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Messages - abcdstockshots

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1
Pond5 / Re: Pond 5 review changes
« on: May 02, 2016, 16:59 »
Maybe you are right. When I was discussing 1080i on this forum a year ago, one person decided to scream about it and rant at me. His suggestion was at the time that I throw a perfectly good camera which would have cost about $6K when new into the bin and buy a progressive camera on a whim. It was much cheaper to use the fluid motion timewarp effect in Avid to make perfectly nice prog clips. It takes about 60 minutes to process 60 seconds of footage but you can leave a batch going over-night.

2
Pond5 / Re: Pond 5 review changes
« on: May 02, 2016, 15:54 »
I posted my views on this site and on the Pond 5 forum and sure enough I had some little pr*ck calling me a crabby old man for not being hip enough. This guy was kneeling on my chest pretty much and ranting about how we should embrace new technology and pretty much frothing at the mouth. These angry hipsters ranting about cinematic story-telling and who can't tell the difference between the film biz and television are pretty scary. Their usual defence is to rant about how video on the interweb is the thing now and how it needs to be flashy and attention grabbing. Well that pretty much describes present-day television. When I want to watch an old programme from years ago I tend to go to Youtube. Oh the humanity of it.....It turns out that my hipster friend has nearly 50 years' experience in the business, but expresses himself like a not-very-nice teenager. Tragic.

The arrogance over 1080i expressed by Pond 5 a year ago as though it was a matter of fashion was annoying. They STILL haven't put up a sign saying what they don't want it any more and you won't see any warning that they don't want old-school stock shots, you know, of things and places, the kind of thing you could drop into a production that wouldn't be bloody annoying to watch. My little sh*tster friend on Pond 5 thinks that all establishing shots will be done with a drone in the future, unlikely as you won't be able to fly drones at will in public for much longer for fear of killing somebody or bringing down a 747.

The other source of annoyance is that Pond 5 will never ever take on board anything you say. The fact that somebody as ignorant and obtuse as Lawrence still has a job there just about says everything about the company. The public face of Pond 5 would be better suited to working in the civil service.

It is interesting that sales at Pond 5 seem to have slumped. Maybe potential customers just wanted to leaf through a infinite number of clips of the Taj Mahal until they found the one they wanted.

The bottom line is that Pond 5 needs its contributors and pretending that they are Getty Images is actually going to shrink their business because that's a much smaller market.

3
Pond5 / Re: Time to give up on Pond 5.....
« on: May 02, 2016, 08:59 »
Javier actually contacted me first last year, nothing to do with the letter I wrote to the CEO. He said that there was nothing wrong with my 1080i collection, so I carried on uploading only to be told by the curator that interlacing was a problem and they would have to issue refunds. I tried explaining that they just would have to tell the customer to de-interlace correctly and it would be fine. I was actually telling support things that would save the company money.

Stock agencies seldom have anything newsworthy in the way of clips. Their mainstay is lots and lots of clips of Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, The White House, Red Square Moscow etc etc. They are very boring but a huge collection will keep the browser on site until they decide to buy something and a decision to buy can be very subjective. Less variety or sheer quantity would damage sales. Arty clips have very little use because the people who make art movies are usually broke anyway and would be a bad customer base. They would probably going to want to shoot their own clips anyway because they are artists.

Moving Pond 5 support to India, employing people with no film or TV experience and using scripted responses is a decision that is nearly 20 years out of date.

4
Pond5 / Re: Time to give up on Pond 5.....
« on: May 01, 2016, 09:40 »
Yes that's right. I did have the courtesy of an exchange of e mails with Javier Salinas who seems to be somebody at Pond 5 with a brain and it seemed encouraging. I did give them a second go and I think I've been fair about it.

5
Pond5 / Re: Pond 5 review changes
« on: May 01, 2016, 06:19 »
Pond 5 was ok until about a year ago. You could upload anything that was competently shot and they would accept it.

