Quote from: increasingdifficulty on March 21, 2019, 15:10

Quote from: tickstock on March 21, 2019, 15:09

It's not just marketing though.  If you need a specific video and it's only on Pond5 then you need to go to Pond5 to get it.

Obviously. But that doesn't make it more valuable to the customer. Or us.

If they pay 60% rather than 30,35, or 40% it does.

Really? Since you have to remove your clips from every other site it definitely does not.

About 90% of my earnings comes from other sites. So would that 60% suddenly increase my P5 sales to astronomical levels? I think not.

But of course this was more about the "higher value for the CUSTOMER". Which is just bull****.

Practicing Morse code?

This is a race to the bottom - of contributor share percentage.

They have seen that the others get away with 30% and people still happily send their stuff in, so they think "what the heck, why not go to 40%, then in a while, 30%".

This means a MAJOR upswing in earnings for them. 20% up on April 8th in one easy move. That is an ENORMOUS increase in earnings for a company. They know people aren't going to leave, just be angry on the forums for a while, and then it all goes back to normal. Well, except for 20% higher earnings for Pond5.

I think their (P5) point was that if the content is only available on their platform, they control the price therefore the price would not be slowly eroded by different agencies competing with each other selling the same content.

That's not what they said.

They specifically said that the buyers didn't want the clips being used by other buyers. Which of course makes 0 sense dealing with any stock asset. Do they know what a stock asset is? It is an asset that is in stock, ready for anyone to buy and use immediately. If you want exclusive content you film it yourself or hire someone to do it.

I didn't hear what they said about going exclusive while already having thousands of clips spread across multiple agencies. Will those non-exclusive clips drop to 40% or would we have to delete all content from other agencies? I'd think about going exclusive, but there's no way I can afford to delete anything from SS

I didn't hear them clarify this beyond doubt, but it is my understanding that this program was ARTIST exclusive, meaning ALL of your clips need to be either exclusive or non-exclusive. Not just some clips in your portfolio. So you would have to delete everything. Good luck with that P5...

according to that stats site with the bird logo (I forgot the name),

Sounds like a waterproof way to get the facts.

I have 20,000 videos and about 50,000 photos (half online, rest are pending upload).

I have a million images, but unfortunately, 99% are pending upload. But just know I have a million images.

And also remember that all images and videos are created equal. If someone has 20,000 videos and earns X, you will earn exactly the same when you get to 20,000. It couldn't get any easier to predict earnings, really.

Being in say the top 10% is not mediocre. Being in the top 1% is exceptional.

That depends entirely on the barriers to entry. For any profession requiring a 4-5-year education, the top 10% are of course not mediocre. Because the really bad ones never got into the school in the first place.

Today, in microstock, there is virtually zero barrier to entry. You don't even need a camera. So yes, I would definitely say that only the top 1% are good, if even that many.

With the Microstock market as it is NOW do you really think anyone who isn't a brilliant businessperson and photographer could enter the market today  and make �150k pa? and they couldn't make more elsewhere?

Why should you not have to be a brilliant business person and photographer to make really good money?

Make more elsewhere? Yeah, you could work oil rigs. Or a hundred other things. Or become a famous photographer doing celebrity portraits. I heard that's really easy and all it takes is talent.

Quote from: increasingdifficulty on March 11, 2019, 23:54

About 5,000 to 10,000 clips of similar production quality and subject matter as hotelfoxtrot would probably do it:

https://www.pond5.com/stock-video-footage/1/artist%3Ahotelfoxtrot.html#1/2063/artist:hotelfoxtrot

Of course, those shots cost a lot to make, so if you're talking $150k profit, you'd probably need 20,000-30,000.

Mm, good point - I had forgotten about them. But yes - I think I read/heard somewhere they actually do much better than that...

Yes, they do MUCH better than that, but they have 70,000+ clips.

Last thing I read was that only at Pond5, they make about $30,000 per month (with a smaller portfolio). They have a strong presence there, with their stuff being promoted a lot, but that's also the case at Shutterstock, so they might pull in $50,000 or so in a good month.

But they are a whole team - production planners, editors, filmers, uploaders, keyworders, not to mention all the models.

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But no, I do not think you need to be a factory to make $12k per month. You just have to work full-time and be good. I think a lot of people here forget that you have to be good.

but now items are appearing on torrents, google drive sites, pirate sites, etc, etc.

Pretty much anything can be found there. For the last 20 years. People who use those sites are not your potential customers.

Plenty of people pay for assets. We can't really do much against piracy, and worrying about it just drives us crazy. Sad, but true...

Footage is somewhat protected here due to the filesize. Not many are prepared to download 300 GB for 1,000 clips they may not need.

Only 1/4 of sales are from USA.

"Only".

That's quite an enormous part.

OK so grading is basically altering the white color balance, on purpose?

You're always altering the white balance on purpose.

Anyway, there are two main steps when creating a look for film:

1. Color correction - this is where you set the desired exposure, get a neutral white balance and make sure nothing is clipping. Basically, you're goal is to get a neutral start and the same basic look for all clips that belong together.

2. Color grading - this is the creative part. This is where you change the colors and contrast to enhance the mood.

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Perhaps selectively, like that hideous 'teal and orange' thing all the movies do now?

Cheers!

Yes, very selectively. And the "teal and orange" thing is certainly the most common, but not the only look. Why teal and orange? Because movies usually contain people and they tend to look strange if they're purple or green. The sky is blue, and it looks very bad purple, so either you go to teal/cyan or keep it neutral.

It's nothing new, by the way, it's just that it's easier to make it extreme in the digital world, and everyone is now their own color grading expert, which is why we see so much of it on YouTube.

It's often more a question of how extreme the orange teal look is. Many times you don't notice it, but it's there and you just think it "looks like film". Action movies sometimes use it to an extreme, which is what you would probably say is hideous.

Anyway, The Matrix is a good example of a completely different color palette. It's very green.

In Game Of Thrones, there is very different color grading depending on where they are. In the north, it is very blue and has a cold white balance. The opposite in the south.

Probably not the best place to ask, but in a nutshell, just what is this "grading" thing?

I saw one pretentious twit on Youtube reviewing the Mavic, who colors his videos so badly it looked like the camera is broken. You mean that stuff?

Just like georgep7 said, it is an art and a very big part of filmmaking - coloring.

And just like ANYTHING on YouTube, you will have to watch 100 videos, and maybe 10 (or less) will have the good information. But it is definitely out there for free.

Mad Max: Fury Road might have over the top grading for some people, but here you can see how much color grading changed the look. Just like you would expect, before colorists get a hand on the RAW material, it looks just like what we would see on our own cameras, more or less.

Sorry, never thought of this!

I have filmed a lot of with a full-frame + 600 mm setup but that is impossible to handheld (only for photos). I missed so many shots since I could basically only film animals that are standing still or slowly walking.

But with a GH5 + 400 mm (800 mm full-frame) I can handhold and film birds in flight across very long distances with 180 degree movement, up and down etc. 4k60p helps a lot too.

This setup is VERY lightweight and I can walk for hours with the camera + lens in one hand. This is impossible with the full-frame setup unfortunately.