The stock footage industry is hot and getting hotter. Just ask Anita Turcotte, visual researcher for Toronto’s high-end doc prodco Cream Productions, where she is responsible for finding the archive elements that make up 30% of footage in the productions she works on. She starts by breaking down the script into archival elements, then begins the needle-in-a-haystack search for the perfect clips among a growing volume of high-quality stock footage.

‘Rates have gone up everywhere. There are more people in the business now. They’re extremely competitive and you can make a lot of money,’ says Turcotte, who has worked on docs such as The True Story of Moby Dick and The True Story of Robinson Crusoe for Discovery and Channel 4 in the U.K.

The stock footage industry is undergoing a series of changes that are making stock an increasingly attractive option for producers with shrinking budgets. The quality and quantity of available footage is increasing. Internet databases are making searching for and accessing footage a simpler, less time-consuming process. And many providers are moving away from traditional licensed footage in favor of a royalty-free business model.

More international material

Expanding existing libraries is a priority for many stock footage providers, including Canamedia. The Toronto-based company became the sole domestic provider of the U.K.-based ITN Archive library a little over a year ago. The move enables Canadian producers to access archived images from international sources, which otherwise would threaten Cancon status and impede eligibility for government funds.

One of the world’s largest, ITN has been growing for almost 50 years and includes libraries from sources including Reuters and Channel 4. The move was partially due to Canamedia president Les Harris’ own experiences as a documentary filmmaker.

‘One of the key concerns I had was that you are not allowed to spend more than a small percentage of your budget on archive footage that’s not from a Canadian company,’ explains Harris. ‘That’s why I put the proposal forward to the ITN Archive in London to set up an operation where Canadian producers could buy from a Canadian-owned and

-controlled company.’

Since Canamedia started repping ITN, Harris says sales in Canada have tripled. The company is currently selling between $18,000 and $20,000 of ITN stock footage per month, and Harris says he expects that number to increase to $30,000 in the near future.

At Canamedia, like many providers, the price of stock footage is affected by several factors, such as where footage will be seen, how long a buyer will hold the rights, and whether the footage is being used for educational, broadcast or DVD markets.

Other stock footage providers, however, such as Oregon-based Artbeats, are moving away from these traditional licences in favor of a royalty-free business model, in which the customer pays a one-time fee for unrestricted use.

Artbeats president Phil Bates says that while business slowed down after 9/11, it has been picking up steam since early 2003, when the company made a major trade-show and PR push. Artbeats has also been growing its library, and in April signed a deal with Discovery FootageSource, the archive arm of Discovery Communications, to rep 15% to 20% of its stock footage.

In addition to repping collections from producers and broadcasters, Artbeats also shoots its own material – a riskier approach because it requires an upfront production spend.

‘So far the risk is paying off rather well,’ says Bates. ‘We’re careful to choose stock footage shoots on subject matter there is a demand for.’

In order to meet a growing demand for international lifestyle and scenic footage, Bates is preparing to send two film crews overseas to capture footage from Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. He says he expects to recoup production costs within two years of adding the footage to the Artbeats library.

Going forward, Bates says Artbeats will shoot exclusively in HD or 35mm film. Currently about 20% of Artbeats’ sales is in HD. While 80% still comes from standard-definition footage, Bates says the industry’s move to HD is ramping up quickly.

Joanne Leduc, head of business development at the National Film Board’s distribution branch, agrees.

‘There is an incredible demand right now for everything in HD. It’s growing so fast that anyone who presently has an HD collection is bound to get an inside track on this market,’ she says.

Although Leduc says the NFB’s HD library is limited, what it does offer is in high demand. For example, the NFB series Arctic Mission for CBC was all shot in HD, providing a variety of Arctic footage that has been quite popular in the U.S.

Sales of material from NFB’s archives in the U.S. have increased dramatically since it entered into a cross-representation deal with the National Geographic Film Library in April 2003. Rare NFB footage from WWI, WWII and the Korean War is also selling well right now south of the border.

‘The U.S. is a market we hadn’t really tapped into that much, and [National Geographic] has been doing really well for us there,’ says Leduc.

At MIPCOM, the NFB unveiled another cross-representation deal with France’s Gaumont-Pathe Archives, which includes extensive historical and social footage from Europe. As part of the new partnership, the NFB will also exclusively represent the Arkeon Library, which includes archives from Russia and the former Soviet Union.

While the NFB is heading full-steam ahead into the future of HD stock footage, some Canadian providers are taking things a little slower.

Richard Boddington of Barrie, ON-based royalty-free stock footage provider Time Image recognizes that HD is the future, but has not started formatting his 30-volume, in-house collection quite yet. Once he makes that move, Boddington expects it will cost around $30,000 to scan all of his 35mm negatives into HD and build an Internet site to sell them from.

‘I’ve held back because my research shows that the vast majority of HD buyers are doing very high-end network shows with big budgets,’ he says, explaining that many of his clients continue to produce standard-definition material.

After working as a promotions producer and part-time cinematographer at CTV, where cost was the major factor restricting the use of stock footage, Boddington left to form Time Image with the goal of providing stock footage at a reasonable price without the restrictions of traditional licences.

In 1995/96, his first collection of royalty-free time-lapse photography, which he sold for $349 in BetaSP, took off when Fox Television became one of his first big clients, but by 1997 business slowed for Boddington because, he says, he had pretty much exhausted the market for his work.

‘I had basically saturated the production house market, and desktop video was not really going big at that stage,’ he says.

In 1999, however, the desktop video and miniDV revolution provided Boddington with a slew of new customers looking for royalty-free stock footage. His marketing strategies expanded to include a wide variety of customers, incorporating promotional, corporate video and documentary filmmakers, all the way down to event videographers cutting on a home computer.

Boddington says one of his largest client groups is church organizations in the U.S., which are using footage such as time-lapse images of flowers opening or tranquil ocean-scapes as backdrops for sermons or in promotional videos for local congregations.

For a visual researcher like Cream’s Turcotte, a hot stock industry benefiting from a growing customer base may mean slightly higher rates, but at the same time it has resulted in a greater variety of better-quality images that are becoming both easier to find and access. *

-www.canamedia.com

-www.artbeats.com

-www.timeimage.com

-www.nfb.ca/archives