Stock film clips -- what are the best sites for film footage?

[Jon O'Brien]

Hi, I recently uploaded 10 Super 8 and 16mm film clips, all shot within the last year and graded to a high standard, to a site that seems to have a high profile and seemed to be saying that they wanted more film footage clips, but my clips were rejected. Okay, maybe not the best clips, but I thought pretty interesting especially when compared to what this site already had up for sale. Anyway, so that was my experience with that site. I'm pretty sure I can sell my clips elsewhere. Can anyone help me out with advice as to what sites are most likely to be looking for Super 8 and 16mm film clips? I find all the advice on YouTube to be aimed at digital video makers. Thanks!

[Tyler Purcell]

I've tried to sell clips to stock footage companies for years, I've been rejected 8 times out of 10. They have some odd QC engine that finds issues within the clips and auto rejects them based on those issues. With film clips, it's a nightmare because any flicker or even fast pans which create a motion blur, can cause it to be rejected. This is why when you look at the stock footage sites, nearly all of the footage is heavily stabilized and almost overly squeaky clean. It's hard to get 16mm and super 8 to look THAT clean. 

[Jon O'Brien]

Hmm, sounds like they don't reeaalllly want film footage despite hinting that it's cool to shoot film clips on film. Looks like it's on to plan G (or is it plan M, somewhat down the list from plan B and plan C) for making a buck from shooting film.

[Jon O'Brien]

Perhaps some enterprising individual should start up their own film footage only stock clips site.

[Robin Phillips]

1 hour ago, Jon O'Brien said:

Perhaps some enterprising individual should start up their own film footage only stock clips site.

unfortunately it probably wouldnt do very well stand alone. which is too bad, cause one imagines there are at least some cases where some show might want cineon log footage. Hell, you'd think there'd be a (admittedly small) market for landmarks filmed with super 8 alone

[Jon O'Brien]

14 minutes ago, Robin Phillips said:

... which is too bad, cause one imagines there are at least some cases where some show might want cineon log footage. Hell, you'd think there'd be a (admittedly small) market for landmarks filmed with super 8 alone

Yes, I've been thinking about it. I guess it makes sense that, really, who is going to want to buy any Super 8 or 16mm footage of anything? I'm not being satirical. It makes sense that content creators are going to want digital stock footage because, let's face it, a lot of video production is very shallow, glib, commercial .... call it what you want but, whatever it is, standard video production doesn't interest me in the least. I'd literally rather be a bus driver than try to make a living as a wedding videographer for instance. Or a 'corporate videographer', whatever that actually is (everyone says they do corporate videos on their websites haha). So, all these video content creators really just want shallow, commercial-looking clips to insert into their boring videos that look exactly like every other content creator's boring videos. I'm not being cynical or negative, I'm telling it like it is.

But just who would actually buy Super 8 or 16mm clips? Maybe once a blue moon you might sell a very cheap clip to some teenager making a music video. But that's total peanuts. Not worth the time to upload the clip.

Edited May 3 by Jon O'Brien

[Jon O'Brien]

All those stock video clip sites have reams of very similar shots, all in glorious 4K. Gimbal tracking shots of inner city buildings. Drone city scapes and interesting geological features. Shots of people sipping chardonnay at street bars or whatever. Drone shots and uber slow motion shots of people in the surf. Slow mo of wedding couples hand in hand. It's all the same stuff. Much of the most interesting stuff is shot with a drone. I don't know why they keep accepting clips because they already have more than enough.

Almost no one is going to need Super 8 or 16mm B roll.

Edited May 4 by Jon O'Brien

[Jon O'Brien]

https://www.stocksy.com/ideas/film-stock-footage-why-super-8-16mm-still-rule/

[Aapo Lettinen]

6 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I've tried to sell clips to stock footage companies for years, I've been rejected 8 times out of 10. They have some odd QC engine that finds issues within the clips and auto rejects them based on those issues. With film clips, it's a nightmare because any flicker or even fast pans which create a motion blur, can cause it to be rejected. This is why when you look at the stock footage sites, nearly all of the footage is heavily stabilized and almost overly squeaky clean. It's hard to get 16mm and super 8 to look THAT clean. 

