The ACSIL Global Survey of Stock Footage Companies Report is Now Available

The ACSIL Global Survey of Stock Footage Companies 4 (AGS4), the fourth market research report on the global stock footage industry from the Association of Stock Image Licensors (ACSIL) and Thriving Archives, is now available for immediate purchase and download.

The AGS4 examines current business conditions, key trends and best practices within the footage industry. Results highlight market stability, confidence in future growth and shifts in customer demand, with Netflix and other streaming services representing the most significant source of new revenue for footage licensors. For more detail, please click here to read the Executive Summary.

ACSIL and Thriving Archives have worked together to publish three previous AGS reports, achieving strong industry support and participation in each effort. Like it's predecessors, the AGS4 provides a snapshot of the global stock footage industry, tracks evolving trends and examines how footage companies operate, market and serve their customers, providing footage industry leaders with strategic, practical information to help them compete more effectively.

Assessing the overall health and well being of the footage industry has been a top research priority since the inception of the AGS series. Based on the performance of the 84 companies within the 2018 dataset, which represent 20% of the estimated 415 footage companies in operation currently, the footage industry is in solid shape, with total industry revenue now estimated at $570 million, a 3% increase over the 2015 estimate of $552 million.

“While we did not find significant growth in the dollar value of the overall industry, we did find that the mood had shifted on many key topics, and individual companies appear to be more stable, confident and optimistic,” said Matt White, ACSIL executive director. 

Highlighting this sense of optimism, the majority of companies said that their revenues had increased over the last two years; that demand for footage was up; and that they expect their revenues to grow over the next several years. Conversely, only 37% believe that production budgets have gotten smaller. All of these findings represent improvements over previous years.

“Another key takeaway from our current survey is that while footage companies have rallied to integrate the tools and benefits of the digital revolution, many long-standing business practices have endured,” said David Seevers, president of Thriving Archives and the principal author of the AGS series. “And while online media marketplaces are now fixtures in the footage licensing business, they do not appear to have displaced the older, more traditional footage licensing operations, which seem to be co-existing with these technology driven powerhouses.”

While traditional buyers such as “independent producers” and “broadcast networks/commercial TV” remain leading customer types, newer categories such as “SVOD Services,” (which includes Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc.) increased the most in terms of overall importance to 2018 companies’ billings, followed by “independent producers” and “ad-supported streaming services,” underscoring the growing importance of these newer streaming services, as well as their future potential.

The AGS4 is based on an anonymous 47-question survey completed by a group of 84 stock footage companies, launched in mid-July 2018 and running through late September 2018. During this roughly two-month period, multiple attempts were made to contact as many footage providers as possible and make the existence of this survey known to the industry at large. 

The 191-page report includes 85 pages of detailed analysis and 90 full-color charts visualizing results from the 47 questions asked in the survey. The report covers 11 separate categories, including: Business Conditions; Company Types; Footage Holdings; Headcount; Ecommerce & Order Processing; Order Volume; Pricing; Licensing Practices; Customer Types; Marketing, Customer Development & Growth; and Threats & Opportunities.  

The AGS4 is now available for purchase for $950. Please click here to purchase and download your copy, or click here to read the full AGS4 Executive Summary. 

AGS4 participants are entitled to receive a 50% discount on the purchase of the full report. If you participated in the AGS4 survey and would like to purchase the report for $475, please send us an email at davidwseevers@gmail.com.

ACSIL and Thriving Archives Launch New Footage Industry Survey

ACSIL and Thriving Archives today announced the launch of the ACSIL Global Survey of Stock Footage Companies 4 (AGS4), their fourth survey of the global footage business. The 47-question survey is being conducted online, and all footage companies worldwide are invited to participate.

The online survey is open now through August 13, 2018, and can be accessed here. 

ACSIL and Thriving Archives have worked together to publish three previous AGS reports – the first in 2007, the second in 2011 and the third in 2015 -- achieving strong industry support and participation in each effort. Since publication, all three AGS reports have been widely used and highly valued by business leaders both inside and outside the footage industry.

Like it’s predecessors, the AGS4 is designed to take a snapshot of the global stock footage industry, track evolving trends and examine how footage companies operate, market and serve their customers, providing footage industry leaders with strategic, practical information to help them compete more effectively.

“As the news, marketing and entertainment sectors become defined by their video content, the footage industry experiences enormous growth and rapid change,” said Matthew White, Executive Director of ACSIL. “This fourth survey of industry trends and activities will provide a long anticipated snapshot of the new dynamic in footage licensing. We expect to learn more about our businesses in this survey than in all the others combined.”

