Basics of Stock Assets
Stock Assets are pieces of content that are readily available to be used in projects. Examples are stock video, stock graphics, and stock music. These assets are game changers for adding quality to your content while avoiding spending time or money to produce them manually.
How do Stock Assets save time and money?
It’s important to note that we use stock assets subscriptions for all of our video content, and do not purchase these assets ala carte. We have a full library of assets available for us to download at any time. Follow the links below to see our stock libraries.
Purchasing assets ala carte, on the other hand, is exceptionally expensive. The only time we would ever purchase content ala carte would be if the content needed was something we did not have available in our stock libraries. An example would be a shot of a small city, specific animal, specific person, or specific action. For the most part, stock subscription assets cover most request, but there are times when they’re unavailable.
What is Stock Video, and how is it used?
Stock videos are videos recorded by other cinematographers that are available for us to download and use in your projects. The main benefits of stock video are:
They can provide you footage of something you can’t otherwise produce easily, such as a helicopter shot over NYC, or a shot from a city across the world.
They can expedite or eliminate the need for certain B-Roll shots in person. An example would be stock video of a San Diego beach, instead of an actual recorded video of a San Diego beach.
They can add visual variety and interest to your content. An example could be a stock video of a market value graph.
They are often very high quality.
What are the times to avoid Stock Video?
Although stock has a lot of value, we often advise against using it too much. Many stock videos are inherently vanilla looking. They use very basic and similar actors, with very obvious cues to being produced as stock assets.
In other words, when used too often, they’re uninteresting, seemingly lazy, and obviously used for their value instead of what actually appropriately aides the production. An example would be a video overviewing your companies customer service, but instead uses stock videos of “customer service”.
What are Stock Graphics/Animations?
Stock Graphics are a variety of visual add-ons to projects. Some examples are lower thirds, intro graphics, motion graphics and transitions. Stock Graphics are pretty much essential to all videos, as they present very strong yet subtle quality visuals. The benefits of stock Graphics are:
They are easy to use and look great.
They can typically be customized (words, colors, etc.)
They can add a whole new level of professionalism to your content.
They are way cheaper than having an animator design them from scratch.
What about Stock Audio?
See our article on “Music in Video” for a more comprehensive breakdown on this subject. Overall, stock audio is another imperative element of video production. When we produce a video, it almost always includes stock audio. Unless you intend to have custom music for your content, stock audio will be the way your video is scored.
Closing thoughts
For the most part, every video that is produced includes some form of stock assets. Because of the ease of availability, they are an excellent way to increase the overall quality of your video at absolutely no cost. We always suggest clients become familiar with the landscape of our stock libraries, so they can make more informed decisions to refer us to styles that fit their needs or ideas.