With ad budget cutbacks and increased border security, agencies have to look for alternate ways to get the big shot. Before renting the largest crane at WFW or flying to South Africa to capture that perfect sunset, some producers are looking to rediscover the options presented to them via stock footage.

Freelance agency producer Leslie Hunter went the stock route for a Roche Macaulay & Partners ad called ‘Eat Sleep Work’ for Mercedes Benz. The spot was mostly stock, put together by some slick post work at Toronto design shop Crush. Hunter says in her experience, going the stock route is often a fine alternative.

‘With the use of stock footage you are able to produce spots that otherwise for logistical or budget reasons you would never be able to produce,’ says Hunter, who has also used stock on Ikea and Eatons ads. ‘You may never be able to recreate that scene, but you have it there in a stock footage form. It definitely is a viable option in some cases.’

Ogilvy & Mather broadcast producer Judy Coleman agrees. She sought quite a bit of stock footage for a spot O&M put together about a year ago for ITI called ‘Future.’

‘I used it for ‘Future’ because of the global nature of the commercial,’ says Coleman. ‘For us to get all this filler footage it would have pushed us into more days and the cost would have been exorbitant, so it was better in that instance to use it. It was mostly used to get us from one scene to another, like cars speeding along highways and bright cluttered lights. It helped us out a lot.’

According to Coleman, the cost of using the footage often comes out to be much cheaper in the long run. The rights for stock are usually purchased on a per-year basis, and when it comes time to renew, the stock footage supplier often offers a discount for subsequent years of usage.

Coleman says, however, using stock can be frustrating for creatives when they realize the difficult shot they hoped to find doesn’t exist.

‘If it is not the right thing and you have something exactly in your mind, what you may have to do is creatively settle for a lesser shot because the one you want doesn’t exist, but you get as close to it as you can,’ she says. ‘Obviously the ideal would be to shoot it yourself, but in a lot of instances [the stock footage] is perfectly good enough. A sunset is a sunset.’

Hunter goes on to say that the other hardship is found when the piece of footage you are looking for has degenerated from its original sheen, coming across looking grainy or faded.

‘You are limited by the quality of the film,’ says Hunter. ‘It does make it more challenging.’

Still, stock footage has the unique advantage of being able to deliver powerful shots that are literally impossible to recreate, as was the case recently when Toronto’s First Light delivered a clip of JFK giving a speech which was used in one agency’s annual corporate meeting presentation in a film on leadership.

‘It’s a way to access things that are otherwise non-accessible,’ says First Light president Pierre Guevremont.

Beyond this, companies specializing in stock footage can access top-line creative from around the world and some of the best Hollywood has to offer. In the case of First Light, this includes spot footage from Miami-based agency Sharpshooter, which First Light can access through a deal with New York-based Sekani.

‘If what they are looking for is a couple running on a beach or a family hugging or something of that nature,’ says Guevremont, ‘the production costs far exceed the cost that we would be charging for the use of that footage on a stock basis.’

-www.firstlight.ca

-www.ogilvy.com