Having had all but 2% of a recent near 200 clip upload rejected I'm finding it hard to justify using Pond 5. I have clips on there that I still need to label and submit but don't really want to do it now.

Here are the multiple reasons for rejections this time around. Btw none of these reasons were given when I submitted almost the same material from the same shoots a year ago.

Clips are out of focus and 'smudge'. Pond 5 destroyed quite a number of my clips post upload. The curators also don't know that slight haze in the air and shooting before dusk or at dawn and during magic hour creates some wonderful soft effects. Thanks but I do know how to focus the glass. The belief that all digital photography needs to be pin-sharp and look electronic in order to be technically correct is just wrong.

Pond 5 already has clips similar to the ones you submitted. Is this company familiar with the whim of the customer, the value of a huge catalogue and the fact that giving more choice means more sales and that you can effectively sell the same thing many times over. Pond 5 told me that having fewer clips of the same thing means that they stand a better chance of selling. This is illogical. I wouldn't mind if they culled clips which never sold after a few months or a year, but hanging them out and seeing if they sell or not is a pretty good idea.

I was told that Pond 5 are looking for 'vibrant and original material'. Most video stock collections are not very interesting to actually watch until you need something for your edit.  I do a lot of establishing shots which tell you very obviously what city you are in. They are simple, not arty and will fit into any edit. This is a cornerstone of the stock business. For a curator to reject material because it isn't interesting enough or it bores them means that they don't understand the stockshot business too well. Art House clips and niche clips are in fact less likely to sell and specialisation ruins your business.

Lastly Pond 5 returned clips that I had helpfully labelled at 1080p 25fps.

If you find this kind of attitude annoying then you can vote with your feet. Delete your clips and stills and close your account.

6
Pond5 / Re: Time to give up on Pond 5.....
« on: May 01, 2016, 05:30 »
It might be that the 2K crowd got fed up with the mass rejections of their clips and when they moved to 4K, decided not to bother. If I had a clips agency I'd include everything that was competently shot and then cull it after six months to a year if it didn't sell. The curators at Pond 5 really can't know what will sell or not and the new policy that quality equates to how interesting the clip is shows that they don't understand what stock footage is.

Most video rushes and stock collections are incredibly dull to watch but you have to adhere to the idea of shooting more than you are going to edit because then you have more choices. The same applies to a stock catalogue of say clips of Big Ben. They are nearly all quite boring but having a vast catalogue means endless browsing and sooner or later the customer will pick one.

If you have ever tried to edit video where the camera op was trying to be arty and creative all the time, rather than just pointing the camera at what is in front of them and letting it roll then you'll know what real pain is. Material like that is very hard to work with and the more niche it is the less saleable it is, because there are fewer ways you can fit it into your edit.

The other issue is that it takes a lot of time to upload and label a batch of clips and the attitude of the curators can seem smug and shallow, there is a lack of appreciation which second time around for me makes me not want to give them the business. I know that they are probably using cut-and-paste scripts but it is annoying having to deal with people, probably students who don't know about film & television and actually quite resistant to learning new things it seems.

7
Pond5 / Re: Time to give up on Pond 5.....
« on: April 30, 2016, 21:10 »
Pond 5 accepted three of my Mermaid clips, which probably means that they don't know their stuff, though they are terrified that somebody you might video in public might sue, even though they have no legal recourse. They used to jump all over contributors about this but they seem to have forgotten about this and now seem to consider themselves as an Art House agency. If you search for abcdstockshots you will see the clips.

The point I tried to make to Pond 5 was that posting variants of the same subject means you can sell more clips of exactly the same thing and a decision to buy or not can depend on a small difference between clips, even just the length of the clip and not how arty and original you can be in your videography. Selling the same thing twice is great business, something Pond 5 doesn't understand and I'm sure the owners of the work would be delighted with the royalties.

