Stock Footage Saves The Day And Schedule

In spite of all the best planning and scheduling, producers will occasionally find themselves up against an immovable deadline, frantically scrambling for those last few stock footage clips needed to complete a project.

Recently Kate Raisz, a producer with Moore Huntley Productions in Sudbury, Massachusetts, found herself in such a spot while making a show for the National Geographic Channel on Alaska. The program dealt with Alaska's geology and weather, and how extremes in the Great North affect other places around the world. They had great footage from Alaska, but were coming up short on "the rest of the world"; things like geyser activity in Yellowstone Park, for instance.

The obvious answer was stock footage, but how to find suitable (and terrific) HD video on such short notice? It was already Wednesday night and the show had to be shipped in less than a week.

Luckily, Kate discovered Mammoth HD in Evergreen, Colorado. She gave them a very specific list at 7:25 pm on Wednesday night. The rest went something like this:

On Thursday Mammoth sent a series of links of online previews and 'online screeners" for review. By Friday - the initial selections had been made and media was FedEx'd for Saturday delivery... on Saturday evening additional shots were requested and FTP'd Sunday.... on Monday AM there were a few more clip requests which were FTP'd Monday night.

Mammoth HD's president, Clark Dunbar, added a whole new chapter to the book called "service". Based upon his intimate knowledge of Mammoth's files, he personally selected great clips to meet the needs, working around the clock and even weekends as the program came together.

With the deadline closing in, even overnight delivery was too slow and Clark FTP'd the final clips, even as the MooreHuntley crew was pulling an all-nighter coming down to the wire.

In the video production world, this is almost unheard of. With a lot of companies, if you don't conveniently fit into their 9 to 5 schedule, you're just out of luck. Mammoth HD actually became a de facto member of the production team almost from the moment they were contacted. Their commitment matched that of the production team in a way that was never expected.

Result - Moore Huntley delivered the project on-time and on budget.