10 Quick Tips for Monetizing Stock Footage

Posted: August 06, 2013

[caption id="attachment_11480" align="alignright" width="382"]© ayo's photo - Fotolia.com[/caption]Everyone is looking for ways to generate more income. Videographers with stock footage on hand should be using that footage to make money. These 10 tips will help get you started.

The Digital Cinema Society (DCS) organized a how-to event for cinematographers in New York City aimed at offering tips on making money from stock footage. Moderated by DCS President James Mathers, the panel convened August 2 at B&H Photo & Video in Manhattan, and speakers included cinematographer Mark Forman, Light Iron CEO and co-founder Michael Cioni, B&H-The Studio cameras and workflow expert Michel Suissa, and Shutterstock's director of video acquisition, Tom Spota. The topic shifted fairly quickly to encompass a free-wheeling discussion of camera technology, but here's a rundown on some of the advice about making money from your own footage library that panelists shared.

1.) Always think about rights issues. To keep your shots from being flagged by skittish network or studio legal types, don't frame them around a single entity. Instead of taking a picture of one building, compose a nice shot including three or more. Instead of shooting a single person on the street — unless you're willing to secure a model release (see below) — shoot a crowd of mostly unidentifiable people. If you really need to highlight a specific structure or person, seek permission. "If you don't get permission, even though it's legal, the lawyers will make you kill it," said cinematographer Mark Forman.

2.) Always shoot the highest quality possible — preferably 4K or better. Light Iron CEO and founder Michael Cioni showed a chart depicting the relative size of different screen formats. The image was familiar but it made a crucial point: with word last week that Red Digital Cinema's Dragon sensor was in the field, 2K resolution is decidedly closer to the right-hand (lower quality) side of the chart than it is to the left-hand (higher quality) side. There are lots of reasons to shoot in HD or 2K, but future-proofing footage and preserving its value as stock is most definitely not one of them. (B&H's Michel Suissa shot some 4K video of the event with the Sony F55 and then played the clips out on an HP Z820 workstation running Assimilate Scratch within minutes, just to show that 4K can work comfortably in the real world.)

3.) When considering subjects, look out your window. "I have a really incredible rooftop, with a view of Manhattan north and south," Forman said, explaining that TV series are always looking for establishing shots of New York City. If you're lucky, pointing a camera out your window could conceivably net you thousands of dollars worth of stock shots. Forman also remembered a cross-country shoot for an indie film, during which he specified that any shots he captured without actors in the frame (such as Monument Valley vistas) would be his to keep and license, giving him an instant archive of Americana.

4.) Think twice about shooting time-lapse for stock. Shutterstock's Tom Spota said time-lapse is a popular footage category, but Forman argued shooters should consider whether the potential revenue is worth the significant time investment required to babysit a camera for 12 hours or more. "Unless you want to do [time-lapse], it's not worth it financially," he said.

Read the entire article 10 Quick Tips for Monetizing Stock Footage, at StudioDaily.