I stopped selling anything on Shutterstock couple of years ago because they launched the new very low price licenses and the royalty was so low per purchase that it did not even cover the costs of checking the page from time to time if anything had been sold. It is, when there is the possibility to pay ultimate peanuts for the lowest quality license ( I think it cost like 2 bucks per clip to buy them at the time) then 95% of people buy exactly that and when getting about 30% of royalties per purchase it is really not worth it at all. One cannot cover even the hard drive costs to store the raw material, let alone the costs to shoot it in the first place. Nor the work to process the clips, to upload them and catalogue them correctly, etc. I was just, screw this I don't need this bullsh*t in my life, better to delete the whole collection for it becoming cheaper than try to keep it generating losses 🤢

About 10 years ago it was very different, people often paid the medium priced or highest priced license for a clip and I could get about 100usd in royalties PER CLIP PER PURCHASE. that compare to the current days when getting 0.6usd or something like that AT BEST.  I think the issue is just the customers being cheap ass pos, they got what they asked for when always paying the lowest price for everything, no one wants to shoot material for them then 😝

[Todd Ruel]

The secret is to stop trying to sell your own stock footage.  Instead, try uploading vintage public domain films.

I've been a Getty Images contributor for 20+ years.  I specialize in automotive footage.  I shot footage at the Detroit Auto Show for 20 years.  That footage is still for sale on Getty's site, and it earns peanuts compared to vintage car films, industrials, commercials, etc.  I've made $137,000 since 2009, and the vast majority of that income has derived from the vintage public domain stuff.

The secret is volume.  If you have a vintage 10-minute industrial, you might be able to yield 10 or 20 clips from that film.  The more clips you offer, the greater the chance to earn passive income (aka royalties).

It's true that you earn lower royalties than you used to.  I've found that's true since Getty started offering premium memberships to high-volume customers.  Many of my monthly royalty statements are filled with a few dozen 50-cent or $1.09/per clip royalties, but there's usually a shot (or two) in there that licenses for $100, $200, or $300.  That little jackpot is enough of an incentive to continue uploading vintage material.

Pivot away from shooting your own material.  Upload vintage public domain material.  Niche down to a topic that you can specialize in.  Be resilient.  Rinse and repeat.

[Tyler Purcell]

7 minutes ago, Todd Ruel said:

I've been a Getty Images contributor for 20+ years.  I specialize in automotive footage.  I shot footage at the Detroit Auto Show for 20 years.  That footage is still for sale on Getty's site, and it earns peanuts compared to vintage car films, industrials, commercials, etc.  I've made $137,000 since 2009, and the vast majority of that income has derived from the vintage public domain stuff.

Yea it's a niche market you found, which I guess others could also get into if they wanted. Gotta be in it for the long haul tho, and as you said, it's all about flooding the site with content. The problem I always had was metadata tagging. You need to do it as a full time job. 

[Todd Ruel]

29 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

The problem I always had was metadata tagging. You need to do it as a full time job.

Don't let that stop you.

I never know if my metadata tags are useful or effective.  Getty provides zero feedback about the metadata I create.

However, I have a spreadsheet of all my clips and the metadata tags that I used for each clip.  Once the clip has been published, I go back to the public listing of that clip and include tags that Getty has added by themselves to the clip.  That helps me understand what they feel is important to customers.  It's not direct feedback, but it's helpful.

I've found that it's not enough to think like a content creator.  You also have to think like a business person.

[Jon O'Brien]

5 hours ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

... One cannot cover even the hard drive costs to store the raw material, let alone the costs to shoot it in the first place... 🤢

Yeah. To hell with that, as they say. The clip companies can take a flying F.

[Jon O'Brien]

... and another thing. I'm sick of videographers putting their hands up to do work for free. Videographers and filmmakers, and anyone who's shelled out hard cash to make movies of any sort: refuse, and i mean point blank refuse, to shoot any more gigs for anyone for free. Take your clips off the cheapskate clip sites, if you can. Cut the cheap bastards off from their footage.

Every time you shoot something for free you're killing cinematography as a profession.

Edited May 4 by Jon O'Brien

[Tyler Purcell]

19 hours ago, Todd Ruel said:

I never know if my metadata tags are useful or effective.  Getty provides zero feedback about the metadata I create.

I didn't know you could upload without metadata. Honestly, how anyone would find your pictures at all, amongst the hundreds of thousands from the same event, tells me you have excellent metadata. So sounds like you know your answer! 

[Todd Ruel]

2 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I didn't know you could upload without metadata. Honestly, how anyone would find your pictures at all, amongst the hundreds of thousands from the same event, tells me you have excellent metadata. So sounds like you know your answer! 