8
Pond5 / Re: Time to give up on Pond 5.....
« on: April 30, 2016, 21:01 »
You need a release if you want to include most well-known privately-owned buildings in your commercial production, let alone works of Art, the Mermaid is no different. The clips of the Mermaid on Pond 5 are all awful, last time I looked. I am still quite surprised that reviewers who work for Pond 5 don't understand that simple establishing shots are the mainstay of the stockshot business. They aren't fascinating but they are a cheap way of scene-setting. It's irritating to have your work slung in the bin because the reviewer doesn't feel entertained.

9
Pond5 / Time to give up on Pond 5.....
« on: April 30, 2016, 18:27 »
Last year I had a huge row with Pond 5 because they would not accept broadcast standard 1080i video. To this day there is no warning on their site that they don't want 1080i and seem unaware that the paying customer can de-interlace this kind of material themselves anyway. I actually raised this issue with a colourist at major facility and he thought the policy was hard to understand.

A few weeks ago I uploaded nearly 200 1080p clips. After waiting for about three weeks I discovered that about 2% of what I uploaded was accepted.

The reasons for rejecting material was lack of focus and something they called 'smudge'. I looked at these rejected clips and saw that the chroma was damaged, the clips were crushed and they looked awful. They did not look like that after they had just been uploaded. This is an IT problem at Pond 5.

The other reason for rejecting clips was that the reviewer said that the site already had clips similar to ones I had submitted. I was also told that the variants on a theme I had submitted decreased the chances of a sale.

I had a lot of clips returned because I had helpfully stated in the descriptions that they were 25 fps 1080p.

The other reason given for rejecting clips was that Pond 5 is looking for material which is 'vibrant and original.'

I have written to a contact at Pond 5 to say that most of the material I shoot is establishing shots. By definition they cannot be vibrant and original but are intended to serve a need for somebody who wants to include them in their edit. Most film and TV is actually shot in quite a safe way and clips which are shall we say too Art House can't be used easily in an edits because they will not fit. Submitting clips of the same subject means that you give the potential customer a lot of choice and they might decide on a whim to pick one clip of the same subject and not another. A simple example is that a 10 second clip of Big Ben might be cheaper than a 20 second clip of it. It is entirely possible to sell both clips in time and this actually used to happen before Pond 5 started becoming prissy about what they accept.

My recent submission of a number of clips of The Little Mermaid in Denmark was intended to nail the subject on the head so that this would be a definitive collection. The limited collection already on Pond 5 were so obviously shot by tourists on non-standard equipment and looked dark and pretty awful for the most part.

Pond 5 do not seem to understand the notion of an electronic press-kit. I submitted a number of clips of people outside Abbey Road studios in London along with some establishing shots. The idea of such a collection is that somebody making a film or news item far away can pick and choose what they want out of a collection that is all shot the same way. The idea expressed by Pond 5 that fewer clips of the same subject will increase the chances of sales is contradictory. They are not even prepared to let the potential customer browse a variety of clips at the small expense of using up a bit more server space. I wouldn't mind if they had a cull of my clips that hadn't sold after a year, the process could be automated and I'd accept that that they weren't ever going to be saleable. The simple of idea of hanging them up and seeing if they sell or not doesn't seem to apply at Pond 5.

In short, the reviewer does not know what will sell or not. Their lack of understanding about what video editors can easily use in terms of bought-in clips shows because they confuse photography with video media, which are two different things. Establishing shots are not actually that interesting but they are a cornerstone of the stock shots market. For a curator at Pond 5 not to understand this and to exclude material that does not try to be Art is quite a concern really.  The practice of wholesale rejections is actually pretty grating and the reason given that the lazy curator doesn't find the material interesting enough doesn't mean that somebody out there might not want to buy it. 

Once again I have tired of having to deal with people who know so little about how video is actually used and what you have to give a video editor. A collection of breath-taking and Arty video clips is less likely to sell because such material has more limited uses when you try to combine it with other clips.

I'd be open to suggestions of alternative agencies. I think I have given Pond 5 the benefit of the doubt now and it hasn't worked out.

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