When should we use stock footage?

Episode 2: We Got that B-Roll! - The Pros and Cons of Stock Footage

So, should we really use b-roll? In this episode of Cut Through, we talk about stock footage, the pros and cons of using it as overlay in videos and how to use it effectively.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofXXYk8SWHQ&ab_channel=FastCut WATCH MORE EPISODES

"Do we really need to use b-roll? Which ones are the right ones?"

Discussions on how to use stock footage in creative video production are confusing and have many sides to it.

However, with careful consideration, they might be what a video needs to produce the best output.

Not sure whether stock footage or a shoot is right for your next corporate video? Submit a brief and we'll recommend the mix that fits your budget.

Full episode transcript

Welcome to CutThrough, the podcast that helps to make video content accessible to more creators. Cutthroat the noise and a wide range of topics to help you break down those barriers and to bring your ideas to life. In today's episode, we talk about stock footage, discuss the pros and cons of using it as overlay in videos and how to use it effectively. Let's get started.

What are we talking about today?

We needed some stock video to help illustrate some points and to make it a little bit more versatile or dynamic.

Are you talking about B-roll?

Let's do it now.

What a nice view of the ocean. That's B-roll of the ocean. Think that's all the B-roll we got? Not even close. Overwhelmed man trying to pay bills? Yeah, we got it. Frustrated man looking for a job in the paper. You know we got it. And lunch meaning success. Hey look, that's me.

So I've seen that a thousand times and I laugh sometimes out loud every time. And I think let's lead with that. Why is it? Why is that such a good spot. What makes it so funny and so useful?

Cause it's the stigma of B roll. It plays on it quite well. mean, it's so generic looking, but it's like, it looks fake and it's yeah, hand up and it's playing on that. So it's, it's quite, quite well done. And plus that was made at a time when actually B roll or stock footage was much harder to access than it is now. So it's kind of a throwback and.

Yeah. Kind of throws back to late night TV materials and not much at all.

What do know about late night television? Are we going to do a full disclosure here guys? there any disclaimers?

For anyone that's worked with us, that...

I didn't do anything on late night television. didn't do a damn thing. And I don't know what you're talking about.

I another podcast episode idea from them. But you said the word stigma. I think that's a great way to pivot into this. Cause look, from this perspective, you've been, you've been on this side of production much longer than I have. And I had a lot of time on the client side. And I guess the number one question I had is, is what's the, when can you use stock video and should you? And really, I guess the big question, the burning question is what's the, what's the risk?

I don't think so.

with a trade off of using stock footage versus acquiring footage, what are the considerations to go through?

Yeah. Well, I think it's the first thing you probably have to take one step back is, what's your communication objective? And, and, and ultimately it almost throws back to the first episode where we were talking about budgets and things like that. I mean, what's your, your, your budget? Like, do you have acquisition budget and acquisition budget means do you have the ability to spend some money to shoot and, and what are you shooting? Like, as if it's, you know, if it's generic overlay that supports the messaging.

if you have the money for acquisition, then it's going to be much more enticing to do that. But some people are the, they won't have the acquisition budgets available. So they're to be looking at producing content that supports a message. And that's where stock video has such a, such a lot of versatility because it's easy. Now there are so many great stock libraries. Like I don't even know how many of there are out there.

They're fantastic. And then you've also got the advent of AI generated video, which is now it's still not quite there, but it's getting there, getting better every day where you'll be able to sort of generate potentially your own kind of stock from AI. And that will get better and better with time. So where do you use it and how do you use it? That's, that's, that's more that we have to unpack.

Yeah, so the first thing to consider just like any project is what are your objectives? What are you trying to achieve? What's your message? Who's your audience? So stand your stuff and what's your budget?

you want to talk about it, like just an immediate example, we just recently used some B-Raw. We that B-Raw. But we use stock video for the promotional work we just did for the first set of socials that we did for Cutthroat. And those social clips, I think they're about a minute long to illustrate some pretty, you know, some points we wanted to use.

We got that.

stock video. So we had to go about through a process. What's the kind of points that we want to find? What's the kind of stock we're looking for? There are lots of different types of stock video and a lot of them will illustrate points. So you have to be quite discerning. So we went and used things that really illustrated points.

So from your perspective, what are the type of points where B-roll makes its impact? Like from my selfish perspective, I always think of, and just steer me in the right direction if I'm off base here, is that sometimes you just don't want to see the person talking and screen the whole time because it's kind of monotonous. So I always think, it to break up the flow? Yeah.

You're a hundred percent right. So when you need to sort of break up the narrative or you need overlay, and if you haven't got any overlay that you own that actually supports those points, you're going to have to either create. So go and shoot something, animate something, or get some footage from somewhere else.

and call 888-0.

Thankfully, no, not anymore. But although some of that B roll was quite good, I have to admit, was some really depressed women touching the wall. The key to using stock video is being discerning and actually finding what works because we used it to illustrate points and that worked for us. And it was, it worked really well, but we actually had to go through quite a, quite a lengthy process to pick out the right things, to make sure what we were using felt right.

