Buying and Selling Stock Footage at Pond5.com
Buying Representative Stock Footage from Pond5.com
Why would anyone want to buy stock footage for a low-budget digital video production? Let’s say you want to include a scene of rocky stretch of coast along the beach. If you live in either of the famous Portlands, Oregon or Maine, no problem; just hop in the car with your camera, point and shoot. Voila! You’ve got your beach scene. If, on the other hand, you make your home in Portland, Missouri you’ve got a problem. Pond5.com is one solution to this problem. The cost of purchasing the stock footage varies according to the length and quality, beginning at the incredibly low price of $5.00. If you need footage of landscapes or objects or landmarks that you can’t easily acquire yourself, Pond5.com can come to the rescue.
Buying Non-Representative Stock Footage from Pond5.com
On occasion new filmmakers will want something a bit more abstract or else they will want to find a special effect that they themselves are not yet sophisticated enough to pull off. For instance, let’s say you want one of those really cool effects of big fluffy clouds passing overhead at 100 miles per hour. This seems like a simple enough effect to shoot yourself…until you go outside and notice there are no big fluffy clouds. You could do as David Lean did and wait for six months for just the right sky to shoot, but how realistic is that? Pond5.com offers all kinds of great special effects that you maybe could pull off yourself if you had time, as well as special effects that you can’t hope to pull off quite as well.
Selling Your Stock Footage to Pond5.com
Maybe you are good enough to shoot those effects as well or better than what is currently on Pond5.com. Or maybe you live next door to Mt. Rushmore or on that rocky beach near Portland. Instead of buying stock footage, why not contribute something? Pond5.com allows you to set the price that you want your footage to sell for yourself. The seller retains all rights to the video footage and splits the royalties 50/50 with Pond5.com. One thing you definitely want to be aware of is that before you can submit any stock footage to Pond5.com that contains the faces of other human beings, you have to get the signed permission of each person who face is recognizable. Another important consideration is that there not be any music or audio contained within that is copyrighted by somone other than the person submitting the clip.
