Stock Footage, Don't Knock it.

I bought some very expensive, at least by standards, stock footage way back when I was working in Digital 8 and miniDV.  Even now I occasionally use some of the more impressive, hard to get, realisitic standard definition clips in my HD productions.  I think of it like the old T.V. shows that used to cut 16mm military footage into a show shot on 35mm filmstock.  The quality isn't the match I'd like, but it's the only way a $15 episode of "The Simplest Things" is going to have a convincing shot of the planet Earth from space.  Using the footage as backgrounds helps a bit too, because you can play with the focus.  A softer focus on something that isn't the focal point of  your scene works pretty well.

Lately though I've been picking up a LOT of HD stock footage from a few sources.  There are companies that give it away for "free" on DVD.  Actually they charge about 3x what shipping costs and make their money by sending you the DVDs, but it's still very affordable and useful stuff.  Mostly I get CG iconic images, particl F/X or light and energy F/X from them.  Can I do a lot of these things myself?  Probably, but to be honest, I'm not really a graphics guy, so even the stuff I can do takes me longer than it should.  If I can save 3 or 4 hours of work and have the machines rendering stuff I'm being paid for rather than some abstract HD graphic I may want down the line and all for less than 10 bucks, it's worth it to me.

I also shoot the heck out of the world around me in HD to gain as much as useful footage as possible.  You've got to be in a public place, try to keep faces and logos out of it and not cause a disturbance, but you'd be amazed at the stuff you can get, especially if you travel.  Wildlife, planes, landscapes, construction equipment at work and weather are all things to have your arsenal.  I carry a small (slightly bigger than pocket) HD camera with me at all times and download a few great clips every month.  The stuff my Dad filmed while we were on our flight lesson has already made it into two features.

This past week I was capturing footage from a company called "Videoblocks".  Short clips and under the agreement you have to "change them significantly" to use them in your project.  Basically, screening people or objects in, editing them to music and using them within a bigger project should cover you. 

I've been planning on doing a "bloody" version of our HFP logo for awhile.  It consisted of shooting syrup blood dripping onto plexi at an angle in front of a white background and keying that into the existing three frame film logo.  Or I thought about pouring fake blood onto a printed version of the logo upisde down and running it backwards to make it look as if it filled with blood.

Between client work, trying to schedule my own projects, shooting the episodes of the online shows and writing, I hadn't gotten around to that for the past 4 months or so.  Then this week I capture a cool new set of flickering film frames as stock footage.  I went through my other clips and realized I had everything I needed to make this work.

The finished product uses almost all stock elements, including library music, which we'll get to in another blog.

I thought this version worked really well, but decided some clients may not want this opening a video of their family pictures or business's last big event.  I also figured shows like "The Simplest Things", which are more family oriented shouldn't open this way, so I made a second version.  You can see that on the main page of my site: http://www.hocfocprod.com/