Whoa.  I didn’t say that.  I only said that Getty doesn’t provide feedback on the metadata I submit.

To be clear, you must submit metadata tags along with your clips.  I’m no different.  I simply meant that Getty doesn’t tell me one way or the other if my tags were good, effective, or otherwise.

Also, I don’t upload pictures.  (I’m guessing you mean stills.). I now only upload vintage public domain film footage.  There’s a ton of it.  It makes much more money than me shooting my own stuff.

But there are consequences.  Virtually all of the film prints that I acquire and transfer require restoration.  I use Diamant for restoration, Neat for grain removal, and Resolve to reassemble all the restored parts and pieces.  It’s time consuming, but once a clip is up on the site, it’s sellable forever.  I have clips that go years without making any money.  Then suddenly, someone licenses it again.  It’s been a reliable but uneven passive income stream since 2009.

[Jon O'Brien]

Thanks Todd for this excellent information. Could I ask, who would mainly be buying these vintage footage clips that you've restored? Would the clips be used in music videos for instance, or documentaries, videos on YouTube about cars? I'm genuinely curious.

[Tyler Purcell]

23 hours ago, Todd Ruel said:

Also, I don’t upload pictures.  (I’m guessing you mean stills.). I now only upload vintage public domain film footage.  There’s a ton of it.  It makes much more money than me shooting my own stuff.

Ohhh you said car show, I assumed you meant new stuff. 

Interesting. We do a lot of public domain stuff as well, we have our own scanners, wet gate system and do a lot of public domain stuff. I've little to no luck uploading to anywhere for money. 

Here is a sample of the kind of work we do. Mostly with a mix of wetgate, Phoenix and Resolve. 

 

[Todd Ruel]

4 hours ago, Jon O'Brien said:

Thanks Todd for this excellent information. Could I ask, who would mainly be buying these vintage footage clips that you've restored? Would the clips be used in music videos for instance, or documentaries, videos on YouTube about cars? I'm genuinely curious.

Jon, the monthly revenue statements tell half of the story.  But it’s a pretty interesting 50%.  The customers are all names that you know:  CNN, Viacom, Bloomberg, Disney, BBC, you name it.  

I don’t know what their specific projects are, but I do know how they’re using the material.  The revenue statements will reveal whether it’s for a documentary, a web-based video, educational video, commercial film, etc.

Getty charges for its clips based on the size of the audience.  They also charge different rates for editorial usage vs. creative usage.  For instance, Jeep might make a national commercial featuring some of my vintage Jeep footage from the 1970s.  I make $500 or more for each clip included in that commercial.  Yet that same commercial might only sell for a few dollars when used in a CNN news story.  It depends on how the footage is used.  A national commercial or Hollywood film will always make me a ton of money when compared to a news story.

The production companies don’t know me personally.  I’m just one of many contributors to Getty Images.  But I also occasionally license footage privately to documentarians who know me.  For instance, I’m currently working hard to provide a ton of b-roll to the guy who is producing a PBS documentary about the history of American Motors.  He and I will work out a private licensing deal that has nothing to do with Getty.  It will be much more profitable than anything I do with Getty.

One more tangent:  yes, I specialize in automotive footage, but the films I acquire often include lots of shots that have nothing to do with cars.  For instance, in a 1938 Hudson (defunct auto brand) film, there’s a montage of people tuning radios.  I uploaded this random clip to Getty, and omigod, it’s been a steady seller since the beginning.  Has nothing to do with cars, but producers license it over and over and over.  Sometimes it makes $3 a month and sometimes $50.  But it sells month after month.  These are the kinds of clips you cherish.

Vintage public domain films are where the stock footage money is.  Go with what customers want.  Not with what you want them to want.

[Todd Ruel]

7 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Ohhh you said car show, I assumed you meant new stuff.

Tyler, you were initially correct.  I said that I shot at the Detroit Auto Show for 20 years.  That’s footage I created.  It sells for packaging peanuts most of the time.  As I’ve said, it’s the vintage PD films that make real money for me.

I suspect that my auto show footage will age like fine wine.  When it gets to be old enough, it will start to make more money as future producers use it in their news stories, documentaries, etc.  The cars that I recorded are like snapshots in time and really help to illustrate the time period that they were created.  It’s like vintage footage of the Ford Mustang.  You know it came out in 1965, and it’s a cultural icon.   Someday, my auto show footage will be vintage, and maybe I’ll live long enough to see it make some real money!

