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Hi there, my name is Kirby Ferguson and I
made an online video series called Everything is a Remix, which it's possible you may have
seen. If not, go check it out. I'm going to be making a series of themed Everything is
a Remix videos and they're going to be sponsored by iStock Photo.
This however is a three part video series about getting my most out of stock footage.
I think stock footage is a good tool for, not just filmmakers, but anybody who wants
to produce some video. This is part one, "Why Use Stock?".
So I am best known as a remixer. I am known for taking existing media and recontextualizing
it into something new. However, if you're doing professional work, grabbing stuff from
around the net really doesn't work. There's several reasons for this, the first for them
is copyright. So if you're using something that you don't
have a license for, number one, it's possible that someone later on will tell you to remove
that footage from whatever it is that you made. That's a pain, that's embarrassing,
that's more work. Number two, you can potentially get sued.
Especially when you're doing professional work, when you're doing some that has commercial
intent: you're selling a product, you selling a service, whatever -- you're making money
on it. People get more series about copyright in those case. So you really have to be careful
with licensing, with using licensed media in projects that have a commercial intention.
So that's reason number one, copyright. And secondly is quality. Lot of the media
that you'll find on the net is, quite frankly, low quality: bad scans, bad photos. Everything
at iStock Photo is hand curated so you know you're getting a certain level of quality.
Also a lot of media on the net is low resolution and highly compressed. So low resolution -- it's
too low to be used in most projects. You're going to have to blow it up, which looks ugly.
And then there's a lot of JPEF artifacts in there from that heavy compression. So there's
a lot of ugly, kind of pixelly distortions in there.
When you buy stock you've got all the resolution you need and you don't have to worry about
compression artifacts. And lastly and certainly not leastly is price.
Stock is just a really economical route to go. Even nowadays when we've got DSLR cameras
and we can shoot really gorgeous footage fairly easily, you still have to go out and get those
shots. If you want a shot, let's say, of the Manhattan skyline, and you live in New York,
that's hours of work to go out and grab that shot, a nice looking shot, and process it.
As opposed to just click, download, done. So there you have it, there's my reasons for
why I think stock is a valuable tool for any kind of creative work, And I'm not just talking
here, I've been using this service since, check this out, 2007.
Thank you for watching, stay tuned for the next installment, it's going to be about video
for graphic designers. Thank you again for watching and take care.