Film Courage: Can you explain what licensing footage is?
Marlin Darrah, Filmmaker: Absolutely, well as part of my career I shoot stock footage. I've
shoot documentaries, travel, adventure programs and movies. There's a variety of possible income
streams a filmmaker can explore. For me that's what I've been doing for decades. For licensing of
stock shots which God I've got so many thousands of stock shots what you do is you co through all
the footage that you shoot on assignment in a particular country you kind of edit that down
to maybe a top thousand shots from all this hours of footage you shot and then you put it on a real
digital file and then you license it to different companies National Geographic represents thousands
of my shots action shots motion shots I don't shoot Stills you could probably do frame grabs
these days from 6K-8K footage and they could look great right but it's all been motion shots
I've licensed over time to different companies so there's there's Pond5 there's so many different
companies out there Getty and what you do is you sign a contract with them it's can be perpetual
I mean it can be an automatic renewing thing you can limit it to 5 years it's up to you usually I
just let it go for in perpetuity because there's no reason not to if you're getting a check and
then you can try to renegotiate sometimes the the terms of of your contract or how much you're
getting per shot stock footage though has not been as profitable for me anyway as it was in the 9s
and the early 2000s and that's because there are just so many more people now shooting really high
res shots with iPhones and where it used to be the case where you'd have to spend more money for good
equipment good good gear that you could not have to compete with so many millions of other people
shooting how many we're in a selfie generation so people shooting reams of shots and and some of
these people are now marketing it through Pond5 for very small amount of money sometimes just
$35 a shot it used to be $1,500 a shot for certain things that you would shoot in different countries
that were a little bit more unusual or rare to shoot but now it's different in the last 10 years
I've noticed a decline of of income from the stock footage sales so I don't normally recommend people
do that but it just depends on how aggressive you are at marketing your your library and your shots
but you can have as many deals as you want with different companies you don't have to be exclusive
to Nat Geo or to Getty or to any of these others you can create a whole library of shots thousands
of shots and offer it to different stock footage libraries did you adopt Drone footage right away I
know that's something that's maybe a little more rare than these selfies or yes Drone footage as
every filmmaker knows has changed the entire complexion of film making the entire let's
say tools in your toolkit that you can bring to your movie it used to be of course when I
was starting out early on it would be shooting from planes from helicopters probably not from
balloons but at least helicopters now that that was very expensive to do it was $1,500 an hour to
shoot from a helicopter or a plane and then you'd have to have specialized stabilizing gear as well
inside the plane they take a door off and you have to go through this entire rigmarole to do this
and so those were very selective shots and you couldn't afford it often for your shows depends
on your budget but now of course drones are just taken for granted now it's they're so cheap to
get some of them are are still very good and still very cheap so it's it's a matter of almost every I
think I can't really think of any film now that I would want to do or any movie that would not
incorporate drone shots especially if they take place in the international settings where we
always shoot because that's part of what we're doing is is trying to transport the viewer and
the audience to Egypt to Thailand to Zanzibar to Antarctica whatever you're doing you need to bring
them in to the the general setting it used to be called the the master shot and now a master shot
could be coming in over Cairo and then coming into the marketplace going over the pyramids or going
over icebergs in Antarctica it's just an expected part of your toolkit now to bring those into play
and so again depends on the country and their permits like I said Egypt it's illegal but most
countries you can bring a drone into and shoot and even in Egypt you can hire a government appointed
production company to do drone shots for you it's just more money so but even here in La I think
that you couldn't just necessarily go to downtown LA and find a landmark that's a good point do a
drone and that's let's talk about accessibility of of drones and let's say you're you're going
to Europe you're going to Paris and you wanted to get some drone shots well that's not going to be
that easy I think what I was referring to before are usually in desert Landscapes or over rivers or
over certain big geographical sites mountains or Foothills and mountains and those sorts of
things in the country that's pretty easy you can do that but in in most country except for China
again we have to have all these caveats if it's a communist country or something like that those are
very tightly controlled you can't usually shoot a with a drone in a communist country that's pretty
tricky but a lot of countries dozens and dozens of them you can bring in a drone and do that but
yeah like in Downtown LA or virtually any city in the US or even a town there are definitely laws on
the books you can't just fly a drone through a downtown LA without special permission and
there's like pilots license for drones and so on but again like a lot of the countries I go
to they're the laws are a little bit gray and so sometimes you just take the chance and negotiate
when when that's if somebody comes up with her hand out what types of shots are most marketable
if you are to license the footage later on very good question the sense of what is what are the
most popular shots being licensed for me since I only focus on International shots from the
ground from the sea drone shots things like that that only represents 5 to 10% of the marketplace
90% I understand from other filmmaker friends who focus on just doing drone shots and stock
footage shots in the US 90% of the demand is for domestic subject matter not International isn't
that interesting I always thought that that would be a higher percentage there'd be more demand for
shots from Rome or wherever but that's not the case it has more to do with more practical things
because a lot of times stock shots are used for ads supplemental shots of people working
in offices or a product they're trying to sell domestically so they just need more uh readily
recognizable shots for advertising and if it's for documentary sometimes producers want documentary
shots of something that they can't easily get but still 90% of the shots that you might be shooting
you might as well focus mostly on domestic based themes that's where most of the money is
interestingly enough surprising yeah isn't it yeah I would think that the more unusual shots of other
countries would be more popular but that's not really the case so I found that to be interesting
too so the licensing terms you kind of talked about you said it depends it can be in perpetuity
yes it can be in perpetuity or you can just limit it to five years or whatever you want to negotiate
often they're fairly flexible okay but they also do well I didn't mention is they usually want to
also with stock footage shots if you're doing that for part of your income as a filmmaker you
want to be sure you have a u sort of provenance line of custody on that model releases if you're
shooting anything to do with people's faces in a crowd or in a market or wherever in a business
setting wherever you're shooting nationally or internationally you have to get that model license
have them sign off and pay them a dollar whatever it is it's it's a nominal thing most people don't
really care although sometimes when you bring out a model license they kind of go wait a second are
you going to be making a lot of money on this it almost draws more question to what you're doing
but generally speaking and actually specifically you do want to get some kind of model release
photography release from every subject that is seen in the frame for there's no exact formula for
this but at least if you can recognize a person essentially that would mean like 2 seconds if
they're passing by you better get their permission and I've noticed that with stock footage companies
now they're getting much more stringent on on requiring permits not permits but permission
from your subjects didn't used to be that way 10, 20, 30 years ago but now it's more stringent and
even if you photograph say the Eiffel Tower with their light show they have every night that's now
copyrighted that light show and you can't actually sell a shot of the Eiffel Tower at night without
having the permission of whoever designed the light show isn't that interesting but think
about how many millions of shots are are done by people every year right of the Eiffel Tower at
night but it's just becoming you more regimented I suppose as far as getting permits and permissions.