Stock footage is, by my definition, royalty-free or royalty-paid clips that I can freely use in my productions. There is no shortage of sources out there, with pricing varying from free to several thousand dollars per clip. I recently procured some DVDs of stock footage from Footage Firm. Here is my review.
Footage Firm (www.footagefirm.com) offers stock footage in SD and HD resolutions on DVD. Recently, they have been offering certain titles for 'free,' charging just $8.41 per DVD for 'shipping and handling.' Taking advantage of this offer, I purchased eight DVDs for a total of $67.28.
The first thing to realize is that this footage is in fact not free. It did not cost Footage Firm $67.28 to ship me eight DVDs… In fact the postage was likely something around $10.00. You see the gimmick here, but on the surface it's not a bad deal overall.
The discs I purchased are:
- HD City Rush
- HD US Cities
- HD European Architecture
- Time Lapse City Scapes
- Time Lapse Night Scapes
- Time Lapse Winter Landscapes
- Time Lapse Road Rush
- Time Lapse Traffic Patterns
Each DVD contains 15 clips, with HD and SD versions of each clip. This equates to $0.56 per clip, which is a really great price for stock footage, so long as the content is useable and the quality sufficient. In this case, the content is somewhat useable and the quality is okay.
Packaging is a simple plastic clamshell case - nothing fancy here - and each disc appears to be burned rather than produced. The bottom of each is purple in color, just like the burn-it-yourself DVDs you use at home or work, though the label appears to be printed on, which is a step above an adhesive-backed version.
Technical Specs
Each clip is somewhere between 7 and 30 seconds in length, with most right around the 15 second mark. SD clips are 740x480 at 29.97 fps, and HD clips are 1920x1080 at 29.97 fps. All clips are in Quicktime *.MOV format, making them more immediately useful to Mac-based editors, but a Windows File Converter application is included on each disc.
Content & Quality
The base directory of each disc is clearny organized, with separate folders for the HD and SD clips. The 'Shot List' folder contains a single-page PDF with preview snapshots of each clip. Similarly, the 'Still Frames' folder contains a *.jpg image of each clip.
I find that I usually want my stock footage to be kind of neutral. As an editor, I want to be able to apply my own color correction, effects and filtering to a clip depending on the needs of my project. Over-stylized or highly-processed stock footage is rarely of use to me.
Similarly, in most cases I prefer a static shot, with no dollying or zooming applied in-camera. I can simulate these effects very easily in editing, and the more content I have to work with, the better. The exception, of course, is when the camera movement is part of the content of the shot.
To this end, the Footage Firm content delivers nothing better than inconsistency. The Winter Landscapes are very color-rich, while the European Architecture are decidedly flat in color with a bit of a 'tourist video camera' look to them. The rest I sampled fall somewhere in between.
The variety of content is also somewhat lacking. Occasionaly, multiple clips are in fact the same location framed differently. Admittedly, this can have its uses, but with only 15 clips per disc I would expect every clip to be unique.
Many (seemingly most) clips were obviously shot in Las Vegas, and numerous business logos and identifiable buildings are pictured: Circle-K, Citgo, Met Life, MGM Grand, Starbucks, etc. Their inclusion can seriously impede the usefulness of a shot, as care must be taken to properly represent (or more specifically, not improperly represent) the business or brand in your end project. In one case, an otherwise gorgeous shot of Grauman's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles is ruined by a 'Hellboy II' banner. Sure, it can be removed in editing, but that's added work. Stock footage is supposed to reduce the added work.
Another challenge is organization: finding the shot you need when you need it. For my purposes, I imported all the still frames into a photo album in iPhoto, whereby I find it much easier to browse all the content quickly and avoid loading multiple DVDs just to survey clips. Another option (which I plan to do) is print the index PDFs and transfer the discs to standard DVD cases with the PDFs as labels. Sure, this takes up more room on the shelf, but to me the improved browsing ability is worth it.
By comparison, I also have stock footage from Digital Juice, who coordinate all their content through their own free application, the Juicer. Given, this option locks one into a specific database method, but again, this tradeoff is worthwhile for ease of access.
Bottom Line
While certainly not 'free,' the stock footage options from Footage Firm are very reasonably priced, of decent though variable quality, and therefore not a bad deal at all, as long as they fit your need.
Disclaimer
I purchased the reviewed product. I was provided no compensation of any kind from Footage Firm (or anyone else) to produce this review. The opinions herein are completely my own.
