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Tag: Dissolve

  • Blog: Dissolve – Expand and Narrow At the Same Time

    When Dissolve hit the market, I – along with many other online content creators – was excited by the potential of having access to high quality stock footage that wasn’t the run of the mill stuff we’ve seen hiding out in every other stock site out there. It was fresh material, and prices began at a pretty amazing US$5. To top things off, you could also get access to three free clips a month if you were a member. Finally, there was some stock worth celebrating!

    Fast forward through to 2015, and somewhere along the lines you will have seen Dissolve change tact. Whatever the impetus, the high quality stock marketplace went higher with their pricing overnight. One day, the cheapest Dissolve footage was US$5. The next, there was an almost 900% increase with the cheapest footage priced at US$49!

    The silver lining was the fact that they continued to offer three free clips each month. Interestingly though, how they did that changed too – they began to process the free clips as an ‘order.’ If I’m being honest, that always felt to me like a little bit of a slap in the face: “Hey, we’re including the full price of these clips just so you can see how cheap you are being by not actually purchasing the footage otherwise!”

    Now today was the first opportunity I have had to check out the latest offerings from Dissolve this year – and yes, that very much included perusing their free clips. Well, it would have except for the fact that they’re now offering just the one free clip a month. That puzzled me a bit. Last year they announced that, “Quality is the focus as company expands into multi-billion dollar market segment” – so why do they seem to be narrowing their target market while expanding their business? Surely that is not mutually beneficial. Well, I have a theory.

    In this example, Dissolve have a Saudi Arabian aeroplane taking off from Heathrow Airport. Pricing for this 14-second clip begins at US$400. We are already talking an increase of 7900% on their original clips (to be fair, this was not necessarily one of those US$5 clips). If you intend to use it in an indie-released feature film though, that increases to US$3,000.

    Now $3K for what is essentially beautiful filler is most likely beyond the scope of the average joe making a YouTube or Vimeo clip, right? So who is it priced for? The official line says that, “Our aim is to empower today’s video storytellers with footage from the world’s most exciting and relevant shooters.” Sounds wonderful! But who are these story-tellers? I think the Dissolve About us answers that question quite succinctly: they license, “stock video clips for use in commercials, television shows, documentaries, and feature films, and licenses stock photography for use in design and creative work.”

    Ah-ha!

    In short, Dissolve burst onto the scene with their great product, and lots of people bought in. But it seems like they were not necessarily attracting the right people. In order to bring balance, pricing was dramatically increased in order to right-size the average story-teller out of the Dissolve equation. That way Dissolve’s apparent understanding of what constituted “video story-tellers” could be more readily serviced with their empowerment.

    What about the rest of us though? Well, we can pretend we’re in the money and occasionally buy these high-priced clips – in the same way that you might fork-out to buy an Armani suit. Otherwise, we may just have to write blog posts of lament over diminishing access to quality stock content until something new comes along once again.

    Le sigh.

  • Video Montage: The Turn Smile (Dissolve)

    If you were to ask just about any serious cinematographer for their thoughts on stock footage, the general consensus would be one of derision. In a digital age where content creation is often more important than the complaints of said cinematographers though, using stock footage is a tool you might want to seriously consider. That advice is not without a warning label though.

    Back in April the team at No Film School gave us 6 awesome reasons to consider using stock footage in our work: the cliff notes version is that,

    1. It’s often cheaper and easier than shooting something yourself,
    2. Hollywood uses it,
    3. It’s ready when you need it,
    4. Not all stock footage looks like “stock footage”,
    5. You don’t have to travel everywhere or pay for permits, and
    6. Guess what — stock filmmakers are filmmakers too.

    If you have never heard of Dissolve – it is a stock footage provider, though their branding works quite hard at differentiating itself as a provider of better quality stock than you might get elsewhere. By and large, I like their stuff. With that being said, their own array of stock collages (of which today’s clip is just one example) prove an important point… too much of a good thing really can be terrible! For me, it also highlights this fact: some stock footage really does just look like stock footage – even when you have a better quality stock product!

    Some stock – like the turn smile – just has that look about it. And you know what? That is okay. My point is that if we can stay somewhere between the extremes of outright stock derision and attempting to create a piece using only stock, we might be surprised at how handy – and effective – some well placed stock footage can be.

  • Video Montage: A Stock Homage to Directors

    Continuing my series of resource links, today I want to share a video that is something of a lesson in styling. Now, you could ask almost any cinematographer in the world what they think of stock footage, and you most often find yourself on the end of a tirade against some element of the entire stock industry. Truth be told, it is easy to see why they feel that way. Invariably, stock shots look quite same-same, lacking in ingenuity and visual oomph. With that being said – I must protest the blanket hostility towards stock footage. With the development of fresh sites such as Dissolve and DeathToStock – the creative types are claiming back the unique elements that have been lacking in the great pool of stock footage and imagery – and it has been a breath of fresh air!

    So, it was very cool to stumble on this video created by the ShutterStock team that is a stylised homage to some of the great directors… and it has been done using only stock footage.  Now is it brilliant? Nah. Let’s be honest. But it is really good! And it is exciting to think that as an indie film-maker, or documentary producer, or whatever… we might very well be able to squeeze in a reasonable stock shot that isn’t going to raise the collective ire of cinematographers any more. And that is worth celebrating just a little.

    You can also read about this whole process here.