What?

that it felt good because you can, the quality difference in things can be quite different and the points and the performances in the stock can be quite different. So some things are performed well. Some things aren't performed well, sometimes colors and looks like we were here in, in Oz and Australia. So a lot of European and American stock footage tends to have a very different look to Australian stock footage. It's just one of those things it's got to do with, got to do with lighting in Australia.

Should you even care about that if you were putting together a video? you're like, say,

It depends how long is a piece of string. It depends on what your communication objective is and it depends on what you're trying to do.

said illustrate a point as well. One thing I've always thought of and I tend to in some of the projects we've worked on is I would say it's emphasis points. So if there's a dialogue, so that's the other point I was thinking. It's like sometimes there's words on screen and sometimes they're spoken word. How do you see, because I always think it's good to emphasize a point. Like if there's a sentence being stated, maybe there's a bullet point that comes out of that. Is that how you use it? kind of thing.

if I had to break it down, I think if you were to, if you were trying to drive your entire narrative with stock video being the main, the main piece of media in that, then you're going to be, I think you're going to be doing yourself a disservice because what's going to end up happening is it's going to look very hammed up and it's going to look really fake. And it's probably not going to do you many favors.

If the stock video were more of a secondary aspect or a secondary piece of media where you've got graphical elements, which are tying a narrative thread together and highlighting points and pulling a look together, then the stock actually serves a bit of a different purpose. It becomes a supporting actor. And that's something that I've seen quite clearly. Where it really works well is where it's a supporting actor, where it's being used to, to support

a narrative where it's being used to support either good interview footage from, from the project or from a client, or whether it's being used to support a voiceover or graphical elements, when it's being used in those sorts of things. And it's a secondary sort of support actor, as I like to call it, you can use it quite well. And then I think the process from there is really picking the right stock, the right look.

that fits whatever that messaging is or fits your brand or fits the communication. That's the key. Whenever it's a primary, it doesn't work.

Yeah, the word that always pops in my head is generic, right? No one wants to look generic. I've always, this happened to me years ago, it more in the stock photos, but we use the stock imagery for like a promotional end bin at pharmacy. And you know, we felt great because the image was perfect. And then we see a competitor use the same image. So you can't, that's one, I guess, risk or con of using stock footage is you don't own it then.

and therefore anyone can use it, it's publicly available. So I guess that would be another reason not to lean with that because again, you don't own that image.

Some recently, think, one of the main places that I've seen stock footage used, and this is something that we've done for quite a few clients of ours is where we've had, the main driving piece of content is that animated.

sort of graphical text overlay, which supports these big points and tells a narrative and the stock actually sort of fits in underneath the sort of support, illustrate those points. I'd probably call it kind of like a, it's kind of like an explainer video. And in that case, there's quite a, actually, there's quite a lot of effort put into developing the look, the text or the treatment looks, the graphical looks.

a non-narrated essentially text-driven video. Because I guess the question I was going to ask you for the viewers to... Well, then that was just where I was going to go. Maybe we go through some examples of good... Because I guess someone's thinking about this, yes, I can use stock video, but what types of videos would be the best ones to use stock videos? And to your point, say you have words on screen, no narrative, just... And you need to illustrate those points, that would be...

but highly stylized.

I guess example number one. Any other styles or types of videos like training videos, for example,

Let's list out some examples and have a chat about them. I mean, training videos, not so much. I don't think there's a strong need there to communicate. Like training videos tend to be for, for, audiences that are needing the training. their, their requirement is to absorb information. So it's less, there's less need there, but there might be, but it's just not as much. promos is probably the biggest one.

But in the promo space that we're talking about, I see two extremes. There are two extremes. There's there are like promo generators that you can, you can subscribe to. There's quite a few of them out there. And I think even like, even some of the online platforms and social platforms probably have their own, promo generators where they'll, they'll access doc libraries. Personally, that might work if you just need to just try and generate some activity, but

My warning with that is it looks very, it can look very hammed up, especially if you're not giving it some, some extra special treatment can look very generic. As you said.

One of our first sizzles that we ever did is when we started doing this was the, was it was a stock video promo video. And I still think it's one of a strong piece of promotional content because it, forced us to, when you don't have, or you don't need footage or you just want to get a simple message across, it forces you to keep the message in your, well, sorry, it forces you to keep your messaging sharp.

So what do you think worked with that then?

Well, that's where I was going with that. think is the message was sharp and on point and we didn't try to communicate too many words. I I wrote the thing. So my first version was probably triple the length that should have been because I was writing pros and, that's, yes, that's where I was going. Yeah.

There are three, there are three layers to that. Layer one was, it has this really pumpy music track. Layer two, it's got some really strong, impactful graphic treatments that that punch in the point. And layer three is the stock footage, which was carefully selected that illustrated those points.

