By Jake Hellbach, Shutterstock Footage Submitter

Becoming a successful stock footage submitter can be a simple and rewarding process if you have the right techniques and equipment.

Since delving into stock video in May of 2007, I’ve noticed an interesting trend: More and more buyers prefer footage with artistic, “film-like” qualities. Advanced techniques involving lighting, shallow depth of field, and movement are in demand now more than ever.

To create great stock videos that appeal to the majority of buyers today, I recommend the following equipment and techniques:

Equipment
My best investment has been the Canon EOS 5D Mark II Digital SLR Camera, which I now use exclusively for stock. The 5DMKII provides:

- Shallow depth of field for the look of high quality film
- Brilliant color and amazing sharpness
- Great low light capability

All of the clips mentioned here were shot with the 5DMKII. Though the 5DMKII takes more time and skill to use, the results are well worth it. To complement the 5DMKII, I recently added a Canon EOS 7D and a Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS lens to my repertoire.

Lighting
It is essential to invest in good lights and to acquire good lighting skills to create marketable images and footage.

The clips featured below are titled the “Friends” series, and were made with some of the talented actors I use from time to time. I wanted to capture a group of friends having some wine and enjoying themselves. To do that, I used more intimate lighting. Basically, I had just one main light directly above the actors and a reflector to cast light back into their faces from the table. A couple of hair lights were also used.

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Movement
Investing in equipment to add movement to your images will add special “production value” to your shots and help your clips stand out. I use:

- A portable crane
- Losmandy Dolly System
- A shoulder mount
- Steady Tracker (steadicam)
- A camera slider (another type of dolly)
- A tabletop radial dolly

To get the following series of shots, I used my Losmandy Dolly System. Setup as a radial dolly, I was able to capture the action around the table by keeping the actors in the frame while creating a sense of movement with the background.

View clip

Another favorite of mine is this police surveillance clip:

View clip

To create this shot, I used a crane inside the car door to follow the detective’s actions. The saturated color was created in After Effects, which leads me to the workflow that I like using.

Since I have a Canon 5DMKII, I use Neo Scene as an intermediate codec to download the video from the card to the PC. This converts the QuickTime H.264 format from the camera to a more PC-friendly AVI. As a result, the editing process is easier. From that point, I import the footage into Adobe After Effects for editing content, color correcting, and grading to final render.

If this sounds like it’s a lot of work, that’s because it is! However, seeing the high quality of the finished product makes it all worthwhile. The big plus is that my footage sales have increased as well!

For more information, here is a behind the scenes view of the Friends Series shoot, as well as some stills of the actual setup of the lights, camera and table where the series was shot.