The high-definition explosion many have been bracing for may well be a reality within the next 18 months, and pioneers such as stock footage veteran Paula Lumbard are ready for it.

Lumbard has been listening closely to her primary clients regarding the production industry’s migration to HD and in response has created FootageBank, an L.A.-based boutique stock footage company dedicated to servicing the growing HD community.

‘It’s the studio people and the networks who told us HD is coming and that we’re going to be asked to deliver in HD format,’ says Lumbard, stressing that indicators already point to the next 18 months as a critical window. ‘More and more clients are saying, ‘I can’t accept a 4:3 delivery format, it’s got to be 16:9.’ So whether [footage] is 35mm converted to HD or shot on HD, the demand is growing [exponentially] each month.’

And although Lumbard is strategically located in L.A., the move to HD is widespread. In fact, some of the early HD adopters Lumbard contacted when developing FootageBank, and some of her biggest content providers, are Canadian.

Toronto’s Stonehenge, one of the first HD-capable post-production houses in the country, and Randall Dark’s HD Vision Studios are among FootageBank’s four biggest providers of HD content. Toronto-born Dark, who has been shooting in HD for more than 15 years, recently opened HD Vision in southern California to take advantage of Hollywood’s growing appetite for the high-end video format.

Lumbard started out as an F/X producer and in 1985 set up Film Bank, a stock footage boutique that initially focused on F/X footage and then expanded. After Film Bank underwent several acquisitions and transformations, Lumbard ended up at New York-based stock footage company Sekani, but she left a year ago after Corbis Motion acquired it, adding Sekani’s moving images library to its own collection of photography.

Now, with the recent launch of Discovery HD Theater, an entire network dedicated to HD programming, and with other broadcasters set to follow, Lumbard has embraced the opportunity to get in on something at the very beginning.

‘I took the lead and have really built up an impressive archive very quickly,’ she says.

FootgeBank recently signed a deal to represent the library of Al Giddings, one of the pioneering filmmakers to convert from film to tape for natural history productions 15 years ago. Now the esteemed filmmaker, director of underwater photography for features Titanic and The Abyss, is leading the way in the current HD migration. He is in the process of upconverting his entire library to HD for representation with FootageBank.

Giddings’ varied collection includes top nature and underwater footage, which Lumbard says HD is particularly well suited to. In September and October, 46% of the company’s licence fees went to nature shows. ‘Documentaries in HD are gorgeous. If you want to really look at a phenomenon of nature, in this day and age you can’t get any closer than with HD,’ says Lumbard.

Lumbard is working towards building and diversifying her library by repping filmmakers and production companies as well as building up original footage.

Currently, 90% of FootageBank’s collection is repped, and although Lumbard has shooters in New York, Austin, San Francisco, L.A. and Denver collecting 24p HD footage, she says there are certain types of footage, such as lifestyle and sports, that will continue to be acquired from outside sources. Lumbard says she is collecting footage more rapidly than anticipated and is looking at new storage solutions for the growing library.

One year in, FootageBank has already archived more than one terabyte of footage and is requiring roughly 720 gigabytes of new storage every two months. ‘We’re filling up memory so fast that we have to have a long-term plan,’ says Lumbard. Up till now the company has been storing on a RAID system, but is negotiating with an L.A.-based company that specializes in storage using Final Cut Pro systems.

Lumbard is resolving storage issues and will continue to build FootageBank’s library. Although film and television producers are her primary clients, there is also growing demand from the corporate community, which, according to Lumbard, wants nothing but HD.

-www.footagebank.com