The AGS4 questionnaire has been fully updated to collect data on the current footage market, with a focus on the impact of digital media marketplaces and new customer types. The results of the online survey will be published before the end of the year.

“The footage industry has made massive strides since we published our first survey back in 2007,” said David Seevers, president of Thriving Archives and principal author of the AGS series. “Footage companies have been steadily digitizing and moving online, with many of the leading companies blazing a trail into ecommerce, and we’ve updated our survey to reflect these changes and capture these shifts.”

To ensure that all proprietary information remains completely confidential, the survey collects no identifying information on individual respondents.

Participants who complete the online survey will be eligible to receive a complimentary summary report and a 50% discount on the purchase of the final report. Anyone interested in taking the new survey can click here to get started.

Renowned Film Preservationist Robert Gitt to Receive FOCAL International's 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award

Film preservationist Robert Gitt is to receive the FOCAL International Award for Lifetime Achievement at the thirteenth annual FOCAL International Awards, to be presented in association with AP Archive on 26th May, 2016. This Award is a gift of the FOCAL International Executive and has been endorsed by many eminent people, amongst them Director Martin Scorsese.

“Bob Gitt has dedicated his life to film preservation, and in all honesty I can't think of anyone more deserving of FOCAL's Lifetime Achievement Award,” said Director Martin Scorsese.

In 1970, Gitt joined The American Film Institute in Washington, D.C., where he served initially as film booking and technical manager of the AFI Theater at the Kennedy Center. Three years later, he became AFI’s technical officer and began to work on film restoration projects, including Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon (1937), which he completed at UCLA, and The Blot (1921), influential in cementing Lois Weber’s reputation as an important pioneer woman director.

In 1977, Robert Gitt began work at UCLA Film & Television Archive as its first preservation officer, where he was actively involved in the preservation and restoration of hundreds of classic Hollywood films, both silent and sound. Most recently he was asked by Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker to supervise the digital restoration of perhaps the most beautiful Technicolor film of all time, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (1948), in collaboration with the BFI and ITV.
        
“Bob has led the preservation and restoration team at UCLA for many years and is one of the world's most admired and respected conservation and restoration experts,” said film historian Clyde Jeavons. “He has restored probably more important American movies - silent and sound, classic and obscure - than all the other US archivists put together, and has been a pioneer of techniques to recover early and late Technicolor and to restore the first Hollywood sound-on-disc systems, even working from cracked and broken shellac recordings. In short, he has helped to make available to the highest possible standards countless films threatened by loss and decay.”

“Bob Gitt set the standard for what we call film restoration,” said Grover Crisp, Sony Pictures EVP asset management, film restoration and digital mastering. “Film preservation existed prior to Bob Gitt, but the kind of restoration we know of today is the result of Bob’s standard setting work for almost forty years.”

Gitt has also specialized in resuscitating early sound films, including over one hundred 1926-1931 Vitaphone one reel short subjects, and has lectured widely on the subject of film and sound preservation. His latest project is Part II of his epic history of sound on film (A Century of Sound, 1933-1975) - described as "a gold mine for specialist researchers and technology buffs" - which was launched earlier this year on BluRay.

'It's great news that our FOCAL International Executive has voted to honor Bob Gitt in this way,' said FOCAL International's Chair Sue Malden, 'Bob has also accepted our invitation to present the Jane Mercer Memorial Lecture a few days prior to the Awards Ceremony on 26th May. It will be a wonderful bonus to a thrilling week of archive industry events.” 

Kate Adie OBE, the former Chief News Reporter for the BBC and current presenter of From Our Own Correspondent on BBC Radio 4 will host the gala FOCAL International Awards Ceremony on 26th May at the Lancaster London Hotel. Apart from the Lifetime Achievement Award, sixteen further awards will be presented on 26th May to celebrate achievement by producers and directors in the creative use of footage in all variety of genres, across all media platforms plus the contribution made to the global production industry by archivists, film libraries, researchers and technicians, as well as the work done to restore and preserve these irreplaceable assets.

Organizer of the Awards competition Julie Lewis went on, 'It's going to be another gripping competition. We received 191 submissions to the FOCAL International Awards 2016 from 17 countries - amazing archive heavy productions featuring, for example, Amy Winehouse, Steve McQueen, Marlon Brando and Kurt Cobain all vying for a place in the final nominations - and that is just in the Cinema category! We also have an unprecedented 12 nominations for the Jane Mercer Footage Researcher of the Year Award so it’s going to be a very tight race in all 16 Award categories. Our amazing team of over 50 international jurors are already stuck into viewing their respective submissions and we will be announcing the final shortlist in the second week of March.'

Tickets for the Gala Awards Ceremony 26th May go on sale today, so you'll need to hurry if you want to book a table.