sports stock footage game. HBO’s Sports Archives department has been licensing the sports footage it has built up over the past three decades. In March of 2003, the network decided to take the next logical step and database each and every piece of footage accumulated. Using a team of loggers and sales people, HBO has been able to create a full list of available footage from more than 40,000 tapes for sale to potential researchers and producers.

Not Just Sports....
As with most stock footage companies, VTL & Best Shot Stock Footage don’t provide just sports footage. They offer an extensive collection that encompasses natural wonders, historical monuments, aerial shots, footage of daily life, and, of course, all manner of athletics. There are the traditional sports, such as football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, but most of these have professional leagues with well-funded media divisions. “As far as NFL football, we can’t provide that, but we have access to set-up material and semi-pro and college material,” said Klein.

The advantage of sports material, however, is its longevity. “Sports are unlike regular lifestyle [footage]. Lifestyle footage is only good for a couple of years and then it’s dated. Sometimes sports footage is good forever.”

And nowadays, there are all sorts of new sports to cover. Extreme sports have gained in popularity over the last few years, fueled by the rise of specialty cable channels and events like the X Games. Klein points out that requests for extreme sports images aren’t new, but the increased demand for them is. “I remember in 1991, people were asking for extreme sports,” he said. “It’s been around a long time. But the mass popularity is a new phenomenon.”

Greg Hensley, of the one-man Colorado company Greg Hensley Productions, said that although he mostly focuses on wilderness and time-lapse footage, because of his environment he also sells sports footage. Hensley, who works exclusively on 35mm, said, “Sports is something I do because I live near Aspen and I’m a skier. In terms of sports, I mostly shoot snowboarding, skiing, hang-gliding, and paragliding.”

This means you’re much more likely to see shots of people mountain biking, river rafting, skydiving, and skateboarding—especially skateboarding—in today’s commercials and movies. Then there are the sports you didn’t even know existed, like dirtboarding, which entails surfing down a dusty mountain on a “dirtboard.” Some intrepid snow-lovers have brought the beach to the mountain by using surfboards on snow slopes.

Though the extreme sports phenomenon has reached new heights, St. John predicted, “I think it’s going to settle back down. There’s only so much you can do with that.” St. John said that commercial producers often take their cues from Super Bowl commercials. “Whenever those major commercials come out in January, those ideas filter down through the rest of the year to smaller national and regional spots.”

St. John said that about 30% of VTL’s stock footage requests are sports related. Best Shot Stock Footage also relies on sports footage for a big chunk of its business. “We have more calls for the extreme sports stuff and the bloopers than for anything else,” said Klein.

And sports footage is requested for a variety of different uses—not always where you’d expect. Most commonly, it’s used as playback. If a movie or television show has a scene in a sports bar, the TVs in that bar need to have footage on them, which is when producers turn to a stock footage house.

But a less obvious market for sports-related stock footage is corporate and motivational videos. “Anything where you have them talking about winning, striving, achieving—they’ll often want sports images: like someone scoring a goal or pole-vaulting over a high bar,” said St. John.

Who Buys Sports Footage?
Who are the clients that are coming to these companies? They run the gamut, producing everything from television commercials, to movies-of-the-week, to feature films to industrial videos. “The big networks all have their footage. But these guys making other shows, they need stuff,” said Klein.

“Car guys, sports drinks commercials...they don’t always have the time or the budget to shoot something like snow-skiing. That’s when you come to somebody like me,” said Klein. Best Shot Stock Footage recently provided several shots of an Alaskan avalanche to a movie of the week (MOW), aptly titled, Avalanche.

When a client comes in with a request, the company will prepare a preview reel for the producer, who will take a look, make his or her selections, and then the company will provide the chosen images as clean selections that can be edited into the production. The selections can be delivered on any format the client wants. Clients mostly choose DigiBeta or Beta. More clients are requesting high definition and DVD as well.

“We’re getting smaller. Everything is going to be digitized in the next few years. Eventually we’ll be sending out reels and demos on DVD. We may eventually store our preview tapes on DVD,” said Klein.

The Digital Impact
An increasing part of this digital revolution is high-def. “It’s not a lot more,” said Klein, “but it’s especially common for MOWs and serials, because some are shot on HD. And the 24p HD seems to be the most asked for.” Most of Best Shot Stock Footage’s material originates on film (usually 16mm and Super 16, but also some 35mm) and is then transferred to some other format.

Many would compare the impending HD onslaught with the advent of video some 20 years ago. St. John believes that HD will soon be a force to be reckoned with. “We’ve recently acquired the exclusive right to represent the Sony Video Library by Sony PCL, Inc. with over 300 hours of HD footage. HD is coming into its own, but it’s still going to take a couple of years.”

The other big change in the stock footage business has been the Internet. “The Internet has changed our business because now we can email clients images on request,” said St. John. “The Internet has also made it easy for people to access our database. It’s much easier. It’s a click of a finger.”

The stock footage business often demands a quick turnaround, which makes the Internet especially valuable. Klein said that at Best Shot Stock Footage, they will often hang a clip on their website, allowing clients to access it with a password.

“We’re storing more and more of our images on our computer. And eventually, we’re either going to store them in hardware towers or on DVD,” said Klein. “The business is getting more and more technical and the Internet is playing a big part in that.”

For More...
Best Shot Stock Footage
www.bestshotfootage.com

Greg Hensley Productions
www.greghensley.com
HBO Sports Archives
www.hboarchives.com

Video Tape Library
www.videotapelibrary.com

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