Royalty Free Footage
We often find ourselves trawling through stock footage archives, looking for that perfect transition or establishing shot which will set our video productions above the rest. Whilst there are many archives that we have trawled through in the past, we recently encountered the world of Pond5 and can’t recommend it enough.
An online portal for downloading stock footage, photos, illustrations, motion graphics templates, sound effects, 3D models, Pond5 is guaranteed to have whatever it is you’re looking for, and creating an account couldn’t be easier.
Of course by royalty free we don’t mean FREE. The clips can be purchased for a variety of prices, each set by the creator and pretty much dependent upon the format and subject matter in question. A lot of the aerial photography, will cost more than static shots for instance.
What’s really cool about this portal is that the content is uploaded by users who create accounts. That means you or me. The site relies upon people who have filmed their own stock footage to upload it, tag it and put it on sale. It’s really as easy as that.
You get to set your own prices unlike many of the other archives, and 50% of the sale comes back to the user, which is generally considered to be double the industry standard. As a company that likes to promote young and aspiring filmmakers, this seems like a great way for those with the equipment to go out and make some cash from their footage.
The breadth of archive footage available is huge too, with clips available in the lowest quality formats all the way up to 4K, all of which can be downloaded in a variety of codecs. The site is easy to search and you will can find some pretty cool clips focusing on some really quite niche subjects.
If you’re a filmmaker, photographer, animator or whoever, consider uploading your work as you don’t pay any fees until you actually sell some of it. It’s a great place to find stock footage for corporate films too, and we often scour the site for those choice clips that will enhance our client’s projects.
Follow them on Facebook to keep up to date with their latest offers here.
