In 2017 Fyre Festival launched a video marketing campaign which promoted a 'transformational' party experience on a remote island in the Exhumas.
The short video boasted a private paradise, previously owned by Pablo Escobar, glamorous yacht trips, deluxe accommodation, and only the best gourmet food.
Festival-goers were pretty disappointed when they arrived to chaos, damp mattresses, mountains of rubbish and grilled cheese.
Not quite what was advertised in the companies star-studded video advert.
Shutterstock, a stock photography, footage, and music provider launched a film this week which, using a number of their stock clips, re-creates the infamous 'Fyre Festival' commercial.
The two videos are indistinguishable and it is a great example of what you can do using stock footage if used correctly.
At TT we do occasionally use stock, but it isn’t always as simple as it may seem.
A big challenge we have is that when we are working with multiple clips from different places, each clip will inevitably be shot differently. Different camera, different lighting set-up, different grade, different aspect ratio, different resolution and so on. We always shoot our own footage on Sony FS7 Mk II Cameras which produce beautiful advertising quality footage, and so any footage which isn’t to that high standard would look pretty poor alongside it.
There is an assumption that stock footage is in-expensive but that is inaccurate. There are sites which are cheap at around £50 per clip, but there are also very high-end stock sites which cost around £400 per clip. Like anything, you get what you pay for, so the more expensive, usually the better, more cinematic the clip.
Granted, £400 is a lot less expensive than travelling a film crew to a desert island, via private jet so you can capture 3 seconds worth of gorgeous drone footage… but £400 x 40 clips still racks up!
Although stock footage is almost always immediately available after you buy the clip, trawling through hundreds of pages of stock libraries to find that perfect shot can be very time-consuming and does require an experienced researcher to select the right clips and to make sure they all seamlessly flow into one another.
As you can see from the Shutterstock ad, it is achievable and you can create a film which is slick and professional, but as Fyre Festival displays so brilliantly, you can’t always trust what’s out there.
And so, if we can, we always prefer to shoot our own footage, as we have complete control over the output and we know that when the footage lands in our edit suite, it will be full of those beautifully cinematic, creative visuals that TINKER TAYLOR are proudly known for.
Shutterstock has released the first video in its 'It’s Not Stock' campaign. This sees it recreating Fyre Festival's infamous marketing campaign using nothing but its stock footage library. The campaign featured professional models, a private island and took a whole camera crew to create. Shutterstock replicated it with stock assets. “We knew we could create the same thing much cheaper and from our desks,” said Lou Wiess, Shutterstock chief marketing officer. “We thought it would be a great way to show marketers and creative teams that you can truly create anything you want from our 12 million video clips and tens of thousands of music tracks”