So that's you, you, took the baton beautifully. Cause that was where I was going. It forced me. So this is something to think about if you create.

And just, just on a quick note to people that is actually strangely in some testing that we did that was still one of our highest performing pieces of material that went out there. Still is performs. It just has impact.

Yeah. And as a marketer, and this person that uses it the marketing and messaging side of things in my career is, I think it's a reminder for everyone to, if you think overlay, you don't have overlay and you need to use stock footage, make sure your narrative is as succinct as possible. Long sentences. Definitely. Long sentences forcing people to read long screens and having long overlay footage.

is probably going to drag and be less effective because you're making people read a book essentially. So using ours as an example, it was probably tripped at that length when I first wrote it, then it went half the length and then I cut it half again. And there's probably about maybe 20 words in that whole thing, 25 words in that whole thing. And that's to your point. You have good clear messaging and then that informs whoever's editing to be very clear on what kind of footage.

is best used to emphasize those key points. You mentioned lots of libraries in me. What are your libraries that you frequent?

Too many, too many to mention. I mean, I can, we can put in the notes definitely after this, the ones that we've, we've looked, worked with in the past and are still quite good. What I would say about libraries is there are so many out there that you can find them. You've got Adobe stock, you've got iStock, you've got, geez, there's some of the bigger ones that are slipping my mind.

Are subscriptions or can you pay as you go? Can you pay, I need five pieces this week and just pay for five?

Both are available. Subscriptions are going to be more cost effective and useful. depends on what your level of usage is. Like if you're using it for, paid media, there can be differences in your licensing that you need to consider. if you're using it for socials, they tend to be a bit more liberal in their, licensing. so that's something you need to look at because they're all very different.

So that's an important point then. So basically your medium or where you intend to show or use your media will dictate your ability to use some of the stock videos.

You will need to, you'll need to know what your licensing agreements are. Cause they're very different. I've, I've come across that, that some stock libraries have very different licensing agreements to the materials.

Maybe as a call to action, we'll in notes if you want to ask us some advice on stock sourcing, stock videos, pros and cons.

Yeah, think recently for one of our clients where we were, we're developing some materials in the background for them. they are acquiring most of their stock from Adobe, which is more pricey, but the quality is pretty good. And it, and it works. It still looks like stock, but it's good stock. There's crap stock and there's good stock. So there are. Difference in the levels of quality out there. And even in, even in some libraries, there's big differences in the quality.

That sounds subjective. What do you consider? What are the key criteria that you use in your mind to determine what's good footage and bad footage?

That's a really good question. First, first thing I used to consider is, the material supporting the, or illustrating the point or the, it, is the action develop, is it, is the action what I need?

Well, that leads to the second question because that's the first point which is does it reinforce the message? Communication intact. The second question, what about the quality of the shot? Because if you're someone that has never shot, never worked behind a camera, never edited, they might look at a shot differently than you would look at a shot. So, how do you evaluate the quality of the shot? And I'm thinking more like a brand guy. It's like you don't want it to say that looks cheap or that's a bad...

shot of that idea.

Most of the libraries will have filters in terms of video resolutions. So that's an important thing. mean, you more often not, you want to be using high resolution materials and that does cost more as well. Simply for that reason is it gives you a little bit more latitude to work with the material. Like you can crop in and push in and do different things. Right now it's about finding the right supporting messaging.

Second thing is the right look and look is not quality, just look. So it can be look. And the third thing is the quality. But generally now most people are able to shoot really good quality. you you'll be, you and most of the libraries have very strict requirements in terms of the quality that they will accept. So that's less of an issue.

modern days has eliminated some of the quote unquote quality issues. So now it's fit and it's, it's overall look and then fit with your narrative.

Right. Content. So you want your content to fit and then you want your look to be the look that fits. I, generally actually probably sometimes I reverse those around. I'm, I want the look to be right. You need the action to be right. So it's that they kind of have a 50 50 for me.

That'll be the classic marketing creative battle, right? I want it to be a message. say, want it to look right. You find the happy, you find the middle ground, the happy ground. So the ideal piece of stock hits both. It looks right and it sends the appropriate message of what we're trying to convey. And that would be, that's Nirvana for B-roll, isn't it?

I think if you're going to use stock, me, as a supporting, stock is used as a supporting point or a supporting media. It's either supporting a text graphical treatment, which has a really strong brand look, or it's being used to just supplement the larger points. And when I say supplement, you're using it just very strategically to fill some gaps that you have, being aware of balance. And I think that's the key for me, if you're going to use stock, you use it that way.

And to your point, think if it dilutes your brand and it creates too much of a generic fill where anyone could have used it, you do need to think carefully. I don't necessarily think that should stop you from using it, but you'll just need to think about your circumstances with that.

That's a wrap on this episode of CutThrough. If you liked it, hit subscribe, and if you've got thoughts or questions, we'd love to hear from you. See you next time.