Stocking up: while many stock houses are now shooting and transferring footage in high def, others are waiting for demand to increase

Post, Nov, 2004 by Christine Bunish

an 8-year veteran of HDTV, Randall P. Dark, co-founder/president of HD Vision Studios (www.hdvstudios.tv) in Studio City, CA, remembers a time when there was no call for HD stock. But times have changed. "The world is going digital widescreen and high resolution," says Dark. "In the past, 4:3 SD libraries were worth hundreds of millions of dollars because of demand. But all of their footage will go away in the digital widescreen world unless it's important historical or archival material. You can't seamlessly incorporate a 4:3 low-rez image in an HD program. Everything that people have used in the past has to be recaptured for the future."

HD VISION SUPPLIES FOOTAGE BANK

Initially, Dark fulfilled requests for HD stock footage as an offshoot of his own content-creation business. "Providing 'eye candy' for product launches at trade shows and retail environments was a big source for us," he reports. "Everyone wanted to attract floor traffic with jaw-dropping footage on their TV, projector or playback device."

HD Vision still provides images for that market, supplying footage for Texas Instruments' HD projectors and TVs display at CEDIA as well as for a number of major manufacturers at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show. Dark crafts custom programs for exhibitors based on his extensive HD library. "They want people to walk by and see some pizzazz, not a storyline. The images have to be self-explanatory; extreme sports, aerials, nature."

Now Venice, CA-based Footage Bank (www.footagebank.com) represents HD Vision's HD program clip library as well as footage Dark continues to gather, such as European material he lensed while on location for Wealth TV.

When Paula Lumbard launched Footage Bank in '02, studios had begun gearing up for HD program delivery, "We hoped there would be enough shows to support a company like this, but there weren't during our first year," she recalls. "Instead, we spent time building our library, the concept of HD footage and educating ourselves and our clients."

Today, with a new TV season underway. Footage Bank has seen the studios do an about-face. "People now ask for HD or 35mm," she reports. "Even the last film shows are taking HD images." Among the series requesting clips from Footage Bank are LAX, Dr. Vegas, Medical Investigation and Everybody Loves Raymond. "We've also been working aggressively with DPs to shoot locations on 24p HD to build our library and meet the on-demand need for establishing shots," she adds.

Footage Bank represents HD material from over 60 suppliers in a wide range of subjects, including the popular technology and timelapse categories. It offers aerials from the "Over America" and "Over Canada" series developed by Sony and KCTS/Seattle; footage from HD cameras mounted on the Space Shuttles; and collections from three of the "world's best" underwater cinematographers. Al Giddings's underwater library has been upconverted to HD from film and video using the Teranex system while Howard Hall and Tom Campbell shoot 24p HD and 1080i HD native, respectively.

Footage Bank recently signed to represent Helinet's aerial collection captured by gyro-mounted HD camera systems developed by Helinet. "The systems have incredibly powerful lenses, so you can be riding alongside a car looking at the driver, then pull back and the car becomes just a spec," Lumbard explains. Helinet footage has already been licensed for the indie HD feature The Kid and I.

HBO SPORTS, SCENICS AND GROWING HD

In spring 2003, the 30-year-old image vaults of HBO Sports, containing over 40,000 tapes of one-of-a-kind material covering sports and more, were opened to the public.

"We had licensed our boxing material on an ad-hoc basis before but embargoed our behind-the-scenes footage," notes Max Segal, manager of HBO Sports Archives (www.hboarchives.com) in NYC. "We realized we had wonderful personality features from all sports and decided to make it available."

The archives comprise a number of stellar collections. In the sports arena, HBO leads with its boxing features as well as fight footage from bouts where it is the rights holder. Grand Slam Tennis includes original Wimbledon features and interviews from 1975 to 2000 and US Open features from the mid-'80s. The Football collection represents original features and interviews from HBO's Inside the NFL. Also offered is material from HBO's Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel and extensive interview footage and B-roll from award-winning documentaries like Do You Believe in Miracles?; Playing the Field: Sports & Sex in America; When it Was a Game; and Arthur Ashe: Citizen of the World.

The archives also possess strong non-sports collections. "When we go around telling athlete stories, we end up shooting scenics and landmarks," Segal says. "We've also been building a newsreel collection through the Library of Congress and National Archives."

Finally, the Gold Collection: The Film Vault features film-originated iconic and specialty shots of boxing, motor spots, golf, horse racing, baseball, tennis and figure skating, plus Bob Costas's essays for his On the Record HBO series.