BTW, your Water film restoration is outstanding.  I can’t begin to guess how many hours that took.  I have one partner.  He and I work on my films, and they take forever to restore.  Even with automatic filters in Diamant, there’s still a ton of manual labor that we put into making these films look good.  Yours look great.

If I uploaded that film to Getty, I would cut it up into several shots.  That long tilt down shot of the waterfall would be one clip.  That POV shot inside the car on the city streets would be another.  And there were others as well.  See how you could turn one film into many sellable clips?  That’s what I’m talking about.

[Jon O'Brien]

47 minutes ago, Todd Ruel said:

Go with what customers want.  Not with what you want them to want.

Thanks so much for your detailed and very helpful response!

Yes, the life of the 'artist'/content creator: the eternal tension between what the creative person wants to make and what his or her audience wants to buy. My mother was a painter and won many awards but almost never sold a painting.

I'd be glad to film vintage auto events. Or vintage anything events. Then sell the footage but looks like authentic vintage footage only is the one customers currently want. I'd like to do the filming myself of course 🙂

Edited May 6 by Jon O'Brien

[Todd Ruel]

18 minutes ago, Jon O'Brien said:

like to do the filming myself of course 🙂

If you give customers what they want, they will return the favor with money, which will help you buy your time back to shoot whatever footage you want.

It’s often a mistake to rely upon your art as a financial resource.  I found that my natural desire to collect vintage automotive marketing could be turned into something that someone else would pay for (over and over).  So I put my art down for awhile and put on my business hat.

I’m not rich, but I’ve created a passive income stream that can eventually replace my day job.  #Lifegoals!

[Jon O'Brien]

25 minutes ago, Todd Ruel said:

It’s often a mistake to rely upon your art as a financial resource.  I found that my natural desire to collect vintage automotive marketing could be turned into something that someone else would pay for (over and over)..

Thanks Todd. Excellent advice.

I'm a stubborn fellow and will keep trying to make a buck from filming on film. Not much of a buck. I also got into digital cinematography, having started out with the idea of specialising in real film cinematography for weddings and so on. Filming is already something I do on the side, so the money I make elsewhere is already funding my art. But, what you say about making money from vintage clip restoration does also interest me because, along the way of getting into film production, I've developed good skills in grading, editing etc. So it would be possible for me to get into vintage film clips as another side income, as you have described.

[Tyler Purcell]

17 hours ago, Todd Ruel said:

BTW, your Water film restoration is outstanding.  I can’t begin to guess how many hours that took.  I have one partner.  He and I work on my films, and they take forever to restore.  Even with automatic filters in Diamant, there’s still a ton of manual labor that we put into making these films look good.  Yours look great.

Thanks, yea that was I think at least 8hrs to scan and another 30hrs of hand, frame by frame work. Phoenix did a good job cleaning up much of the scratches and dirt, but we had to do a lot of frame by frame work after its initial pass. Over-all, it think we had close to 50hrs into that restoration. It's unfortunate the client we did it for, didn't really care. We did another one of their films without the frame by frame cleanup and it didn't come out as good. 

17 hours ago, Todd Ruel said:

If I uploaded that film to Getty, I would cut it up into several shots.  That long tilt down shot of the waterfall would be one clip.  That POV shot inside the car on the city streets would be another.  And there were others as well.  See how you could turn one film into many sellable clips?  That’s what I’m talking about.

Yep! I totally see how there is some value to that footage. I'll have to converse with the client about that. 

[Todd Ruel]

I wanted to clear up one bit of my bio that I didn’t communicate very well.

When I said I shot at the Detroit Auto Show for 20 years, I didn’t mean that I was shooting vintage cars.

The Detroit Auto Show is a contemporary auto show.  I shot video there from 2000 to 2019.  I have something like 1,048 from all those shows over the years.  New models, concept cars, fantasy cars like scaled-up Lego versions of production cars, etc.

Those 1,048 clips make about 10% of what I earn from vintage PD films each month, yet they’re the vast majority of the number of clips that I offer on Getty.

If you want to see my Getty wares, go here: https://www.gettyimages.com/search/2/film?phrase=Curious cumulus productions&family=creative,editorial&sort=best&editorialproducts=&excludenudity=true&page=1