Stock Footage Royalty Free - Create your own and make money

Royalty-free stock footage could be your key to conjuring up some most welcome cash. All you need is a video camera and your imagination, and you could be earning money as people download your video clips from a video stock footage library.

A stock footage library is an online library containing video clips of a variety of subjects, from which people can pay a fee to download and use those clips in their own project. You will have seen it numerous times on TV programmes. The action moves from New York, to London, to the Alps. The cost of transporting film crews and actors to each of those locations is incredibly prohibitive, so the producer 'buys' a short clip of, say, some aerial footage of Canary Wharf and the London skyline to use as an establishing shot, and it is woven in with the live action.

It isn't just big TV and film companies that do it. Smaller production companies have a need for it too. Production houses often make training videos for businesses, or product presentations, or adverts etc. They might, for example, require some footage of a swarm of bees, or of someone doing ski jumps. It is much cheaper to simply buy that footage from a library than it is to go and film it.

This is where you come in. You may not be able to to take footage of an avalanche in full flow, or of elephants majestically crossing the savannah, but there may be things you can do closer to home. Start with your hobbies. Do you keep bees? Do you go gliding? Surfing? Sailing? Those kinds of slightly unusual activities could well be marketable to a stock footage library. Even if you don't have such an active hobby, if you use your imagination there may be other events that warrant recording on video. If you live in a city, there may be a whole range of visually interesting events occurring, from carnivals to old buildings being knocked down, cranes moving building blocks around, sporting events, that kind of thing. If you live in the countryside, is there any wildlife you could film, or perhaps an unspoilt time-lapse sunrise? If you enjoy using your video camera, then get creative. Ask for permission at your local recycling centre if you can film the recycling machinery at work. Use your initiative and have fun.

You will need to practice your filming skills. You will need to ensure that you have framed your shot; that you have focused on your subject; the exposure is set correctly for your light; and most importantly that there is no distracting camera shake. A tripod is a must for any film maker, so if you want to make some money out of film making, you'll need to borrow or buy one sooner rather than later.

With regards to the stock footage libraries, this is how it typically works:

You, as the originator and owner of the film, upload your clip to the library website. They will then check through your clip to ensure it meets their quality criteria. The good websites will have quite stringent quality criteria, so it is as well to check the website's conditions first, before you go off and shoot your footage. If you meet their criteria, then they will make the footage available on their website for customers to download.

The customer will pay the library a one-off fee to use the footage on a royalty-free basis. This amount can vary enormously based on which stock footage library is selling the content, the length of the footage, the subject matter, and whether it has been shot in standard definition (SD) or high definition (HD). The 'royalty free' designation means that the customer who is purchasing the clip can use it in their projects without having to pay an ongoing royalty to the Library. It simply means they pay once and can then use it as and when they like. There will be terms and conditions of use, but these again will probably depend on which library is selling the footage.

One final point: Permissions. Depending on where you are in the world, there will be enormous differences over what you can and can't film. As a general rule, if you are filming people (and particularly children), you must get the written permission of those people and the parent or guardian of the children. If you intend to film in or on someone's private property, such as a shop or someone's house, then again obviously you need to obtain their written permission. Different countries have different rules about which buildings and locations can and can't be filmed. It wouldn't be a good idea to go poking your camera into anything vaguely military-looking, for example, no matter where in the world you are.

It is worth saying that there is an ever-increasing need for interesting stock footage. It is an obvious point, but any visual medium requires visuals, and websites are a visual medium. There are a huge number of corporate websites that use flash video presentations, and there's no suggestion that the number is going to decrease any time soon. This trend would appear to have been anticipated and catered for by the rise in the number of stock libraries. Two prominent stock libraries which offer the buy and sell service are istockphoto and pond5. And for an excellent review of those two sites, see this.

If there has been one good thing to have come out of the credit crunch (and let's face it there aren't that many good things), it is that people have become more creative in how they make and save money. There are some standard ways of doing this, such as simply cutting back on spending and selling items on ebay. But in this Apprentice-inspired era, many people are looking around for new and interesting money-making schemes. A lot of people have lost their job. A lot of people hate their job as companies, knowing employees are on the backfoot, are turning the screw. Therefore the holy grail of money-making enterprises is in earning cash out of something you actually enjoy. If you enjoy using your video camera, then how great to actually get paid for it too. The world is an interesting place, so go show it off!