Tag: FilmSupply

Learning Something New About Stock Footage Websites

A post about stock footage and saving money.

Last year I wrote about stock footage. In that post I wrote about Artgrid, using stock footage and why I decided to cancel my account. Flash forward to December 2022 and I am upgrading my Artlist account (royalty free music and sound effects) to an Artlist Max Social account. This reads like an advertisement but I assure you it is not.

If there is one point I have tried to make clear since starting this site it is that I am not making any money. None. Not from writing, not from making videos – not from anything I am putting online. Which is why every time I write about a camera or editing software or using a service like Artlist I try and be upfront about what I get out of it and whether or not it makes any sense. The short version for nearly everything is that it doesn’t.

If I could go back in time and offer younger me some advice it would be “don’t spend that money”. On almost anything. If you have something you can use, like my first beautiful Panasonic camcorder, just use that. Don’t upgrade. Don’t listen to people online telling you what you need. Just make do and be happy.

Back to December: I upgraded this account. Despite my advice of not spending money I spent money. Why would I do this? The cost for one. My old plan was $300 a year for music and sound effects. I use both a fair bit despite not having much of an online presence. When I joined Artgrid last year (so I could have access to stock footage) I was charged another $470. $770 seemed like quite a lot of money for something I was not really using (aside from making fake trailers – which since I now have an active account I can share).

Because my yearly cycle begins/ends in February I was prorated when I made this change to my account. Looking at the website the cost will be either $360 a year for the social plan (which is what I have) or $480 for the pro plan. So given that I was spending $300 a year for access to music and sound effects, this is a pretty good deal for me. I pay $60 more a year and I now have access to all of their footage. In addition to that they have templates for Final Cut Pro X, LUTs and plugins (in the above video I used some of their transitions).

I’m not entirely sure this makes sense from a financial point of view. My intention, which it seems is always the case, is to do more this year. Post more on this site, create more videos for YouTube. I plan to create short form content for Instagram and write more fiction. Will it happen? I hope so. The past two years have been lacking in the creation department and I certainly have been feeling the loss.

Having access to music that I can use and share is an absolute blessing and if you take a moment and compare the various royalty free music and video sites I think you will find that Artlist is more than competitive (again not an ad but this is something I have struggled with). To prove this point I am going to look into the various sites that offer music and stock footage.

You may not have noticed but I have spent a good deal of time finding sites and comparing them. I began making a chart, taking screenshots and attempting to find a way to share my findings in a way that is visual and easy to follow. I have failed at this because there are too many sites with too many options to make this streamlined. Instead and I am going to speak to the three sites that are comparable.

Before I share this I want to point out the following: there are many different companies providing these services. In my travels I looked into many that were already familiar to me (The Musicbed, Filmsupply, Epidemic Sound, Pond 5, Adobe Stock) and I was surprised at how much the pricing differed. As much as I adore The Musicbed and Filmsupply I doubt I’ll ever use their services as I simply cannot afford them.

Filmsupply, I love you but you are pricey.

Many of the other services have more reasonable prices but they greatly limit the number of downloads. Shutterstock costs $60 a year less than Artlist and Storyblocks but at that price only allow ten downloads a month. I digress, let’s move on to the important part of this post.

Artlist Max$30
Envato Elements$16.50
Storyblocks$30

I’ll be honest I want to be incredibly in-depth and helpful here but even narrowing this down to three sites leaves a good deal of variables. For me, I need the basic creators license that Artlist and Storyblocks offer – the ability to post on social media and access sounds and video. I don’t work with other people, I am not making worldwide commercials or films and I don’t make wedding videos. So, for me these are the prices for the plans that make sense.

That being said one consideration to note is the ability to keep the videos/content I’ve made if I decide to no longer use the service. In the past I found that the service Epidemic Sound did not offer this option – meaning that if/when you stop using their service you have to replace the music in your videos. That’s just a terrible feature. From what I have gleaned all three of these services allow you to keep the footage/music/sounds in your videos even if you not longer subscribe to the service.

My subscription is set to renew on the 12th and to be honest when I started writing this I had no intention of using another service. Since discovering Envato Elements and looking through their site I am no longer sure. They have a ton of assets, the quality looks good and the cost of using their service is almost half of the other two. As I keep reiterating I want to pay as little as possible and after spending a couple of weeks looking at these services Envato Elements seems like the smart choice.

Remembering a Year

Taking a moment to look at what actually transpired this past year – and what can be learned from it.

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Yesterday I had a slight mishap with my phone that led to me looking at emails I had sent over a decade ago. It took me a few minutes to understand what was happening and by the time I did I was hooked.

I can’t say I would recommend this for most people but for me yesterday was tremendously positive. It confirmed something I have suspected for quite some time: my memory is not as good as I believe it is.

In short I have a distinct sense of a five year period of my life when I lived in Washington, D.C. My memory of events has me doing little with next to nothing to show for it. The emails from yesterday paint a different picture, in some ways positive and others less so. But to be clear – there are some glaring holes in my memory of projects I was involved with, for months, that I have no memory of. This is disturbing.

This made me stop and reflect on the past year – questioning what exactly have I done. Several months ago I started making a list, after seeing Steven Soderbergh’s again, in an effort of better remembering what I actually watch. I am continually amazed when I add to this list that films I watched only a few months before have been all but forgotten (until I read the names, to be clear this isn’t an article about me suffering from some form of memory loss).

