Footage Firm 'Free Footage' Review

As a videographer, there is often a need for a shot that I just don't have. Sure, I could schedule talent, find a location, recruit a crew and capture the footage myself, but when time is of the issue, stock footage comes in very handy.

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.

It's Daylight Saving Time, NOT Daylight Savings Time

By now you’ve hopefully remembered to turn your clocks back one hour with this year’s start of Daylight Saving Time. I researched DST hoping to be able to provide a fun, concise history, but found the practice anything but simple in introduction or perseverance! I did find that the first nationwide adoption (by passing of a law) was in 1918 (during World War I) as ‘An Act to preserve daylight and provide standard time for the United States.’

Interestingly (as I have a love of precise English), the official term is “Daylight Saving Time,” not “Daylight SavingS Time,” as is common parlance. It’s a kind of time that saves daylight, and it would be more accurate (grammatically) to use a dash: “Daylight-Saving Time;” but this just isn’t the practice. And to make it more confusing, no daylight is actually saved—rather it’s shifted. Daylight Shifting Time just doesn’t seem as politically powerful when it comes to energy savings, I guess...

Thoughts on the iPad

Well, Apple has released the iPad. I'll admit to wanting one, despite not being sure what I'd do with it. Thoughts that come to mind are:

> Reading books and magazines
> Controlling/monitoring my home network

The first one is well-supported. The Kindle iPhone app will run on it, and will certainly be upgraded to support the larger screen, and Apple will be offering additional books via their own store.

The second one, however, is lacking. See, I envision using the iPad like the handheld touch screens on Star Trek TNG - able to access anything on my network from anywhere. This is a current limitation of the iPhone--there's no app for that, it seems.

It Makes One Wonder...

Location: 2009

Mirriam-Webster defines 'astrology' as "the divination of the supposed influences of the stars and planets on human affairs and terrestrial events by their positions and aspects." Since the latest theory is that the universe is expanding (and has been since its genesis), it's reasonable to assume that the position of the stars and planets never repeat. That is, their positions are ever-changing and never the same.

So if astrology assesses the 'influences' that affect our lives and the planets have been constantly changing positions since one's birth, the idea of 'biorhythms' has merit. Biorhythms (again according to Mirriam Webster) are " innately determined rhythmic biological process[es] or function[s]..." or " the internal mechanism that determines such a process or function."

Simply stated, biorhythms use your birth date and cycles of emotional, physical and intellectual states to map how you will feel on any given date. Okay, seems logical so far.

* * *

For the past week, I've been feeling particularly tired. Sleeping almost ten hours per night has not helped. I've dragged, been lethargic, and generally a slug without the energy to be more.

At the same time, my mind has been racing. I'm exploring concepts, wondering about interesting topics, mentally picturing complex 3D suspension designs (a current passion), solving Sudoku puzzles, reading heady stuff (Kerouac, Kafka, Danielewski's House of Leaves)...

On a whim, I checked my biorhythm today:


So, for the past week, I've been (according to my biorhythm) in a physical low and nearing an intellectual high.

Coincidence?

An Organized Economy

This stuff in the news about the big three auto makers (in Detroit) asking for more bailout money bugs me. It is indicative of the ‘entitlement’ mentality that suffuses American business, and organized labor in general.

In a free market economy, the best businesses usually win. Those who can control costs, be aggressive and innovative in their strategy, be flexible to shifting markets and demands and operating costs and challenges, will be more successful than those who try to keep doing the same thing over and over.

My personal opinion is that organized labor is a large part of the problem purely because the costs of labor are not in line with the service delivered. Unions are about entitlement. "I did for you before, so you do for me now." It’s contrary to the way the business world really works, which is, "I did this before, and now I’m doing this and next I’ll do that." Success is about pay for performance, and constantly improving that performance. It takes constant improvement, not resting on past successes, to be successful in the future.

If organized labor could do an about-face and become more like guilds, they would deliver true value. If the purpose of a union was to develop and provide the best trade service to their customers, and hiring a union worker meant the customer knew she was getting a proven, qualified and skilled person, the whole thing could be different. Unions could demand the same dollars (if not more) they do now because the customer would be willing to pay for quality, not because they had successfully tied the hands that feed them. You have to make your customer want your product. It's about customer satisfaction. But unions aren't in the business of customer satisfaction. They’re in the business of making union management fat dumb and happy.

I think organized labor is the leading driver that limits our ability to compete in a world-wide marketplace. We have the laziest, highest paid workers in the world. It’s a cultural problem, however. It’s based out of a belief in individual rights at the expense of others’ rights: Me before you. It disgusts me.

How do we forget?

We have things that we really enjoy. Things that revive us, rejuvenate us, remind us why we go on day after day.

Sometimes, other things get in the way. We're distracted, diverted from the things that sustain us. We go for days, then weeks, then longer and slowly tell ourselves we'd rather not. We're too tired. It's too much trouble. There are things more important. We forget--forget what makes us happy. We substitute sustenance for joy.

When we wake up, however, and make ourselves get up and go and do the thing we know we love but have forgotten temporarily , the surge of well-being is addictive. How did we ever go this long without, we wonder.

Now, if I can just remember how to not forget.

Story with Teeth

Location: The Sofa

Just got the chance to watch director Mitchell Lichtenstein's movie Teeth. Some have panned it, but I thought it was a fun satire/metaphor on sex, the anxiety we all feel (or felt) as teens discovering ourselves and our sexuality. Yes, it has feminist tones, but only in that sex is power, and by our biology/evolution, women tend to hold that power more than men.

A fun movie, severed penis tips aside.

Besides, one can never tire of Jess Weixler's voice which reminds me constantly of Winona Ryder's slightly slightly round-mouthed diction.