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Selling Stock Direct / The game is rigged!! 🤬
« on: October 19, 2023, 12:52 »I'm 40 years old, a film producer for 12 years and I've been a contributor since 2017 on the main platforms (Shutter, Adobe, Getty, Pond5 and a few others).
At the beginning, business was growing quite well, but the main platforms have become less and less fair and I can no longer keep quiet!
Year after year, all these platforms have changed the game and the rules of the game, without ever consulting us, without consulting the people who make them money, because yes without contributors these platforms would never exist!
I will spare you the details that you all know: change in their policy of paying contributors as they wish, implementation of level systems based on the number of sales that we make, subscription system which penalizes the contributor, etc . In short, a huge lack of consideration for the work of all filmmakers, photographers, designers etc... To summarize, a turnover which decreases by 25% despite a higher number of downloads! And the icing on the cake now: AI
I hardly dare mention the reviews of the files, which are immeasurably absurd, for example, I sent two videos from the same series at the same time, same camera, same format, same resolution, etc. .. one file was accepted, the other refused for poor resolution! it's the same!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What is the goal except to make you crazy and lose time? Or maybe they have a number of rejection they have to do to be able to say yeah we have curated footage!
And now the AI: after reducing contributor payouts so their investors could make more millions, they all said, "NO AI ACCEPTED"...and now what do they do?? They each create their own image generator!!!
Adobe was the only transparent and honest one for me, from the start they accepted AI images developed alongside Firefly, but Shutterstock, Getty, who said NO AI IMAGERY and have now launched their own AI!! WHAT PURPOSE?? Remove all contributors? Earn more money? Destroy creativity? And what's more, all their communication is now mainly focused on AI!! Proud to show that they have over millions of AI generated images, millions of images that the photographer probably has in their portfolio and won't sell.
I got more than fed up with all this, so I created my own archive site to no longer depend on these people, a platform created by filmmakers for filmmakers.
https://footage.film/
I decide to go in the exact opposite direction of them:
- They created a subscription that customers pay for every month hoping that you won't use all your credits or worse, you forgot that you have a subscription on their platform and continue paying for something you don't use. So, on my site, NO SUBSCRIPTION, only a clip package with NO EXPIRATION date, you get what you pay for, it's simple! If you pay for 500 clips, you get 500 clips no matter how long it takes you to download them, 10 days or 5 years, that's for you to decide
And you know what ? I also created a lifetime offer, if you invest and believe in us, you deserve it so you will have unlimited download access to our platform for the rest of your life!
- They jack up the price of the license if you want to use it for TV or film etc. So many licenses for so many uses! Please can you make things more complicated to make sure we make a mistake and thus be able to ask for more money?? So for me I keep things simple, ONE LICENCE for all media, viewers, worldwide and timeless. Creators should be able to focus on their creativity and not on these kinds of details.
- LESS but GOOD: we upload only curated content, and we organize them !!!! Who wants to spend 10 hours searching for one image or video in the middle of millions of footage that are unusable??
So if you want to be part of the change, say stop to all these big companies selling our works for pennies, and start believing that your work deserves a platform that understands what a filmmaker's job is. Visit us, support us, and why not join us 😉and if you just want to take a look and leave a comment, big or small, you have my eternal gratitude🙏
Franck
https://footage.film/