Below are a list of sorts of  projects I worked on this past year – in the hope that someone, somewhere finds this interesting or helpful.

Nearly one year ago I participated in the FilmSupply Challenge. It was a interesting competition in that participants were given access to both FilmSupply’s catalogue of stock footage and The MusicBed‘s selection of music to create either a trailer for a movie, a commercial or a title sequence.

I chose to make a film trailer and although it was difficult to find unrelated clips (with no dialog) to string together to tell a story I am proud of my results. The rules of the competition make it impossible for me to share my trailer but one of the judges, FilmRiot‘s Ryan Connolly, made a trailer that I can share.

I will say, seeing the winners of the competition, if I had better understood the freedom of creating audio content for these videos I would have done something different. All things considered I am happy with what I did – but more importantly it was an great exercise in editing and storytelling and I am happy to have been able to participate.

While attempting to put together the trailer for the FilmSupply Challenge I also adapted my unpublished novel into a screenplay. The Stowe Story Labs in Vermont have a fall narrative lab (and were promoting but decided not to hold a November adaptation lab) that I scrambled to apply to. Numerous film/video related ventures offer fellowships  to help with the cost of tuition to attend the labs. I was not awarded a fellowship, so despite being accepted I found I was unable to attend which was disheartening.

What might seem like a negative experience was, unexpectedly, quite positive. In addition to having proper motivation to stay up late and write I was made aware of other writing programs in and out of the state of Vermont (and film/video related entities as well).

Becoming clued in to the Story Labs was due in part to attending the White River Independent Film Festival. There I met several local filmmakers who helped steer me toward wonderful resources (and people) in the state. I also became aware of the Vermont Media Alliance at the event.

I had the pleasure of volunteering with the VMA from June until December last year. In addition to playing a role in organizing, reshaping and formatting their website and social media presence I was able to connect with numerous people in the local film industry. It was particularly amusing to be corresponding with the head of the Stowe Story Labs, David Rocchio, both as an applicant to the Labs and as a potential partner via the VMA – simultaneously.

Being able to see the infrastructure and resources in place in Vermont from an “insider’s” point of view gave me a better sense of what is possible (and what is not) in Vermont. I am particularly proud of two interviews I was able to do while working with the VMA.

The first is with Matt Lennon, a filmmaker who lives and works in Middlebury, Vermont. The second is with composer Zackery Nicolosi. The two of them worked together to create the trailer for the Middlebury New Filmmaker’s Festival. I was impressed with the way Mr. Lennon was able to use sections of the many different works to convey emotions and give a sense of what to expect from the festival. The music that Mr. Nicolosi wrote to accompany the visuals is moving and unexpected. Take a look below –

I would be remiss if I did not mention the incredible efforts and work done by Phoebe Lewis on behalf of the festival. In addition to helping me wrangle these two for interviews she organized all of the communications between the VMA and MNFF and bantered with me via social media far more than I deserved.

From attending events, working with the VMA and generally benefitting from the hospitality of those gracious enough to spend time chatting with me, I have been able to get to know a few Vermont filmmakers whose work I admire. Below are a handful of videos from some of these filmmakers.

Michael Fisher –

Ben Silberfarb –

Jon Andrews –

Matt Lennon –

Bill Philips –

Sadly there are others, like Ethan Murphy, whose work I cannot find online to share with you. Then there are those that I was not able to become acquainted with, like Nora Jacobson and Jay Craven but given their contributions to the Vermont film community and the impact of their work I am including two trailers below –

In March of 2017 The MusicBed held their Film Initiative which I participated in. I have been working on a science fiction screenplay for more than a decade and when I saw how this competition worked it seemed like an opportune time to try and put together a visual submission that would take me outside of my comfort zone.

In an act of kindness the good people at The MusicBed put up the package the 2016 winner of the competition submitted. I was able to download and study that submission in order to have a real sense of what was expected. I can no longer find the page they had which contained the interview and submission but on Shane Hurlbut‘s site there is a blog post which contains most of the information (and the short film that was made after winning – I have posted it below).

I’ve never attempted to distill any piece of writing into minimal text and a few broad images and the process was helpful, to say the least. Problems with my script became apparent immediately, as did solutions. In using images I found online I was able to better conceive of the story I wanted to tell – as well as the themes and issues I had been struggling to articulate and explore. I would encourage any writer who does not tend to think visually to experiment with this process as it does force you to think differently and, for me at least, the results are pleasing.

Sadly I did not win the competition but, again, the process was so helpful to my writing that I do feel like I won in some ways. Perhaps that is corny but anything that improves the work is a good thing.

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I’ve tried not to make this a self-centered post, I may have failed. My hope was to point out a few of the experiences I had this past year (I did apply to the FilmicPro competition but I submitted a previously completed work so no real lesson was learned there) in an effort to show how even in failing I feel like I succeeded.

I think it is easy when there are no immediate, tangible results to gloss over a period of time and think, “Nothing happened,” but rarely is that true. I wrote and shared numerous short screenplays this past year in a hope of getting something, anything made. The only short film I completed was one I made by myself – without a script. I did have the experience, for the first time, of writing with someone specific in mind to direct and then having the ticklish conversations that follow when they don’t want to work with you.

It’s a process and I can honestly say as much as I didn’t like many parts of this process over the past year, I think, it’s gotten me to a better place. There is concrete evidence that things did happen and being reminded of that is helpful.