Last week, we reported about Thought Equity Motion's deal to digitize and represent the NBC News archives. The deal, which marks a huge leap forward for Thought Equity in terms of the content it represents, gives further proof of the prominence of footage in today's content market.  Thought Equities CEO, Kevin Schaff, kindly agreed to share with us his views on the footage content business and the role his company plays in the content industry.


abouttheimage (ATI): The NBC deal is the biggest deal yet for Thought Equity (TE.) 

Kevin Schaff (KS): Yes, it's a big turning point in that it's a final piece in an overall aggregation strategy when added to all of our other collections, such as HBO, Sony Pictures, NCAA and National Geographic and our art-directed lifestyle collection. It makes us truly a one-stop-shop destination for any kind of motion content a story-teller might need.  The NBC deal puts us on the map as a content agency with the most exclusive content.

ATI: Where or how do you see TE fitting in the stock photo industry?

KS: Comparing stock photos and stock footage is like comparing cars and airplanes and saying they're both in the transportation industry. Still photos and footage serve radically different purposes. With access to a wide variety of news, historical documentary and lifestyle footage, people can access any element to a story they want to tell. It's no longer about using stock clips as filler, but as a solution to actually telling the story. Where still photos might illustrate a story visually, footage actually communicates the story itself. The convergence of media and advertising impacts the use of photography. Most visual communication uses motion-based images.

More often, shooters are equipped with video cameras while designers must focus on more than a single asset [i.e., not just still imagery and not just footage, but both] in order to deliver their messages across multiple platforms. The footage market is growing as a visual means to tell stories. Today, one out of ten billboards in Times Square uses moving imagery.  We also have more screens in the house; the TV screen, the PC screen and the mobile Phone screen and on these screens, motion content gets the most attention.  Ultimately, the market for moving images is a much bigger than that for stills.

ATI: Does the NBC content combined with the other news, sports and documentary archives you mention put the commercial stock material on the back burner?

KS: Absolutely not.  Our art-directed lifestyle collection, Triangle Images, remains a key element to our overall content.  We continue to produce and outsource production of new content for this collection.  Our goal is to provide our clients with the material they need to tell the whole story. For example, TE has the whole story from a guy not feeling well, to the guy seeing a doctor, to the guy playing tennis.

ATI: Is the stock footage business threatened by micro-payment or over-supply in the same way still image licensing has been?

KS: In the footage business, pricing should be driven by production value and scarcity.  You can't find high production value on micro-stock.  TE focuses on production value. So micro-stock, while it serves a purpose and has a place in the footage market, poses no threat to TE.

ATI: Do low-cost HD cameras threaten professionals and might they cause prices to decline?

KS: Even with cheap cameras the rest of the production costs and value remain high.  These include studio time, lighting, actors, location time, and so on, all of which still cost quite a lot.  Cheaper cameras will help feed micro-sites.

ATI: Who is Thought Equity's primary customer? Do you see that changing in the future?

KS: The ad agency is our primary target, which is why we have offices in the world's major advertising production centers of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Tokyo and Sydney, with a new office in Europe coming soon. Our second most important target is the entertainment market. If you watch an hour of television today, you're likely to see a TE product.  And TE currently represents about 40% of all on-line licensable motion content.

ATI: Who do you consider to be your competitors in this space?

KS: I'm not sure how to answer that question because TE is the first of its kind.  Most companies with footage just sell clips.  We bring a lot more to the table.  We not only provide great content (we have 4.5 million hours of it,) but we serve other key functions to help story tellers with their projects; we provide in-depth research assistance and we provide essential rights and clearance services.  In the meantime, we're busy making all that content easily accessible, on-line.  As such, we're a very unique company.

Web-site: ThoughtEquity.com